My Apple Watch Diary, Day 1.2

Sorry for the delay.  We had a busy weekend.  Here is the second part of my Day 1 experience.

Setting up was pretty simple.  I did notice a few things that I had not expected.

My wrist definitely hurt from having to turn it toward me during set up. We will see if that goes away.  I wanted to keep it on my wrist during set up, but then realized that you have to hover the face of the watch behind your iPhones camera to pair it. Luckily my TwelveSouth BookBook case came to the rescue and I propped it up to be able to leave the Apple Watch on my wrist and hover it behind it.  I suppose you could also hover your phone over your wrist.  I ended up taking it off to wait of the apps to sync so I think either way is great.

1. The interface on both the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch app are super cool and easy to navigate.
2. I had to make room on my home screen for the Apple Watch app.  I am discovering that you are in and out of it pretty frequently.
3. Set up did not take very long and I opted to have all the standard apps installed.

At first I did not know how to add additional apps to the Apple Watch.  Then I realized that this happens inside the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.  This is where my presuppositions were challenged.  All along (even after watching many videos and reviews) I kept thinking that the Apple Watch would be stand alone device, like an iPad.  I think it is instinct after owning an Apple Mac, Apple iPhone and Apple iPad for so long, you sort of expect the next device to be able to stand alone.  This is not the case.  The Apple Watch is an accessory to the iPhone.  It runs through the iPhone for everything.  I am starting to get the hang of this, but this is something to consider and keep in mind.  It is meant to be a companion to the iPhone in EVERY way at this point.  I will talk about that later.

Installing apps was fairly easy.  If you have an app downloaded to your iPhone and that app is enabled with Apple Watch capability, it will show up in a list in your Apple Watch app.  You can then toggle it to be “shown” on Apple Watch.  I tried to get a good photo of it installing on the Apple Watch because it looks cool.  I love how Apple is crazy about details.

Again, the interface on the Apple Watch is super cool.  I love the honey comb grid.  Apps can even be rearranged by touching and holding them. You can zoom in and out using the digital crown.  I will talk about that later too.

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The first task I did on the Apple Watch was call my wife.  It was pretty easy to do.  You an either speak it to Siri or use the “friend” button on the side that automatically adds whatever favorite contacts you have on your iPhone to the list.

The other reality check that I had to remind myself of was that the Apple Watch is about 85% speak operated for most things.  The other 10-15% is touching menu options that they provide and through the deeper “force touch”.  I will talk about that later too.  This will take some getting used to but so far I haven’t had many problems.

Again, I am reminding myself that this is an ACCESSORY to my iPhone.  This is hard for me to remember.

Lastly, I want to show you the charger situation.

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The charging cord and block were packed awesome as usual.  The cord for the Apple Watch charger is very long, longer than I expected.  It pops on to the back super easily by whatever magnet magical power it has.  The Apple Watch came at about 60% battery life so I popped it on to top it off because I had read that most early users lost battery quickly.  It charged pretty fast.

So there is Day 1. I would say that by this point I am literally 50/50 on it.  Half of me REALLY likes it and am very impressed with it and the other half of me thinks it is a little expensive and possibly unnecessary.

I will discuss using it in daily life in the next post.

If you have any questions or want me to focus on anything specific, just leave a comment.  Thanks!