After two years of speculating and writing about it, the Apple Watch is finally here! It’s been over a month since I chased down my UPS guy for my missed package, and now I have enough personal experience to share my thoughts on it.

A Little Background

In the past few years, I’ve made a conscious effort to use my phone less. Specifically, to stop texting while driving, and stop fiddling with my phone when I’m out with friends. That means less documenting my life on social media and simply living more in the moment.

Did you know the average smartphone user checks their phone 150 times per day? That means two things:

1. People waste time throughout the day just reaching into their pockets/bags, pulling out their phones, checking notifications, and then putting them back into their pockets/bags.

2. People obsessively hold their phones in their hands (or at least keep within arms reach) at all times throughout the day.

Just look at Facebook and count how many photos include people holding their phones. People holding their phones at the dinner table. On the dance floor. While drinking with friends. At the swimming pool. Out camping. All because we’ve trained ourselves to disconnect from the moment just so we can stay “connected” to everyone else in the world over text and social media.

My First Smartwatch

Someone once said:

The desktop is meant to be used hours at a time. Phones for minutes at a time. Watches for seconds at a time.

That just made a ton of sense to me. I realized if I could just relieve my phone of push notification duties, all of a sudden I could drastically cut down my phone usage and just keep my phone in my pocket.

So last year, for my birthday, I went ahead and bought a Pebble smartwatch.

Why I Loved My Pebble Smartwatch

• I could stay on top of notifications while shooting hoops in my backyard.
• I could control the music on my phone speakers while showering.
• I could read push notifications while stuck in traffic more easily.
• When I woke up from a nap and couldn’t find my iPhone, I could hit the play button to make my phone play music.
• When I walked my dog, I could control my music while keeping my phone in my pocket.

Dislikes About Pebble Smartwatch

• It was ugly. As much as I loved the utility, I hated the way it looked, especially how it clashed with everything when I dressed up. It just screamed “computer nerd” to anyone who saw it.
• While getting notifications on my wrist was extremely helpful, I still needed to grab my phone to act on those notifications.
• It was fucking ugly.

Enter Apple Watch

Even before I got my Pebble, I knew the Apple Watch was coming. I knew it was going to look like a watch, not a fitness band, because of all the executives/creatives they were recruiting from the fashion industry. I knew it was going to offer tighter integration with the iPhone (and the entire Apple ecosystem), better than any other third-party smartwatch/fitness band will ever offer, because that’s just how Apple rolls.

For the first time ever, even before the product was announced, I knew I was going to get one.

I’ve always dreamed of having a Dick Tracy/Power Rangers watch as a kid. I’ve always loved the craftsmanship of timepieces ever since high school. I’ve always respected the simplicity and elegance of Apple’s industrial design since my first iPod.

And now, the Apple Watch is in my life. With over a month of hands-on time under my belt, here’s everything I learned:

Early Observations

• It is NOT a smartphone. It’s a dashboard and remote for your phone. Once I realized that, it became easier to manage expectations.
• It is not something you play with. It’s something you set and forget.
• It takes weeks to find the right balance of notification settings.
• It is best used in short bursts. Holding up my arm for longer than 5 seconds is not only uncomfortable, but really awkward in public.
• Taptic feedback is nice step up from standard vibration. It literally feels like it’s tapping you. Plus, Apple did a brilliant job complimenting taps with the right sounds. An alert that sounds like a bell ringing also feels like a bell ringing on my wrist.
• Battery life is much better than expected. I always have about 40% of battery to spare when I go to bed.
• Switching watch straps has a profound affect on the personality of the watch. I already own two sport straps (black and white) and plan on ordering a custom leather strap for formal occasions.
• I feel so naked without it now. There are those awkward moments in the morning when I look at my wrist to check weather and realize I haven’t put on my watch yet.
• My first Apple Watch sighting in the wild: a woman in her mid-40s. As a nurse, she bought the watch for notifications and messaging while she works.
• It’s showerproof! After watching videos of divers jumping off a high dive with their Apple Watches, I shower with my watch after working out with it.
• Having an accurate health tracker with a screen that displays graphs is much more motivating than a small Fitbit screen that only displays numbers.
• Battery life on my iPhone has improved noticeably since the screen no longer lights up for each incoming notification.

