Watch OUT!
I spent every day withmy hot new companion. But after two weeks, I’d had enough. And no, Apple Watch — it’s not me, it’s you
IT was a fun twoweeks, but it’s over. I loved him for who he might be, but not who he was— which as any therapist worth her co- pay will tell you is bad.
He was my Apple Watch Sport. Like most of us, I didn’t really need a $ 349 ( or $ 433, after tax and Apple-Care warranty) touchscreen watch, but I’d recently lost my Garmin GPS running watch, so I justified it as a fitness purchase.
Therewere early signs it wasn’t going to work out. While getting it set up at the Apple store, I asked an employee who owns three of the watches what he loved using his for. The first thing he mentioned was how easy it is to text people when you get out of the subway. Not exactly a lifechanging technology.
But hewas right! The Apple Watch is amazing for texting from the wrist! Apple Watch Siri seems to tak dictation better than iPhon Siri, and soon Iwas sendin out mini missives without the inconvenience of having to remove my iPhone from my purse.
Too bad I couldn’t bring myself to start talking into my wrist like Inspector Gadget in the elevator at work in order to communicate dinner plans and toothpaste purchases tomy husband. Ditto for sending bitchy jokes to friends.
At the end of a recent doctor’s appointment, my MD and I had to acknowledge thatwe both had “the Watch”— an awkward side effect of wearing the device. He seemed to really enjoy his.
“What do you like it for?” I asked.
“I hadn’t been wearing a watch before, and it’s just nice for telling the time,” he replied. Indeed, like many watches before it, it’s remarkably great at that task.
What the Apple Watch isn’t great for is tracking a run— despite what Christy Turlington Burns says on apple. com, where the supermodel blogged about how “incredible” it was to use the gadget to train for the London Marathon. The interface for Apple’s Fitness app is surprisingly awful. Basic stats like pace, distance and time are all on separate screens that you have to swipe between— or attempt to swipe between with sweaty fingers. The watch itself doesn’t have built- in GPS, so while the Fitness app still works if you don’t have your iPhone, it tends to be pretty inaccurate.
And pausing the app at stoplights isn’t simply amatter of quickly pressing a button. Instead, you have to use a special, hard “force tap” to bring up an option to pause, then press the pause button. It’s the same to resume a run, and, with the aforementioned sweaty fingers, it’s a pain. On one early- morning, uncaffeinated jog, I became so frustrated trying to stop and start it that I began cursing and pounding it withmy index finger, a running rage I typically reserve for aggressive Prospect Park cyclists.
Other quibbles: At the end of the run, the Fitness app doesn’t supply basic info, like your running route or mileage splits, and the heart- rate-monitor can be quite inaccurate for highintensity exercise— that or I’ve unknowingly been in cardiac arrest.
Still, I’d hoped itwould work out between us. But 13 days aftermy affair with the Watch started— it has a 14day return policy— I found myself slowly descending the glass stairs at the Fifth Avenue Apple store to take it back. For a few hours afterward, I foundmyself missing its silly pleasures — the little taps onmy wrist to alert me to breaking news, the Instagram notifications, the ease with which I could check the weather. But the next day, I found myself not missing him at all. Iwas better off without him.