Apple Watch is the worst thing ever, and here’s why
Yeah, sorry about that link-bait title, but I figured I’d best get in on the current wave of tech stupid before my tech journo credentials are snatched away from me. Mind you, perhaps escaping would be a smart move while the majority of the industry loses its collective mind.
I mentioned tech writers tending towards bile last week, but the latest stick to smack Apple with appears to be the accusation that the company has lost focus and no longer understands the value of simplicity.
Jason Hiner’s piece for ZDNet is fairly typical of this latest raft of Apple Watch moanery, calling it “too ambitious” and “a bit of a mess”. He argues:
the fact that Apple released the product in its current form says something. In fact, it says a lot about Apple under the new leadership regime because it’s the first new product category of the Cook-Ive era. And as far as innovation and discipline goes, this is a wobbly start.
His core complaint seemingly revolves around a belief that all Apple products start out simple and then layer greater functionality as they evolve. He’s right that Apple builds on products (notably software, adding richer features) over time, but what is simple?
For Apple Watch, Hiner complains that the device tries to do too much and that there are a load of new functions for a user to figure out, which are
unlike any other Apple or tech product so they aren’t naturally intuitive.
But what is intuitive? What is fully natural? My dad recently admitted to me he’d never used copy and paste, and he’s been using Macs for well over a decade. He’d just been dragging selections around, muddling through. With Watch, you imagine quite a few people will do something similar, perhaps chancing across functionality. Others will dig deeper. But the point is that many pieces of functionality that tech pundits consider simple and natural are only so to them because they use these things every day.
Consider the mouse and the original Mac. Back then, the windows/icons/mouse/pointer interface wasn’t unique, but it certainly wasn’t commonplace. Then there’s the iPhone, with its gestural interface that had a fair number of elements that felt natural, but also elements users had to learn, in order to access all of the device’s functionality.
Of course, people slammed those things too, saying they’d fail, because that’s what you do with Apple. And perhaps Apple Watch will be a faceplant, but I think the tech industry would be a better place if writers actually started to spend a bit of time with kit before deciding that it was a waste of time, a mess, or too ambitious. (And you can bet that had Apple released a much more locked-down Watch, with a razor-sharp focus and far fewer functions, ZDNet would have been whining about Apple’s closed nature, and how the device was a rip-off for the few things it enabled you to do.)
You can just drag and drop selections about?! I’ve been using Macs for 2 decades messing about with copy and paste and no idea. This changes everything!
(I just tried it, it really works! That’s brilliant.)
Actually, here’s my view of the Apple Watch. “I don’t know”.
There, I said it. It was pretty easy.
I don’t know and, I dare say, no one else does particularly either. Apple probably have a pretty good idea, having clearly put quite a bit of cash in to the plan, but they can’t be sure and they have been wrong in the past.
I do know that the current Apple Watch doesn’t particularly appeal to me – the current me. I also know that tells me very little about how it will appeal to other people, or a future me.
I suppose something else I don’t quite get is why people care either. I mean, either: it’s great, we all get one and we enjoy having it, hooray, thanks Apple. Or it’s not great, we don’t all get one and none of us have lost anything at all, except Apple. Nothing in that compels me to rants of horror at the product, or wild effusion.
The “edition” $10,000 thing though, that pisses me off.
Not because it will or wont be successful. Just because if there is such a thing as conspicuous consumption, this seems to be it, and I don’t approve.
Part of me says “hey, can you still trust this company to have your proper interests at heart when they make decisions about products you rely on each day”. I’ll have to see how that pans out, but I don’t like it.
My thinking on the Edition is changing too. I initially didn’t really care, but, yeah, it signifies a shift from Apple that I’m not entirely comfortable with.