How I Use My Apple Watch

• I use the Workout app to track my heart rate and physical activity while doing basketball drills. I don’t stop until I at least fill the Exercise Ring.
• I’ve responded to texts using dictation while shooting hoops in the backyard. No more using my shirt to wipe dirt off my hands and touching my phone to respond. My watch gets a nice rinse when I shower anyway.
• I’ve answered a quick phone call on my watch in the middle of giving my dog a bath. No rushing to dry my hands since it’s showerproof.
• I thoroughly enjoy the freedom of walking around the house in my undies while my phone is charging. No pockets? No problem. Phone calls and iMessages get forwarded as long as I’m on the same WiFi network.
• I check into Foursquare with just a couple swipes and a tap.
• Every morning I get into my car, I start my podcast player, Overcast, from my watch.
• I control my Apple TV with my watch. No more searching the couch cushions for the Apple Remote.
• Because it’s power efficient and charges reasonably fast, I now sleep with my Apple Watch. When I wake up, I charge it for 20-30 minutes in bed while I catch up on social media and news feeds on my phone. By the time I’m done, I’ll have about 80% battery life, which has been plenty. At night I give it another 20-30 minutes of charging.
• When I’m out with friends, I keep sound notifications on to make it clear to others that I’m checking my notifications, not bored of their company. When I’m at work, I put it on silent and rely on the haptic feedback.
• Unlike a smartphone, I’ve found that the fewer apps, the better.
• The best workflow I’ve found for managing notifications: have all phone notifications forward to the watch but only have time-sensitive ones tap your wrist. When a notification comes in, swipe down to dismiss it. Otherwise, use Notification Center on the watch to catch up on any you missed and Force Touch to Clear All.

Minor 1.0 Annoyances

• 98% of third-party apps for Apple Watch suck…for now. But that’s understandable because no developers had an actual watch to test with. Now that developers have watches, they will move quickly to build apps that make sense on a wrist.
• It’s hard to auto-activate the screen when lying down (so I’ve learned to touch the screen instead).
• Back-swiping to go back a screen is very inconsistent across apps. On a screen this small, all apps should embrace gestures more instead of fully relying on tiny-ass buttons.
• Am I using a Glance or an app? Sometimes I think I’m using a Glance and swipe down to close it, but it’s actually an app and swiping down does nothing.
• When my phone is outside of Bluetooth range but still on WiFi range, I can still still receive iMessages and phone calls on my watch. Unfortunately, no other notifications relay the same way.
• While receiving heartbeats via Digital Touch are in real-time, receiving taps are not.
• I occasionally find myself swiping down to access Notification Center, but that gesture only works in Watchface mode.
• The side button really should be customizable. Right now it is used to open the Friends app, but for such a personal device, each person should be able to assign it to their most-used app.

The good news is, all of these annoyances can be fixed over time with software updates. Remember, once upon a time, the first iPhone didn’t support picture messages or even copy/paste.

Now that I have my observations out of the way, here are the most typical reactions I hear:

“I don’t want all my notifications on my wrist! I’ll be even more distracted!”

Some notifications are worthy tapping your wrist for your immediate attention (i.e. phone calls and emails from your boss). Other notifications definitely aren’t. There are plenty of notification settings to help you prioritize the important ones.

The great thing about having notifications on your wrist is it’s much more convenient to glance at than reaching into your pocket, checking your phone, and putting it back into your pocket.

Remember, the average person checks their phone 150 times per day. Seconds add up.

“Android’s had that for years!”

