My 38mm SG BSB AW arrived last Monday. A few observations as a Gen Xer. As an 80's kid watches have always been important to me. Probably peaked in the mid 80s when you had to have the current Swatch. Yeah, that got old after a couple years. I think I had a total of 3 Swatch. I wish I knew were there were because they are worth considerably more now than I paid for them then. Before then digital watches were the thing to have. Going into college the focus was on nice dress watches -- though hard for me to compete with my NYC friends from mega-wealthy families.
1. Aesthetically, I'm not ashamed to have it on my wrist. "Gray" on black looks nice and unassuming.
2. However it's a little off putting that it's just a big blank black slab unless I raise my arm in a certain way, at a certain speed. It takes the stealthiness of a time check away. Hopefully Apple will figure out a way to have the watch face always-on without a huge hit to the battery.
3. Conceptually, other than #2, I love this watch. It's awesome getting texts or paying for something w/o dragging out my phone. One of the chief reasons I was so interested in AW. It's a time piece plus a wrist info center. And I absolutely love dictating a text.
4. But functionally, the OS is half-baked, and slow. Glances increasingly gets tedious as more are added. No way to delete Apple's apps, which I resent w/ the iPhone and iPad, but detest on the AW because space is so much more a premium here. The "friends" thing is an interesting concept, but I just use Siri: "send a text to Amy." I would much rather the friends wheel be an app wheel with my top 10 apps on it. The app cluster is a bit convoluted and not always easy to target the app you want on the 38mm.
5. The apps themselves are slow to load and often have little redeeming value. Ironically, they are also either too simplistic (Starbucks for example) or too detailed (Fidelity).
6. As a fitness watch, AW is a dud. OK, so maybe not the watch but Apple's Fitness app. It looks like it was a 2nd thought app that they assigned to an intern. I did a few test runs w/ AW, my Garmin 620 w/ HRM, and iSmoothRun on my iPhone. The common data (pace, time) was similar. The problem the detail of the data from the Apple running app is too minimal to be useful. Apple needs to fully open up the HRM to 3rd parties like iSmoothRun for AW to be useful. I won't be running w/ it anymore.
7. The other issue I have with the fitness function is that it's "dumb," in that it can'd differentiate a moderate 5K walk with a spirited 5K run. Exercise is exercise to the AW. There is no quality of exercise level reported like in a Garmin. AW is just spitting out "garbage" data, which is fine as a motivator to get one started with physical activity, but once you bump to a higher level it's useless.
I'm happy with my purchase. 100% worth $350, and I look forward to the coming tweaks and improvements. And also to Gen 2. It's most definitely a watch worn for convenience -- a data portal worn on the wrist. Any other way Apple tries to marketing IMHO is not doing the AW any favors, but rather setting up unrealistic expectations.
1. Aesthetically, I'm not ashamed to have it on my wrist. "Gray" on black looks nice and unassuming.
2. However it's a little off putting that it's just a big blank black slab unless I raise my arm in a certain way, at a certain speed. It takes the stealthiness of a time check away. Hopefully Apple will figure out a way to have the watch face always-on without a huge hit to the battery.
3. Conceptually, other than #2, I love this watch. It's awesome getting texts or paying for something w/o dragging out my phone. One of the chief reasons I was so interested in AW. It's a time piece plus a wrist info center. And I absolutely love dictating a text.
4. But functionally, the OS is half-baked, and slow. Glances increasingly gets tedious as more are added. No way to delete Apple's apps, which I resent w/ the iPhone and iPad, but detest on the AW because space is so much more a premium here. The "friends" thing is an interesting concept, but I just use Siri: "send a text to Amy." I would much rather the friends wheel be an app wheel with my top 10 apps on it. The app cluster is a bit convoluted and not always easy to target the app you want on the 38mm.
5. The apps themselves are slow to load and often have little redeeming value. Ironically, they are also either too simplistic (Starbucks for example) or too detailed (Fidelity).
6. As a fitness watch, AW is a dud. OK, so maybe not the watch but Apple's Fitness app. It looks like it was a 2nd thought app that they assigned to an intern. I did a few test runs w/ AW, my Garmin 620 w/ HRM, and iSmoothRun on my iPhone. The common data (pace, time) was similar. The problem the detail of the data from the Apple running app is too minimal to be useful. Apple needs to fully open up the HRM to 3rd parties like iSmoothRun for AW to be useful. I won't be running w/ it anymore.
7. The other issue I have with the fitness function is that it's "dumb," in that it can'd differentiate a moderate 5K walk with a spirited 5K run. Exercise is exercise to the AW. There is no quality of exercise level reported like in a Garmin. AW is just spitting out "garbage" data, which is fine as a motivator to get one started with physical activity, but once you bump to a higher level it's useless.
I'm happy with my purchase. 100% worth $350, and I look forward to the coming tweaks and improvements. And also to Gen 2. It's most definitely a watch worn for convenience -- a data portal worn on the wrist. Any other way Apple tries to marketing IMHO is not doing the AW any favors, but rather setting up unrealistic expectations.
