Those who are wearing the watch as a fashion product will have many options to change the band, and of course they can have a watch face for any occasion. New bands from Apple and third-party sellers will appear from time to time. I don't expect the shape or size of the main watch to change all that often.
I'm a non-watch-wearer and not into fashion, and neither are you (since you have worn the same watch for nine years), so probably Apple's fashion strategy shouldn't be based on advice from either you or me.
I still have hopes that Apple will provide a way to replace the internals with more powerful (and less power-hungry) innards for about the same price as the $350 model. If I get used to relying on a watch again, I'm going to want its capabilities to grow.
The main reason that people see those products as game-changers is that they changed the game, and we can see that with hindsight. Read comments from before or shortly after they were released, and you'll see that many of those comments are eerily similar to yours. Skepticism before an Apple product's release is historically unreliable.
I'm looking around the airport lounge. There is a man talking on an iPhone. Think about the way people hold their iPhones (or similar smart phones). That's not what someone from the 1970s would consider natural. We had phones that were sturdy and meant to wrap your whole hand around, not hold gently between your outstretched fingers. Another guy is typing onto his iPad. Computers in the 1980s had full-travel keyboards similar to typewriters. The few computers that had "chicklet" keyboards were derided as toys. Now the chicklet keybord is on my MacBook Pro, and ten feet away there's a guy using a keyboard with practically no tactile feedback.
If people find the Apple Watch to be useful, then the use of it will come to seem as natural as holding a 5.5" iPhone 6 Plus next to your ear.
Apple may never convince you to purchase an Apple Watch (some people still insist that a "dumb" mobile phone is all they want or need), but the effort to convince you and me and everyone else has barely begun.
First of all, there are only a few brands that have watch models that live on year after year - watch and band combined. For those that buy watches for fashion, the band is just a small part of the fashion and the watch itself is going to play a part in their buying decision. A smart watch does benefit from having a changeable screen view, but the shape being stuck as a rounded rectangle is going to be negatively viewed. I've worn the same Seiko because it's unique, a small-run version (relatively speaking) that people still compliment me on (not that I'm looking for compliments, but it clearly has a classic appeal). I've not come across another watch that provides me with the features and look - without getting into the tens of thousands of dollars level and I'm just not willing to go there yet when I still like what I have.
I agree, that if Apple can change out the internals (at store level) as a way to keep a watch up to date, that would be a game-changer for smart watches.
In regards to my seeing the Apple Watch as a game changer as if I missed calling the iPhone, iPod, iPad game changers just isn't true. I understood in each case just how disruptive Apple was going to be. I saw Apple that way going back to the release of the Macintosh SE. I just don't see the watch, which at this point is still just an off-shoot of the iPhone and in fact requires the iPhone to do many of the things they want it to do, being some huge hit in the long-term.
The thing with communicating with your watch verbally is the issue faced with any device using a speakerphone - having others hear your conversation or the person you're talking to hear everything around you. I would actually argue that a smartwatch would be unnecessary if Apple would simply make a better bluetooth headset. Why try reading text on a tiny screen when your headset could read a message or alert you to leave for a meeting or any of the other things the Watch is supposed to help with and do so with other people not realizing it (other than seeing you have a headset in your ear).
Apple first bluetooth headset was a fantastic device - tiny for the day, decent battery life. In fact it was potentially too small and I knew two people who lost a couple of them because of that. But today, bt headsets have improved sound, but still look pretty terrible (except for maybe the new Moto Hint). Apple should, if they're not already, be working to replace their wired headsets with something discrete, offering long battery life that uses the iPhone's own noise suppression capabilities.
I'd go further and say that looking at a watch during a meeting is as poor in form as looking at your phone. In the "old" days, looking at your watch during a meeting was a sign you were bored with the meeting. Now with a smart watch, you could be bored and trying to do something else while in a meeting. And given the small size of the Watch screen, you're going to need to focus more intently when trying to get to some particular function, further taking you away from other things you could or should be doing.
It's true, I may recognize at some point as Apple further promotes the Watch, that I have to have one, but I knew I was going to get an iMac, MacBook Pro, Air, iPod, iPad, iPhone even before any of these things hit the market, because I saw the benefit to each without needing Apple to "sell" me on them.