Smartwatches in general have been around for over a decade. The problem is, each and every one of them have been too clunky and/or too geeky to get any sort of mass market appeal.

All but one Android Wear device measure in at 46mm (with the lone exception being 42mm). Apple Watch comes in 38mm and 42mm and include a wide range of meticulously-crafted official straps that even luxury watch enthusiasts are applauding.

Good luck convincing millions of non-techie men and women that a one-size-fits-all 46mm chunk of metal is fashionable.

In the real world, when it comes to smartwatches, looks matter more than specs and features. Just look at #AndroidWear vs. #AppleWatch on Instagram and compare the demographics of each platform.

“It’s going to be obsolete in two years.”

A totally valid concern. The general assumption is the Apple Watch will be updated every year and redesigned every two years, just like the iPhone. But that is only an assumption.

Another possibility is the Apple Watch will be updated more like the MacBooks. Every year, the internals are updated but the actual device gets a full redesign every 3-5 years.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

“Should I get one?”

Depends.

If you are a techie, Apple enthusiast, mobile app developer, or early adopter with the disposable cash, definitely get one! I’d recommend the low-end Sport editions, just in case Apple launches a much better v2.0 next year and you’ll want to upgrade immediately.

To everyone else, I will give a more conservative answer — hold off for now. Wait until a really great watch app emerges from the App Store. There is no rush. The iPhone didn’t become a mainstream success until the iPhone 4.

If the Apple Watch is something that you have to save up for, save for v2.0. Historically, 2.0 Apple devices have been huge upgrades over the original models.

(If Christmas comes around and your girlfriend already has an iPhone and iPad, then sure, get a pair of Apple Watches for yourselves.)

As for me, I am one happy customer. This is a nice upgrade over my old Fitbit, a huge feature upgrade over my Pebble smartwatch, and I get an early glimpse of Apple’s vision of the future. Every time a big company launches a watch app, or a big chain adds support for Apple Pay, or a home appliance company adds support for Apple HomeKit, the Apple Watch becomes more valuable.

Consider this:

Back in 2008, when the iTunes App Store first launched, nobody had any idea we’d end up with phenomenons like Instagram, Snapchat, and Uber. What killer apps will the Apple Watch bring in 5 years?

I can’t wait to find out.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying putting my phone down, focusing more on the world around me, and living more in the moment with my dog, my family, and my friends.

Mark D. Mill:

Can Apple Watch do everything now? No. Can it replace your phone? No. Is it bug-free? No. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Are any of those expectations appropriate for the first generation of any product? Of course not. Apple Watch is not a perfect product, but many people are forgetting that neither was the first iPod, the first iPhone, or the first iPad. Rather than evaluating whether the product is already mature, a better question is to ask whether Apple has laid a foundation on which Apple Watch can grow. The answer, I believe, is a resounding yes.

9to5mac:

In order to avoid the sluggishness and bugginess that was most notably seen in iOS 7 for the iPhone 4, Apple has restructured its software engineering process to better support older hardware.

Instead of developing a feature-complete version of iOS 9 for older hardware and then removing a handful of features that do not perform well during testing, Apple is now building a core version of iOS 9 that runs efficiently on older A5 devices, then enabling each properly performing feature one-by-one. Thanks to this new approach, an entire generation (or two) of iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches will be iOS 9-compatible rather than reaching the end of the iOS line.

Great news. In addition to better performance on older devices:

• slow iPhone/iPad upgraders will be able to run the latest versions of third-party apps
• older iPhone/iPad users will get the latest security updates
• app developers can spend less time/resources on supporting older iOS versions
• third-party apps will progress faster

This perfectly encapsulates the entire range of first impressions that the Apple Watch is getting.

By far the most common complaint was how the Apple Watch requires an iPhone. Totally valid complaint. But once upon a time, the iPod needed a Mac. And eventually it grew into the iPhone.

