Known to my friends and family as an Apple fangirl, many people were surprised to hear that I wouldn’t be getting an Apple Watch. With my Macbook and iPhone, and my excitement for every Apple keynote, it seemed natural for me to set my sights on the Apple Watch as my next acquisition. While I have certainly been tempted to get an Apple Watch to go with my iPhone, I still wear my wristwatch everyday. Here’s why.
A wristwatch is a personal accessory. Wristwatches are beautifully designed, like pieces of jewelry; they are designed to say something about the person wearing it. The Apple Watch on the other hand, is a mobile phone accessory. It serves the purpose of being an extension to the iPhone. The Apple Watch’s design reflects its functionality, which is to say it looks like a piece of technology. The design is certainly nice for a piece of technology, but not as a timepiece… yet.
A wristwatch is timeless, whereas the Apple Watch is a piece of dated technology. One of the best aspects of technology is that it’s always evolving and improving, but one of the side effects of that is technology being outdated before it even sees the light of day. For example, I got my iPhone 6S on launch day and two days later I read an article that says the iPhone 7 will be waterproof and no longer have a home button. Darn. The current Apple Watch will most likely be obsolete in 4 years, at best. Users will then undoubtedly be forced into playing the keep up game – spending hundreds of dollars upgrading to the latest and greatest Apple Watch every few years. For $400, I would be buying a watch that I know I’ll have to upgrade in a few years or I could get a regular wristwatch that I can still be wearing ten years from now.
I have an iPhone; won’t I have to upgrade that every few years? Well yes, but when I upgrade, I’ll assumingly be paying for a new phone with more functionality. The cheapest Apple Watch is half the price of an iPhone and adds no (real) additional functionality that makes it worth half of an iPhone, at least to me. Everything that I would want to do on the Apple Watch, I can do on my iPhone, which is never more than an arm’s reach away.
It may also seem miniscule, but I don’t want to worry about my watch’s battery life. I never have to worry about my wristwatches dying on me. The two watches I currently have in my daily rotation are a solar powered Citizen and an automatic Seiko. (Powered by my wrist movement.) Even the battery in my quartz watches last for at least 5 years before I have to be bothered to change the battery. The current Apple Watch has an “expected” battery life of up to 18 hours. I don’t expect Apple to make a smart watch that will have a 5-year battery life, but three days is all I ask of the Apple Watch. If it could last even three days on a single charge, I’d be ecstatic.
Ultimately, I would love to try out the Apple Watch, but at this point it’s too new and therefore too expensive for most people – including myself. With its current design, capabilities, and price, I see the Apple Watch as more of a novelty item than an essential one that can replace my beloved wristwatch. Once the price comes down to a more reasonable level, I wouldn’t hesitate to give the Apple Watch a try. However, for now, I’m happy that my watch only does on thing – tells me the time.
