Tap, Tap, Tap

Over at Bloomberg, Joshua Topolsky reviews the Apple Watch:

I’m in a meeting with 14 people, in mid-sentence, when I feel a tap-tap-tap on my wrist. I stop talking, tilt my head, and whip my arm aggressively into view to see the source of the agitation. A second later, the small screen on my new Apple Watch beams to life with a very important message for me: Twitter has suggestions for people I should follow. A version of this happens dozens of times throughout the day–for messages, e-mails, activity achievements, tweets, and so much more. Wait a second. Isn’t the promise of the Apple Watch to help me stay in the moment, focused on the people around me and undisturbed by the mesmerizing void of my iPhone? So why do I suddenly feel so distracted?

To be clear, we are in charge of our gadgets, not the other way around. I have turned off most notifications on my iPhone, so that the only time I get vibration alerts is for phone calls. My iPhone—the way I have configured it—is not distracting.

The same way a car you buy off the dealer lot will require configuring to fit you (literally), I anticipate I’ll have to tweak the Apple Watch settings before it behaves the way I want it to.

In the end though, Topolsky digs it:

The watch is not life-changing. It is, however, excellent. Apple will sell millions of these devices, and many people will love and obsess over them. It is a wonderful component of a big ecosystem that the company has carefully built over many years. It is more seamless and simple than any of its counterparts in the marketplace. It is, without question, the best smartwatch in the world.

I’m looking forward to getting one. To Topolsky’s point, I’m not in a hurry to get one because it’s a want, not a need and right now I need to to replace my iPhone 4.

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