Also, kudos to the kids who understand we don't need smartwatches, the same way we don't need a smartphone or a TV; we just want it the luxury because it delights us and makes our lives easier.

Out of all the Apple Watch reviews that came out today, only one person brought this up. Ben Bajarin:

Primarily around the notification and glance-able data experience, I saw a behavioral shift in how I used my iPhone. In many ways the Apple Watch untethered me from my iPhone the way the iPhone untethered me from my PC. I was free to leave my phone somewhere in the house, at my desk, or in my pocket, and focus more on the moments of real life. Sometimes it was a meeting, at home, out in my yard, at the kid’s tennis match, etc. There was peace of mind knowing I can leave my phone out of sight or mind but still have access to the relevant information or notifications and even be able to interact and respond to them. The most important interactions and information are no longer only accessible on my large screen smartphone. This experience, of moving key functionality from my iPhone to my wrist, proved to add a significant amount of value to my overall day.

Smartphones are known as digital leashes. Our phones are always within an arm's reach, constantly begging us to pick up, play with, and distract us from the things that matter. All of the other reviews talked about the Apple Watch giving you less reason to reach into your pocket for your phone but Ben Bajarin is the only person to talk about how much more freedom you'll have at home with your family, just by leaving your phone at his desk.

Cooking dinner for the family. Spending quality time with your kids. Having playtime with your dog. Gardening in the front yard. Shooting hoops in the backyard. Working out in the garage.

When you're at home, you should feel at home; you shouldn't have to feel obligated to stay leashed to the world through your phone. With a smartwatch, as long as you set up the your notifications right, you'll be given back some more of your time, as well as your freedom, to enjoy the things that actually matter.

In anticipation of the first-gen Apple Watch being released later this month, here are some comments on the original iPhone back in 2007:

the iphone is announced to appear in 2007 , the n95 from nokia which is a 2006 model cand kick iphone's arse very easily, the iphone is just some sort of eye candy, i have a 6680 and i would'n trade it for iphone:)
try comparing the iphone with the n95 on gsm arena, you will be surprised.

Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a touch-screen is on a phone. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.
I'll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks. It's smaller, it's got a protected screen, and it's got proper buttons. And it's got all the same features otherwise. (Oh, but it doesn't run a bloatware OS that was never designed for a phone.)
Color me massively disappointed.

Im not impressed with the iPhone. As a PDA user and a Windows Mobile user, this thing has nothing on my phone. It sure is good at what it was designed for, a phone that entertains and talks... other than that, i dont see much potential. How the hell am I suppose to put appointments on the phone with no stylus or keyboard?! I can sync it with my computer, but when Im on the go, I cant do either!
No thanks Apple. Make a real PDA please....

lol last i checked many companies tried the tap to type and tap to dial ... IT DOESNT WORK STEVIE, people dont like non-tactile typing, its a simple fact, this isnt a phone its a mac pda wow yippie....
I mean it looks pretty but its not something i forsee being the next ipod for the phone industry...
and its funny how people are "orgasming" when you havent even seen it being used or a real presentation of it just a mockup graphic on the screen, yes its thinner than the q and the samsung, guess what those were 2006 phones, this is a 2007 apple phone, what did samsung and motorola stop developing last month or something?
It took apple how long to develop this ONE PHONE, samsung and motorola release new phones every few months lol, and constantly innovates and gets better, im sorry but if im sending text messages i'd rather have my thumb keyboard than some weird finger tapping on a screen crap.

Typical short-sighted reactions by consumers who are driven by tech specs, feature lists, "but other companies did it first," and think design is about "how it looks."

Matt Richman:

The challenge of selling Apple Watch illustrates their foundational nature. Apple Watch is technology combined with jewelry, a product that must be experienced to be fully understood.

Jewelers, however, are unequipped to sell technology, and technology retailers are unequipped to sell jewelry. But because Apple has its own stores, the company can redesign them to sell a product that’s a combination of both.

