A month and half ago I purchased an Apple Watch. My first Apple Watch.
I am fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem. I have a MacBook Pro, AirPods, iPhone, a first generation iPad air, a HomePod Mini, Apple Music. It’s fair to say I like Apple’s products. The watch, however, I held out on for a long time. In an age where our attention is a scarce commodity, I was cautious of purchasing something that would bring notifications with me everywhere.
The whole idea behind the Apple Watch, and what makes it useful is precisely that you do wear it everywhere. Naturally, I was sceptical.
After 6 weeks of wearing it almost 24/7, I love it.
Why the Apple Watch is Great
There are many many articles going into the features of the Apple Watch like sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring and fitness tracking. I hope to go beyond just a list of features, and explore some ideas about why these features are useful.
Small Notifications
The Apple Watch goes with you everywhere. It’s easy to access with a quick raise of your wrist. Diving into your pocket, pulling out a phone, and then unlocking it? So tedious. A small difference in effort. However, this small difference is relatively quite big when it comes to small notifications.
Some notifications are important. Your boss is calling or you receive text message from your girlfriend. Others are not so important. You haven’t stood in an hour, or it’s time to drink water. Coincidentally, I just got a notification from my watch to drink water… I’ll be back…
Ok, I’m back. Having these notifications on my phone quickly became annoying. Getting my phone out each time was tedious for such small and relatively frequent notifications.
Having the notifications on your wrist, decreases the Usefulness Threshold. These notifications actually become useful, instead of being turned off.
You Get What You Measure
Many Watch apps use Streaks to motivate you. It’s with you all the time, so you’re getting measurements all the time. You can measure workouts, with the smallest amount of friction possible.
Seeing the data becomes a motivator. I don’t really care if I don’t close my exercise ring on a particular day. But just by seeing it, and knowing that I haven’t moved as much as I should today, I have a few extra thoughts come in asking “should I go for a walk” or “should I do some yoga” so I can close the rings.
Seamless
Apple is known for the smooth integrations between different devices within it’s ecosystem. With the Apple Watch they take it up a notch. I had music playing from my HomePod when I was setting up the watch. After scanning a pattern on the watch with my phone, my watch was already showing that I could pause the music on my HomePod 🤯.
It feels like technology should feel like it. It appears when you need it and disappears into the background when you don’t.
Voice
Having the Watch on me at all times is useful for note taking. If an idea for a blog post when I don’t have my phone with me, or I’m cycling so my hands aren’t free. I can ask Siri to write it in my reminders. I am using voice a lot more since having the Watch.
Cooking and hands are covered but you need to set a timer for how long it should cook for? You can ask Siri for that.
Less Time On Phone
Because the Watch is less capable than a phone, it’s screen is smaller, fewer apps etc. it means going to your watch is less likely to end up becoming a scrolling session. Getting notifications on your phone, even about something important, can lead you to seeing the twitter logo and then…. 5 minutes has passed. With the Watch this just doesn’t happen. After it became a habit to check things I could on the Watch, I noticed my phone usage going down. A win for my attention!
