The Shift
MATT BOLTON thinks the Watch may be Apple’s most exciting product for the future, so why is he so bored of looking at it?
Matt Bolton explains why he finds the Apple Watch a bit, well, boring...
Wof whether Apple is still as innovative as it’s been in the past comes up, I’m happy to point to the Watch as a positive answer. It’s no surprise there are diminishing returns for notebooks and phones after a certain amount of time, but features such as fall detection — along with the ECG function and a few other things that could help it save your life — show there’s tons of clever new ideas powered by technology. You just have to think of innovation in terms outside of traditional computing.
Apple’s also found its rhythm for the Watch as a fashionable physical item, despite largely dropping the fashion focus. The high–end yellow gold original raised more eyebrows than a space anomaly encountered by a starship
crewed by Spock clones, but the current stainless steel burnt gold is bold and showy without losing a sense of class. Meanwhile, the seasonal release of new straps keeps a steady flow of new looks for existing Watch owners. So it’s great, right?
And yet… When I look down at the screen, I’m just bored. I use the Infograph Modular face, which is perfectly nice, but it’s just a bunch of information. And the reason I use that one is simply because I don’t find the actual clock faces any more enticing. I can’t believe how little the faces have progressed in four years!
I see a lot of watches passing through my inbox in my day job. I’ve seen beautiful splashes of color in dials, and gorgeous hand and numeral designs. I’ve seen ingenious creations that tell the time in a whole new way. I’ve seen classic faces go untouched for years because they’re among the greats of aesthetic–meets– functional design… and shouldn’t that be an area where Apple excels?
When you think of making a watch as an opportunity to really flex those aesthetic–function mix muscles, it becomes clear why Jony Ive would’ve been so keen to make one in the first place. This has been his passion at Apple, but I really struggle to imagine he’s happy with what’s on offer. (I’m thinking he probably has the Hermès face, which is by far the nicest, yet is locked to a specific expensive model.)
I want watchOS 6 to bring new faces that not only look fantastic, but also use the infinite possibilities of a digital watch face to their fullness. Light effects that depend on the height of the sun in the sky, backgrounds that reflect the weather, arrangements that use the fact that the hands don’t have to be attached to anything, avant–garde designs that tell the time in weird new ways… The possibilities are endless.
It shouldn’t be the case that my favorite features of the Watch are the life–saving ones, sitting invisibly in the background and that, ideally, will never be used. It should make me smile every time I look down.
>>> Matt is the editor of Future’s flagship technology magazine T3 and has been charting changes at Apple since his student days. He’s skeptical of tech industry hyperbole, but still gets warm and fuzzy on hearing “one more thing”.