Without Apple Stores, there would be no place to properly experience the Watch, so it would have a far smaller chance of success. Apple Stores are a crucial foundation for Apple Watch — and Apple’s competitors have nothing truly comparable.

David Pierce at Wired wrote up a really, really great interview with Kevin Lynch, the software lead for Apple Watch. Lots of great stuff to unpack. Here are all my highlights of the piece, starting with this:

Along the way, the Apple team landed upon the Watch’s raison d’être. It came down to this: Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us, Ive, Lynch, Dye, and everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz—the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications. “We’re so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now,” Lynch says. “People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much.” They’ve glared down their noses at those who bury themselves in their phones at the dinner table and then absentmindedly thrust hands into their own pockets at every ding or buzz. “People want that level of engagement,” Lynch says. “But how do we provide it in a way that’s a little more human, a little more in the moment when you’re with somebody?”

Our phones have become invasive. But what if you could engineer a reverse state of being? What if you could make a device that you wouldn’t—couldn’t—use for hours at a time? What if you could create a device that could filter out all the bullshit and instead only serve you truly important information? You could change modern life. And so after three-plus decades of building devices that grab and hold our attention—the longer the better—Apple has decided that the way forward is to fight back.

Apple, in large part, created our problem. And it thinks it can fix it with a square slab of metal and a Milanese loop strap.

The team quickly learned that smartwatch must be used only a few seconds at a time:

Figuring out how to send a text was illuminating. Initially the process was a lot like texting on an iPhone: addressee here, message here, confirm message. Tap to send. “It was all very understandable, but using it took way too long,” Lynch says. Also, it hurt. Seriously: Try holding up your arm as if you’re looking at your watch. Now count to 30. It was the opposite of a good user experience. “We didn’t want people walking around and doing that,” Dye says. [...]

As the testing went on, it became evident that the key to making the Watch work was speed. An interaction could last only five seconds, 10 at most. They simplified some features and took others out entirely because they just couldn’t be done quickly enough. Lynch and team had to reengineer the Watch’s software twice before it was sufficiently fast. An early version of the software served you information in a timeline, flowing chronologically from top to bottom. That idea never made it off campus; the ideas that will ship on April 24 are focused on streamlining the time it takes a user to figure out whether something is worth paying attention to.

The most common concern I hear from non-techies is, "I'm going to be even more distracted with notifications than my phone!" The Apple Watch team always knew this:

The team had to build software that presented everything you needed without being overwhelming. Fall short of that goal and users might start taking their Watches off, annoyed by the incessant buzzing, at which point the Apple Watch becomes the most personal device you ever bought and then immediately returned. By the time Lynch and his team had finished their third round of software, Ive, Dye, and everyone else believed that they’d nailed the balance.

This next part shows how perfectionist the team is with their craftsmanship.

Audible feedback is the most underrated aspect of design and touch feedback is still very new. I know, I know, Android devices have "had touch feedback for years!"...but they've always felt gimmicky and mechanical. The Apple Watch team spent a ridiculous amount of time making the audible and touch feedbacks feel natural and organic:

Apple tested many prototypes, each with a slightly different feel. “Some were too annoying,” Lynch says. “Some were too subtle; some felt like a bug on your wrist.” When they had the engine dialed in, they started experimenting with a Watch-specific synesthesia, translating specific digital experiences into taps and sounds. What does a tweet feel like? What about an important text? To answer these questions, designers and engineers sampled the sounds of everything from bell clappers and birds to lightsabers and then began to turn sounds into physical sensations.

There were weekly meetings where the software and interface teams would test out, say, the sound and feeling of receiving a phone call. Ive was the decider and was hard to please: Too metallic, he’d say. Not organic enough. Getting the sounds and taps to the point where he was happy with them took more than a year.

