You’ll wind up wanting one
After more than a week wearing an Apple Watch, I’m reserving a prominent spot on my wrist. Apple Watch is an elegant combination of style and purpose, even if it often serves as an at-a-glance stand-in for the iPhone tucked away in your pocket or purse. I was one of the select reviewers who got to test it early.
Apple has introduced enough lovely band options to satisfy most everyone’s idea of taste, assuming your budget allows you to spring for a watch that starts at $349 and leaps to a dizzying $17,000.
My review unit is a handsome $699, 42mm, stainless steel mod- el with a magnetic Milanese loop that ensures a snug fit.
Watchbands are easily removable, meaning you can dress the watch up or down. The functionality is the same no matter how much you pay for it.
Apple has some fun customizable watch faces — butterflies, Mickey Mouse — but for now isn’t letting third-party developers produce any.
A smartwatch isn’t an essential
purchase like your phone is and that’s still so with the Apple Watch. I want one, anyway.
I used Apple Watch to open a hotel room door at the W Times Square, to pay for items at Whole Foods and to arrange an Uber.
Keep in mind you’ll need an iPhone 5 or later to get started, customize settings, and take advantage of most apps. Prepare for a learning curve, too.
You control the watch through various combination of swipes, taps, presses of the screen (at different pressure sensitivity levels), and manipulating a digital crown on the side, which looks like the crown used to set the time on old-fashioned watches.
It may take you a couple of days to get reasonably comfortable. Haptic cues (subtle taps on the wrist) help.
You can press and hold the crown in to wake up Siri or summon Siri with the voice command, “Hey Siri.”
Pressing the side button below the crown brings you to a “friends” screen from where you can call the person, send a message or, if the recipient has his or her own Apple Watch, share a tap, heartbeat or animated sketch that draws on their watch screen in near real time in the same way that you drew it on yours.