I’m not a ‘watch guy’. But I am an Apple guy, and as a developer and runner, the concept of the Apple Watch has me intrigued from a couple different perspectives. Primarily, since Apps are our business, it’s a good business call to be familiar with the technology first hand. Secondly, I currently use a Garmin 305 Watch when I run, and – since it’s the only thing I have not in the Apple ecosystem – I am interested to see if the Apple Watch can replace it as I train for my 4th Marathon.
Other than that, however, I’m not sure about wearing a watch full-time. The object that stopped me from wearing a watch – my iPhone – still seems like a pretty capable time-teller, plus a thousand other things. Regardless, I was up at 3:00am to order my Apple Watch Sport with a Blue Band 42mm.
My watch arrived yesterday and first impressions were good. I had booked an appointment at the Apple Store to try on a watch last week, because, why not, and knew what to expect. But when you first open the box of ‘your’ watch, it’s something just a bit more special. Anyway, I was very impressed with the set-up process, and the cool way you pair it with your phone simply using the camera at this fancy animated QR code on steroids.
After my watch-supported apps were automatically detected and synced to the watch, I was off to the races. One of the first things I did – not intentionally, I just happened to be going there – was to pay for my afternoon Tea at Starbucks with my watch – it was seamless and quick, and saved me the 1/2 second of taking my phone out of my pocket – off to a good start!
I then played around with the apps and sent my first iMessage – and I ran into problem #1. My situation, I suppose is unique – I have both a Canadian and US cell phone with 2 different numbers. However, iMessage plays nice with that, and I have all my devices set to start any new conversation from my Canadian number. Strangely, the first iMessage I sent from the Watch came from my US Number, which makes no sense at all. Later, after sending another message, it came from one of my Apple IDs. Only when I disabled every other point of contact from my iPhone, did iMessages start coming from my Canadian number on my watch. Annoying, but not a major issue, I guess, since that’s all anyone uses to message me anyway, unless I’m on an extended trip to the states.
The only other problem I’ve had – and it’s human error – is that my watch did not charge at all last night. I had it plugged in with the fancy mag-safe type charger, but apparently after I snapped it in and then moved my watch on my headboard, I ended up pulling the plug out of the wall a bit so it wasn’t actually drawing any power. However, it only took a couple hours this morning to charge up fully.
Other than that, I’ve had fun so far getting to know my watch, and hope to take it out on my first run today. It’s definitely a 1.0 release so far – there are some bugs, some glitches, and some strange UI things, but I’m confident they’ll get better.