This sums up the purpose of Apple Watch perfectly:

If the Watch is successful, it could impact our relationship with our devices. Technology distracts us from the things we should pay the most attention to—our friends, moments of awe, a smile from across the room. But maybe a technology can give those moments back. Whether Apple is the company to make that technology is the three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar-market-cap question.

Lynch is leaning forward in his chair, telling me about his kids: about how grateful he is to be able to simply glance at his Watch, realize that the latest text message isn’t immediately important, and then go right back to family time; about how that doesn’t feel disruptive to him—or them.

A moment later, he stands up. He has to leave; he owes Dye and Ive an update on something important. In all the time we’ve been talking, he’s never once looked at his phone.

Benedict Evans:

Facebook is trying to co-opt the next Snapchat. Yes, the smartphone is a social platform that makes it easy to use multiple social apps, but you still have to get someone over the hurdle of installing the app in the first place, and they have to get all of their friends to install it too so that they have someone to send to. Facebook is trying to bypass that - you can drop your content straight into the existing Messenger install base (600m MAUs). Now just one person can get a cool app and send messages to their friends even if their friends don't have it, and if it's cool enough they can tap on the link and install it too.

This is super powerful stuff.

My biggest gripe about today's social apps is 99% of the time, they don't provide any value to you unless your friends are signed up. Even after that, your friends have to be active for it to be any fun. It blows my mind how many social apps still haven't figured that out.

One app that did figure it out was Instagram. In the beginning, they included the genius feature of posting your photos to Twitter and Facebook as you posted to Instagram. So even if you were one of the early adopters of Instagram and didn't have any friends on it yet, that was okay — just push your photos onto Twitter and Facebook for your friends to enjoy. From there, Instagram's early growth was just purely organic, piggybacking on the social graph you already built on Twitter/Facebook.

I'm really excited about this for Facebook.

As for Apple and Android, I'm wondering if they will ever bake something like this directly into their operating systems. How would the mobile apps landscape change if you could get value from an app without even having to install it? What potential security issues would arise? How would shady companies try to exploit this? Could this possibly kill the web as we know it today?

As Benedict repeatedly says, the landscape of mobile computing is still in flux. For all we know, in the next several years, saying "I downloaded an app from the App Store" might not mean anything like what we know today.

A typical response I see on the daily. But here's what really happened.

NY Times on December 18, 2011:

Over the last year, Apple and Google have secretly begun working on projects that will become wearable computers. Their main goal: to sell more smartphones. (In Google’s case, more smartphones sold means more advertising viewed.) [...]

Apple has also experimented with prototype products that could relay information back to the iPhone. These conceptual products could also display information on other Apple devices, like an iPod, which Apple is already encouraging us to wear on our wrists by selling Nanos with watch faces.

A person with knowledge of the company’s plans told me that a “very small group of Apple employees” had been conceptualizing and even prototyping some wearable devices.

One idea being discussed is a curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist; people could communicate with the device using Siri, the company’s artificial intelligence software.

Fifteen months later, Bloomberg reports :

Samsung Electronics Co. is developing a wristwatch as Asia’s biggest technology company races against Apple Inc. to create a new industry of wearable devices that perform similar tasks as smartphones.

"We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long," Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said during an interview in Seoul. "We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them." [...]

Samsung’s disclosure comes after people familiar with Apple’s plans said last month the U.S. company has about 100 product designers working on a wristwatch-like device that may perform similar functions to the iPhone and iPad. The global watch industry will generate more than $60 billion in sales this year, and the first companies to sell devices that multitask could lock customers into their platform, boosting sales of phones, tablets and TVs.

Sorry, Apple haters. The Apple Watch was well into development before Samsung came along.

Even then, Apple has never cared about being first. Tim Cook explains:

These are lots of insights that are years in the making, the result of careful, deliberate...try, try, try...improve, improve, improve. Don’t ship something before it’s ready. Have the patience to get it right. And that is exactly what’s happened to us with the watch. We are not the first.

We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone. But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch—the first one that matters.