Why I will wait to buy the Apple Watch

by Danielle Requa

Photo credit: Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch.com

Ever since the 7^th grade and I was introduced to the Mac, I was in awe, the colors…the fonts…the interactions. It truly made me happy to go to school just to play with it. I am not however, what I affectionately call super Apple lovers, a “fruit head”. These are the individuals waiting in line for hours to be one of the first people to have the new release. I try to be open minded and logical about all products, including Apple. With the new announcements this week, iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch, I felt a little underwhelmed. Nothing truly impressed me as the original Mac or iPod did.

I sat back and asked myself, “How will this enable the industry, workforce and us as individuals?”

My Top 5 Reasons I am waiting to buy the iWatch: 
- Name: Apple Watch. Sure this is not a true reason not to buy it but when you are familiar with a specific branding and it is so engrained into society, changing it just doesn’t make sense. People are still going to call it the iWatch. In May, the chief executive of Swatch, the world’s biggest watchmaker, told Bloomberg that the company had begun notifying authorities in various countries that any use of the term iWatch by Apple might cause confusion with iSwatch, a digital watch made by Swatch.
- Cost: $349 but you must have an iPhone 5 or higher to sync with it. Making the total cost from scratch between $450-$600, depending on your phone carrier. This doesn’t even factor in the multiple strap options cost. To buy this Apple Watch just to have more convenience on my wrist versus my phone doesn’t make sense to me at this time for the cost. Now, if I already have an iPhone 5 or higher and I want to buy a fitness watch, then this may make sense. See more under the My Top 5 Reasons I Will Stay Interested.
- Battery life: Tim Cook failed to mention the length of the battery life which leaves me and possibly others to believe it won’t stay awake as long as I can which makes it useless. His comment on the battery life was “All Day” according to the TechCrunch website.
- Apple Pay: Tag Line: Your wallet. Without the wallet.  This is Apple’s version of the “contactless” payment system. This means instead of caring your debit or credit card “You can pay with Apple Watch — just double-click the button below the Digital Crown and hold the face of your Apple Watch near the contactless reader”, says Apple. I don’t need to press any buttons on my debit card, it never runs out of battery, and currently 75% of stores don’t even support contactless payment systems. Now, in the future if more retailers would offer it, I would consider it. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
- Communication: In just a glance it shows you who’s contacting you. It even gets your attention the way another person would — by tapping you. There are subtle audio cues, too. I don’t really think I would like something on my wrist ‘tapping” me every time I get a message or call or e-mail. If there is a way to turn this off, I believe I would be ok with it.  

My Top 5 Reasons I Will Stay Interested Entire computer architecture on a single chip:
Apple found a way to integrate many subsystems into one remarkably compact module, which is then completely encapsulated in resin to protect the electronics from the elements, impact, and wear. This is just straight up futuristically cool.

- Accuracy: Going back to personal and workforce enablement, the Apple Watch continually checks against the definitive global time standard with the same precision found in GPS satellites. If you move from one time zone to another, Apple Watch automatically adjusts. When daylight saving time begins, Apple Watch simply changes to the new time. So you never once have to set it yourself. This is great for frequent travelers in business and personal life. But again, this is something your phone currently does, this just has the convenience of being on your wrist.
- Watch Face: Each Apple Watch comes with a range of watch faces you can change whenever you like. You can also add specialized functions — known in watchmaking as complications — to most faces. Choose stopwatches, stock quotes, weather updates, and more. When you combine all the possible options, the opportunities for personalization are virtually endless.
- Fitness: Apple Watch unites the capabilities of an all-day fitness tracker and a highly advanced sports watch in one device you can wear all the time. It can track a wider variety of activities because it’s able to collect more types of data. It uses an accelerometer to measure your total body movement. It has a custom sensor that can measure intensity by tracking your heart rate. And it uses the GPS and WiFi in your iPhone to track how far you’ve moved. Being that most fitness watches are $100-$200 alone this makes the cost a little more feasible in relation to those competitors. But then again, buy the sounds of their marketing, this means you would need to take your phone along for the ride too.
- Remote Camera: Apple Watch doubles as a remote for the iSight camera on your iPhone. Use Apple Watch to display a live preview of what your iPhone sees, snap the photo, or set the timer on the camera. This would mean that you would need your phone propped up on a holding mechanism elsewhere to make this work of course.