Why I (probably) won’t buy an Apple Watch

A couple of days ago, as you may know, Apple released details of the launch date and pricing for the Apple Watch, something that as a user and lover of Apple’s products I’ve been looking forward to so I tuned into the live video.  A few days later I’m left a little flat and it’s taken me a those few days to realise why.

The Apple Watch is sure a technical marvel and I know will be a fun thing to use for a little while, but you need your iPhone to use one, and my iPhone is never far from my side anyway.  Would I really want to do things on the watch rather than look at the much more usable phone screen I have on the giant screen on the iPhone 6 Plus?  Probably not.   I’m just as unlikely to want to make phone calls from my watch, or send text’s or messages.  My phone is much better at doing those things, and while sure, like Tim Cook said, “I’ve wanted to make phone calls from my watch since I was a kid, I grew out of it, especially once mobile phones dropped below the size of the early Panasonic Transportable I once owned (yes, embarrassingly, I did).

OK, so what of the health monitoring and benefits like the reminders to move up each hour from the “taptic” feedback engine?  I have a Jawbone Up that I manage to ignore most of the time, so I doubt the watch would make much difference.  If I really worry about my health, I’ll see my doctor, who’s eminently more qualified than my watch.  I don’t need a watch to alert me to a problem, as my wife says, nobody know’s your body better then you – you’ll know when something’s not quite right.  I’m overweight, so I already know I need more exercise but thankfully, I eat sensibly and my blood pressure and cholesterol and everything else that can be shown from a detailed blood analysis are, according to my doctor, “excellent”, much to his annoyance, as he was sure based on first glance that my last physical would show me up to be ready to keel over.

So how about the Apple Watch as a time keeping device as It’s incredibly accurate apparently?  We’ll here’s a thing.  Everywhere I am I have accurate clocks.  The clock on the Macbook Pro I’m writing this on is accurate and the clock on the PC on my desk I use in work is accurate, as also is the clock on my phone.  It’s because of the clock on their phones and the proliferation of other timekeeping devices that surround us these days that most of the people I know don’t wear a watch anymore anyway.

I do have a watch that I wear each day though and in fact I have two;

My first watch, is a Citizen Skyhawk I’ve owned for many years.  It’s made with titanium so is very light.  It keeps itself accurate by picking up the time from various radio beacons around the world, has a dual time zone function and calendar and a stopwatch.  It also has a kind of rotary slide rule that can be used to work out all manner of aviation navigation problems such as speed, distance, fuel consumption and so on were I still flying these days and stupid enough not to remember to bring a full sized “whiz-wheel”, flight computer or otherwise plan a flight before takeoff.  It charges its battery continuously from daylight so never needs a charge.  It cost me £300 about 8 years ago.

My second watch is something my wife treated me to a few years ago as a treat after coming into a little money.  It’s Breitling Transocean Chronograph and has a calendar and stopwatch function.  It’s all mechanical and has a glass window on the back that allows you to see the inner workings and self winding mechanism.  It cost around £6,000 which I know is a lot, but it was a once in a lifetime present from my wife which I’ll own for the rest of my life.  Unfortunately it needs a service badly and so it loses time a little more than it should however a service is about £450 so it can wait.  I love the fact that it’s all mechanical and is a little inaccurate and I love the classic looks and design, reminiscent of a previous non digital era.  In the digital world I work in and that we live in today it’s a reminder that not everything has to be.

The thing with both of the watches I own is that they were in one case, very affordable and accurate, or not so affordable or accurate and I forgot to mention that both of them are water proof, but I have absolutely no reason or desire to upgrade either of them to a version that will inevitably come out in a year or so, and I enjoy them for what they are.

I’m sure the Apple Watch is a fine thing, but in a year or so there will be another and for something that Jony Ive himself says is “so personal” it’s not something I would want to dispose of every few years.