I’m lucky to have an AppleWatch at work to develop apps for it. But before I started to develop an app, I was playing with the watch to get to know the watch better and its functionality. To be honest I wasn’t really impressed, it didn’t gave me the ‘amazing wow’ feeling. To me, the watch felt so limited, maybe because my expectation was huge.
Friend button
First, I can’t do nothing with the side “friend” button (beneath the crown wheel). The button is there and every time I press on it, I get the message that I can add friends. That’s it, I tried to hard press on it, swipe up, swipe down, just nothing. None of my friends have an AppleWatch and not all of my friends have an iPhone. So this button is useless to me and it’s just there doing nothing.
Home screen
The home screen has a watch interface and you can change the face of the home screen by hard pressing on it. This way you can change the faces and customise its color and so on. So the home screen shows time, date, meeting reminders and so on and also shortcuts to agenda, alarm etc., like a normal watch should be.
Glances
You also have Glances, these are static screens to quickly launch the corresponding app. To show Glances you have to swipe up from the home screen. This gives you access to multiple Glances, by swiping left or right you can switch to other Glances. A Glance just shows you a short current status with no interaction, so it’s a read-only view. By pressing on it, the corresponding app will be launched. So if you want to quickly start an app from your home screen, you just swipe up and than swipe left or right to the desired Glance and than press on it. This is fine if you have just three or four Glances, but if you have a dozen or more, this will be clumsy, because you might have to swipe like 6 or 7 times before you find the right Glance and than press on it to launch the app. So Glances are ok if it’s limited to just 4 Glances.
To start an app without Glances, you press on the Digital Crown, this brings you to a bunch of balls (depending on how much apps you have) each representing an app. You can zoom in and out with the crown to find the app you want to launch. Well, it’s funny how it is designed and it’s unique comparing to other smartwatches, but after playing with it some time, the fun is gone. Some apps are not necessary, like the Map app, the screen is too small to show the map in a comfortable way. The same applies for the camera app, you need the iPhone anyway (it won’t work without the iPhone camera activated). Calling a phone is not a thing I’d do when I’m in public, I rather use handsfree. So it’s clearly obvious some things are not handy to use them on an AppleWatch.
If you want to see notifications from the home screen, you just have to swipe down and you get a list of received notifications that are not dismissed yet.
Another feature of AppleWatch is to use Siri. The thing is, I don’t feel comfortable to use Siri in a public environment. For example in a subway, in a library, or in a supermarket. I rather use Siri when I’m in a car or at home. So I’ll use Siri only in certain places (if I use it at all).
To me, a watch is to just have a quick view or a glance , that’s it. Because it’s a small device, you can’t expect to do a lot of things with your fingers and you can’t see a lot of details on a small screen. A watch should only show you a short information message. So I’m glad Apple payed attention on that. When your iPhone is in your pocket and your AppleWatch on your wrist, all the notifications are sent to your AppleWatch (depending on the settings). Messages like Twitter, WhatsApp, SMS, Email, Facebook posts and so on are perfect to read out from AppleWatch. Also controlling functions, like controlling your music, turn off/on lights of your house while you’re sitting on the couch, remote controlling the TV and so on can be perfectly done from AppleWatch.
So the AppleWatch is a nice thing to have and has nice stuff, but it’s not perfect. Some apps are too complex and overwhelming and thus not necessary to have it on AppleWatch (Map, Camera…). The user interface is not perfect too, it can be better. Also it’s too bad to charge battery every day.
If I would choose between a Pebble or an AppleWatch, I definitely would choose Pebble.
No comments:
Post a Comment