(F)utility ⇥ caseyliss.com

Casey Liss:

Perhaps it’s because I have a job where I leave the house, but I can’t imagine looking down at my wrist and not seeing when my next appointment is. I can’t imagine looking down and not seeing what the temperature is outside.

I agree with this piece entirely.

The Apple Watch of today is one that I like very, very much. It fits my life and what I do every single day. On the weekend, I use the Modular face, and I love having my todo list — by way of Things — on my wrist. I can get by just fine with a pen and a notebook, or just Things on my iPhone, but having my list on my wrist is substantially more usable when I need to get a bunch of stuff done.

Weirdly, I have a hard time recommending the Watch to others. It works very well for me and my life, and it might work very well for you, too, but it feels a bit like an old Italian car right now: very desirable, but something that you’d recommend cautiously.

This isn’t a new situation for Apple. When the MacBook Air first came out, it was hard to suggest to a friend that they pick up a laptop that cost as much as a MacBook Pro but had a way smaller hard drive and a way underpowered CPU; ditto the new MacBook. Even the iPhone was a hard sell at first to BlackBerry users who couldn’t bare to lose that physical keyboard. Over time, though, these products improved and we realized what we really wanted.

That isn’t to say that products that were not well-received at their launch are destined to become a success. Apple has their fair share of those — the iPod Hi-Fi and iTunes Ping come to mind — as do plenty of other companies. Time will tell if the Watch eventually becomes a success or if it remains a niche product that Apple eventually kills. But I don’t think it’s been around for long enough to tell, contrary to alarmist Quartz headlines.

Update: I’ve just remembered that I’ve gone a while without mentioning that I still cannot run native watchOS 2 apps downloaded from the App Store on my Watch. My radar is #24143586; it dupes #24436883 (which is weird, because that one is newer, but never mind).

Many of the concerns about the Apple Watch centre around its software. I’ve heard practically no complaints about the hardware, but it doesn’t feel like Apple has lavished attention on the software in the way they have any of their other products. That’s troubling.