Jay Yarow at Business Insider pulled together a variety of reactions to some hands-on time with the Apple Watch. These are snap reactions, given without the opportunity to live with the technology, without the benefit of true immersion.
In a nutshell, the sense I get is one of confusion with the interface. Stephen Pulvirenti at Bloomberg:
Since the first Apple Watch announcement in September 2014, Apple has been touting the digital crown as a groundbreaking interface that will set the Apple Watch apart from its competition. So how is it in practice? On first use, the device felt a little confusing and clumsy. Sometimes it seemed to do one thing; at other times, just the opposite.
Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:
First things first: it is really confusing to have both the Digital Crown and the communications button next to each other on the side. As I tried to navigate the Watch interface, I found myself pressing one or both several times, without knowing which one would take me to the home screen, back out of an app, or launch a feature. Coming from the traditional iOS paradigm of a single home button that always takes you home, it’s a notable difference.
There are certainly some positive comments, but the tone is more hopeful for future improvements, rather than kudos for the existing Apple Watch.
John Gruber called the reactions worrisome. In reference to confusion stemming from restricted access to glances:
Worrisome. Compare this description of the “slide up from bottom of display” Glances to Control Center on iOS. Control Center is available and works the same way (again: slide up from bottom of display) everywhere: the lock screen, the home screen, and within any app.
To me, this gets right to the heart of the matter. To be successful, an interface must have rules that are intuitive and consistent. Sounds like there’s some work still left to do here. That said, this is, fortunately, a software problem. Software is fixable. Software can evolve over time.
Apple needs to do something. You can’t even pre-order this product for another month, and the press is already tearing it to shreds.
Do what? When has the press not ripped an Apple product to shreds. I’ll wait for reviews from people who have used the watch for more than 10 minutes.
I totally agree with you, however I worry that Apple has left too much breathing room for the media to take this and run with it. Apple is a much bigger company now than it was when the iPhone and iPad launched. They’re under more scrutiny than ever before and launching a product in an unproven category is a huge risk. I just hope they can handle it.
Yeah. Shocker. New Apple product gets over the top reactions. This has never happened before.
Putting an ex-Adobe UI guy in charge was maybe not the best choice in this case.
You are talking about a media that never passes up the opportunity to speak thru a dead man to criticise a tech company. You are talking about a media that spun Apple’s biggest quarter in the history of corporate America into a bad thing. There is simply nothing that Apple can do pro actively with the press that isn’t painted as defensive and all their reactions to issues after the fact are painted as “damage control”.
So no, unless you are going to put the collective media in the digital equivalent of a Klien bottle, there isn’t a single thing Apple can do that someone won’t spin into a crisis and run with.
Smart Wear (of all varieties) will, in its first incarnation, seem to say, “I’m a Dork.”
Lessons will be learned.
…
Oh I agree. Apple needs to make sure this window before Watch becomes available isn’t filled with FUD. And with social media and sites like Business Insider things go viral fast. Apple can’t allow that to happen or it will impact sales.
I had a bad feeling when Apple hired Kevin Lynch. That bozo’s stank on the Watch almost ruins it for me.
which is what, exactly?
Seriously. I’m not very interested in clicking on a Business Insider link, so I’m going to hope that Mr. Yarow actually tried to limit his quotes to people who’d actually used the Watch. Quotes from people who haven’t are a waste of everyone’s time.
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
People are going to dump all over it because people will dump all over it. We’ll also see AntennaGate or BendGate or CrownGate or BandGate or something. Then in 3 months you’ll notice them everywhere. And then the financial results will come out for the first full quarter of sales and people will write “Are Android watches taking Apple’s market share?”. And then Christmas will come and sales will mind numbing and people will write “Has Apple lost their innovative lead in watches?”.
Then the year end financial results will come in and the consensus is that Apple sold a metric ton of watches and people will write “See. Only a fool would bet against the Apple watch.”
That’s pretty much complete. May I quote you elsewhere?
I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t change the time on my digital multi-function watch without consulting the manual. Is it possible our standards are a bit too high for the Apple Watch UI?
Yes, it should be great. Yes, it should be simple. But it could hardly be worse than what’s out there now, and it can only improve.
LOL. It’s the internet, do as you wish Mr Moeskido.