I didn\u2019t take my Apple Watch to London. I\u2019ve forgotten to wear it more than once at work, and almost as many times I\u2019ve put it on only to find it dead an hour later because it failed to charge. That, right there, is the biggest impediment to using the watch. I had a Pebble, the first-gen model. It was limited and limiting, but it only needed to go on the plug every five days or so. When my wife had a Fitbit (before it went walkabout in the business-class lounge at Heathrow) it was similar. My regular old tell-the-time watch doesn\u2019t need a battery at all – wind it once, put it on, leave it on for the rest of your life barring daylight savings and time zone changes.<\/p>\n
I suspect the newer version of the Apple Watch hasn\u2019t really licked that issue. Yes, it was overbuilt before, but it was also deadly slow. WatchOS fixes that, but the new hardware – even if it\u2019s more efficient – is adding real GPS, which isn\u2019t exactly cheap on battery life. Once again, we\u2019re back to the same problem: a smartwatch means you have to charge your watch every night just like your phone. And here\u2019s the kicker: the watch doesn\u2019t do that much you couldn\u2019t get from another fitness device that relays notifications. The Pebble does that. The Fitbit does that. Hell, your phone itself can do a huge chunk of that, and it\u2019ll respond to your voice commands these days as reliably as the watch does if not more so.<\/p>\n
So now comes the real trick. Does the Apple Watch, take two, provide enough of an improvement to make it worth wearing all day and charging all night? Or am I properly suited to have my automatic steel-cased 12-hour dial watch? After all, that\u2019s the aspiration: only needing to tell the time, and never having to worry about notifications or fitness or even what day it is. The Apple Watch right now mainly serves to remind me we\u2019re not there yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn\u2019t take my Apple Watch to London. I\u2019ve forgotten to wear it more than once at work, and almost as many times I\u2019ve put it on only to find it dead an hour later because it failed to charge. That, right there, is the biggest impediment to using the watch. I had a Pebble, … <\/p>\n