So it begins. Tomorrow, we find out the stuff we don’t yet know about the Apple Watch. Mainly the actual price points and the battery life, which are the two things we don’t know about in any meaningful way aside from $349 to start and possibly “every day”. The great mentioner’s consensus is that the “Watch Edition” (i.e. the gold stuff) will easily be in the thousands, going against serious watches along the lines of Hublot or Patek Phillips or Rolex, and the $349 will be the base level sport watch with “ion-X glass” instead of sapphire crystal and elastomeric (read: rubber) bands instead of leather or metal.
To me, though. the first obvious question is “how much battery is this going to save me?” My expectation being that not pulling out the phone and illuminating the screen – the biggest battery eater – will make the phone hold out longer throughout the day. But my biggest battery eaters are Tweetbot, Reeder, Mail and Instagram. That represents half my battery use over the last week, and I only have notifications turned on for Instagram. I have my doubts whether I can read my RSS on my wrist without destroying that battery.
But honestly, what is it I need from a smart watch? I’d be willing to use it for Apple Pay, I wouldn’t mind caller ID when the phone is in my pocket, I’d love to know I got a text when the phone isn’t audible or can’t be felt in a jacket pocket, I guess the pedometer and heart monitor would be cool… honestly, though, it still feels like a solution in search of a problem. The iPad was like that, until it became the home laptop replacement and thus eminently practical. If there’s a must-have use case for a smart watch for me, it hasn’t manifested itself yet, and I’m honestly not sure what it would be. Good money thrown after bad, for something whose lifespan is still up in the air at best as a usable device. Of which, as I say, more later.