“I was reminded, as I watched a live stream of Tag Heuer’s shouty boss build hype for his company’s second Android Wear watch, just how difficult it is to make a good smartwatch,” Vlad Savov writes for The Verge. “As users, we expect all the thinness, lightness, and versatility that we’re used to from smartphones, but married to the always-on time display and two-day battery life of a mechanical watch. And we’re only willing to pay impulse-purchase prices.”
“As things stand today, two years after its release, the Apple Watch still presents the best balance between looks, size, function, battery life, and price,” Savov writes. “Apple simply designed its way around the shortcomings of smartwatches better than everyone else. The company seems to have been conscious of the fact that, like a parked car, the watch will sit inactive most of the time, and so it needed to have an appearance that was appealing even without surfacing a time.”
“It’s a sculpted black monolith, whose darkness spills over the edges and either blends into a black metal frame or contrasts nicely with a lighter color. Returning to the car analogy, it reminds me of a fine auto with tinted windows, which is not a bad association to have. The Apple Watch is self-evidently a piece of technology, but its soft, pebbly shape is friendly and universal,” Savov writes. “So, for the immediate future at least, the Apple Watch looks like the best designed smartwatch that any of us can get.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In the Days of Steve, watchOS 1 and 2 would have existed only within Apple, rejected by Steve as he sent Kevin Lynch et al. back to the drawing board to get it right. After millions of early Apple Watch adopters – including us, very happily – beta-tested the thing in public for Apple (standing in for Steve, so to speak, as beta testers), we finally got here to watchOS 3 (or what Steve’s Apple would have released to the public as watchOS 1.0).
Regardless, the Apple Watch on the market today, especially Series 2/Nike+, now fulfills its promise. It’s certainly the best smartwatch on the market, by a large margin.
We can hardly wait for “Series 3” and watchOS 4!