I'm undecided on whether I'll upgrade to AW2. It's kinda pricey, especially as I've committed to keeping the first-gen model like I did with the original iPhone and iPad. But if the AW is going to be on 18 month cycles then I might, as I'm not sure if I could put up with this slower model through spring 2018. It's bearable, and it's convenient to glance at alerts or complications like weather, but trying to access data on it isn't faster—and I might even say much slower—than just pulling out my iPhone. Here's to hoping the difference between AW and AW2 is the same as the difference between the iPad and iPad 2.
I kept my 1st gen iPad, and still use it ocassionally as a back up. I take it places I don't want to take my primary iPad, and use it for less intensive tasks, like reading books. I'd look at the Watch the same way.
Here's the thing, everybody keeps looking at the watch as a commodity, a digital device that needs to be constantly upgraded for the latest features like a phone. Instead, we should be looking at it like a watch.
There's a reason Apple quickly made it possible to pair more than one watch with your iPhone. Because watch people tend to collect them. People who wear watches usually have more than one that they wear on different occasions, even if only to coordinate with different outfits. I had a sport watch, and a daily wear watch, as well as a formal watch. When Apple comes out with a new design, it may have a few new features, but it's not going to obsolete the original watch, which I would expect Apple to continue selling. The current watch will still be stylish, and still do the most basic essentials, and there will almost always be a place where you can wear it instead of the new one, if only to get people talking about your first gen watch at a party.
But Apple has stepped into the deep end of an established industry that offers a wide variety of styles with a myriad of options its customers have come to expect, for no other reason than they will be wearing them. Try as Apple might, they aren't going to change this. Watch bands will only go so far to expanding market share. Likewise with new tech. People don't like to wear the same thing as everybody else.
Making the watch agnostic to platform will open up the product to more market share, but by all accounts there's not much market for the smartwatch, whether Apple dominates it or not. And that's the real issue here.
Apple made a beautiful and functional smartwatch. But people don't buy watches and jewelry based on a single model that receives incremental upgrades every year or two that looks like everybody else's, much less that looks like something they don't want to buy -- I.e. A smartwatch. But make that smartwatch look like something they do want to buy -- a classic wristwatch, or stylish cuff bracelet, and suddenly people will embrace the technology that comes built into it.
Like the original iPad, I hope the gen 2 watch brings some amazing physical transformations from caterpillar to butterfly, and manages to make the transition from smartwatch to fashion wearable. Otherwise, I feel like Apple will be stuck with an attractive, high quality smartwatch offering, with limited appeal to a wider market. And I suppose if That's all Apple expects then that's fine. But that goal certainly seems much smaller than the one I thought Apple had in mind when they launched the watch over 18 months ago.