Casey Chan on Abandoning His Apple Watch

It’s Gizmodo so there’s a heavy dollop of clickbait in the headline, but Casey Chan’s critique of the Apple Watch makes several salient points:

First, I still don’t know what the buttons do. This is ridiculous (and probably very stupid on my part) because, well, there are only two buttons, the digital crown and the side button. Most of the times, pressing the digital crown acts like an iPhone home button. But sometimes it’s a back button (like when you’re in the Favorites contact screen). It gets more confusing because you can scroll through a list with the crown but you can never select, you have to tap the screen for that to work. Most of these things you eventually figure out, but these little inconsistencies just add to the frustration of using it.

“When do I use which button and what do the buttons do?” needs to be obvious for the Apple Watch to truly feel Apple-y. And it fails. The longer I own mine the more obvious it is that Apple dropped the ball on the buttons:

  • Single-press on the crown takes you to the app screen. I almost never launch any apps from the “home screen”.
  • Single-press on the bottom button takes you to the “favorite contacts” screen. I almost never use this.

My hope is that Apple does more than just make the second generation watch faster/thinner/longer-lasting, and takes a step back and reconsiders some of the fundamental aspects to the conceptual design.

★ Monday, 25 April 2016