“There’s been a lot of discussion of late over the Watch, in particular how it’s doing and whether or not it’s a flop,” Dan Moren writes for Macworld. “As someone who’s been wearing one pretty much daily for six months now, I feel like I’ve finally integrated it into my life enough that I’ve got a good idea of both its capabilities and its limitations. And believe me, it’s got plenty of both.”
“The Apple Watch does a whole lot. The sad part is most of it not very well,” Moren writes. “At this point, I’ve removed most of the third-party apps and glances from my Apple Watch. Even with the native apps ushered in by watchOS 2, launching an application and waiting for it to load data is just too slow to be useful except in cases where I can’t get to my phone.”
“Six months into the Apple Watch, it seems clear to me that it’s a cool device, but it’s got a long way to go,” Moren writes. “I’m looking forward to seeing what watchOS 3 brings, but I’m starting to think that it will take until the second-generation Apple Watch for the whole thing to really come into its own. Because performance is definitely the biggest impediment right now, and there’s only so much that software engineering can do to make up for slow hardware.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: He’s right. Speed is the main issue. The Apple Watch is meant to save time with quick glances. Watching the spinning hexagonal wait icon while waiting for some third-party apps to load negates much of the Apple Watch’s utility. But, some apps work well and are actually eye-opening. Language translation and turn-by-turn directions on your wrist are incredibly effective, for just two examples of many.
So, yes, some apps are slow, too slow to really be useful in a device that exists mainly to save users’ time, however, as with the original iPhone (which was also a dog-slow, more proof-of-concept than promise-fulfilling device), we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Being an early adopter of an original Apple product is a rare, priceless experience. You get to see what the designers thought was important (and that will certainly change in future Apple Watch generations) and why it operates the way it does. You get to see the promise. You get to experiment right along with Apple.
We thoroughly enjoyed the early adopter experience with our original iPhones and, right now, we’re enjoying it with our Apple Watches. We’ve sold many of our old iPhones through the years, but we’ve kept our original models. We’ll do the same with these original Apple Watches. There is only one original Apple Watch and you can only have the original Apple Watch experience if you have one.