Apple Watch 1.0 Reviews Are In

The early reviewers have received their watches, have put in as much as a week with the device, and are now being allowed to release their write-ups. If you want to skim through a high-level view of the reviews out there, skip to the last link for an article from TNW.

Re/Code is truly an awesome place to get news and analysis on technology.

Here is the full review:

http://recode.net/2015/04/08/a-week-on-the-wrist-the-apple-watch-review/

Here is a write-up of some 3rd party apps:

https://recode.net/2015/04/08/apple-watch-apps-what-to-expect/

Here is an excellent piece from Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-04-08/apple-watch-review-you-ll-want-one-but-you-don-t-need-one

Here is a snippet from that piece that I find to be quite revealing:

The notification scheme is a little maddening at first. Apple sends a push notification every time you get a corporate e-mail, personal e-mail, direct message on Twitter, message on Facebook, and for interactions in countless other services. Each of these notifications pings the watch. For every message, there is a sound, a vibration, or both. (You can mute them.) If you’re a busy person who communicates constantly on your phone, this gets overwhelming fast. I found myself turning off notifications from entire apps, which seems to defeat the purpose of the watch in the first place. Mercifully, Apple has included a way to clear all those notifications: Just Force Touch on the list.

Eventually, I figured out that getting the watch to really work for you requires work. I pruned a list of VIP contacts in my mail app to make e-mail notifications more tolerable, I killed several app notifications that I found to be consistently interruptive, and I streamlined my list of applications to those that seemed truly vital to my day.

Couple things to think about.  Given these wearable devices are pretty much all slaves to their smart phone friends the notification system is critical.  The above snippet is very revealing to that end.  This watch is for power users who will take the time to customize their notifications for maximum effect.  Secondly, the apps will continue to evolve.  Hard to remember the time when the iPhone didn't have an app store.  Pretty much the case here as well since "native" watch apps aren't allowed yet. This will evolve and improve with time.  Do you want to be along for the ride or wait and see?

One more link will be my last.  This one from The Next Web is a mash of all of the write-ups available, should you be looking for more reading on this subject:

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/04/08/roundup-the-first-reviews-of-the-apple-watch/

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant