The Apple Watch – Should you buy One?
It has been a week since the Apple event in Cupertino where they announced the iPhone 6 and also the Apple Watch. This morning I actually got around to watching the video of the event. I would have watched it sooner except for the fact that my brother was visiting and so I have been rather busy. Up until now I have been thinking that I would not want to have an Apple watch. I had the opinion that an Apple watch would be far too expensive for what it would give me in functionality and that I didn’t need one. Boy, how easily I am swayed. After seeing what the Apple watch does, I have to admit that I am sold. I will be saving money so that as soon as they are available, I will buy one. I absolutely look forward to having an Apple watch my wrist and being properly Good and Geeky. The way that it works with the health applications and the fitness applications is very appealing indeed. I have been thinking of buying myself a Fitbit and now instead I will hang on, save some money and buy an Apple Watch instead.
iPhone in the pocket
The Apple watch needs to have an iPhone to provide some of the functionality of the device. I have been lusting over the new iPhone 6 over the last week and I will be buying the smaller version of the two new models available. I need a phone that will fit into one of my shirt pockets and the large one, the iPhone 6 + would fit width wise, but would be far too long. I could imagine that if I was to use the larger phone then it would not be long before it fell out of my pocket to crash on some concrete. We don’t want that to happen now do we? So that the Apple watch will know how far I have walked, it will need the GPS made available from the iPhone. When going for a walk it is quite easy to have the phone in a pocket or a bag. When you are going for a run you don’t want to have a phone bouncing around, so it is going to be necessary to find a good way to carry it. It is great that the phone will be able to see your heart rate and to use that data in the health application. It is good to have this extra information when exercising, especially when you are an older git, like myself. I see that is going to be possible to use the health application which measures how much sitting down you are doing. The app will recommend that you stand up from time to time. It looks like that is going to be possible to set a target for how many steps that you want to take during your day. You can also set it so that it will let you know when you have completed a target number of kilometres or miles. I can’t wait until next year when we are going to be able to make use of this new technology.
The price of the Apple Watch
Initially, like many other people I thought that the price of $359 was rather expensive for a watch. The Apple Watch is more than just a watch. Not only does it look good and will be a fashion statement it will be incredibly useful. There is going to be a huge number of applications designed for using with the Apple Watch. I can see that it will get exponentially better and better as more apps become available. The Apple Watch is coming in a a few versions and that will include various price points. I will buy the one at the cheapest entry point as soon as the device becomes available.
Out and About with the Apple Watch
The watch gives feedback to the user through a touch system they are calling the Taptic Engine. The device will be giving us a tap on the wrist. Useful when using the map application and asking for directions to walk to someplace nearby. The watch will give you taps upon your wrist that you will be able to differentiate. It will be able to tell you whether to go left or to go right, for example. I could imagine that this would be a super useful tool for a blind person. With messages it is possible to tap out a message on the watch face and for that to be felt by the receiver in touch form. It seems that it will also give an audible version of some of these touch messages.
I like the fact that there is Siri integration on the Apple Watch. It really will feel like we are living in the future, when we are being Good and Geeky with technology like this. In the demonstration of the Apple Watch at the announcement they showed that when a message comes in the text is analysed. It will then give you the opportunity to give a quick reply which could be a choice between two or three items. There will be words from the original message, to give a response back, or it could be something like a yes, no or a maybe. The Apple Watch software will have some intelligence built in.
