When I gave up on (Apple) smartwatches after ten years and switched to a fancy non-smartwatch, my explanation why paralleled this article’s complaints in most regards. I needed to know what time it was and I wanted health integration, but I never used notifications mirroring and hated that my device had a screen at all. After evaluating how much I cared about the non-clock features versus how thick smartwatches are and that they require charging approximately daily to bi-weekly, I ended up switching to a classic watch instead. The design of it is so Apple-like that when I visited the UFO in Cupertino to pick up a tablet, the worker looked at my watch and then asked me if I’d retired from Apple. The watch hands are nearly invisible unless I’m looking at them. It’s everything I want from a wrist clock and nothing more.In an ideal world, the smartwatch I want is thin. Thick watches will get smashed into door frames and walls and tables by my clumsy body, and I tire of it so greatly that I gave up on it. I evaluated fitness watches but I don’t rigorously exercise outdoors in the appropriate patterns, so they’re generally a waste of my money and effort to keep charged. I am truly sad that Fitbit got destroyed because their form factor was very appealing. I think this is the one thing that the post doesn’t address: smartwatches don’t have to be chonky. And yet. Sigh.
I do extremely miss how natural it felt having Apple Pay on my wrist, but my phone is not less usable in any meaningful way for that task.
So, yes, this article resonates. I would never voluntarily have a Samsung account for any reason, and I’ve known for decades that Google is fool’s gold — hi from ETcon ‘03, years after they hoovered up and then substiturd for Usenet and Webrings. Pebble is thick. Garmin is inapplicable. Fitbit was a viable option for health-primary, clock-secondary, no-gps no-wifi no-cell no-notifications optimal use case — but they were hoovered by Google for being a reasonable competitor to providing Google marketable data.
Every single day I wore an Apple Watch I resented not being able to design my own watch faces. Everyone who knew me IRL knew how I felt about that. If I could have avoided it I would have not had a watch at all, but at the time I needed certain health features — ones that could have been satisfied without a screen at all! And over the ten years I wore that, no viable competitors emerged in my health-primary, not-exercise space at all.
I empathize with the article’s author. It’s been ten years of disaster watching Google kneecap competitors with the perennial Lucy’s Football (or Vader’s Deal, if you prefer) of Android smartwatch integration. At the end of my decade of Apple Watch, nothing was left as a viable alternative. And that’s how I gave up on smartwatches altogether. My Mac’s $HOME has artifacts left behind by OS X from installing it on day one when it was first released, but at the end of the day, the features just aren’t worth the form factor, the battery life, and the non-Apple ecosystems.
Happily, it turns out I value thinness in my watch much more than I value capabilities, and that’s a need that the non-smart watch is able to satisfy. It tells the time and that’s all. It doesn’t light up, thank god. It doesn’t have a speaker. It doesn’t need an eSIM. It doesn’t have to be taken off for exams. It only has to be charged every two years. It’s cool. One time an Apple employee at the UFO in Cupertino looked at my non-smart watch, paused, and then asked if I’d retired from Apple. My non-smart watch looked to them like an award given for decades of service by a company who’s design principles I adore. But even Apple let me down, with their insistence on touchscreens and ugly shiny black rectangles, next to which my watch looks like an impossible prototype slash status symbol to Apple people.
So, yeah, I agree with the rage underpinning this post: Apple Watch or don’t bother unless you shop at REI more than once a year in which case Garmin. (Too bad about Fitbit!) I respect what the Pebble folks are doing and I religiously study their posts every time they cross my desk, hoping that they’ve decided to differentiate themselves in physical form factor and battery life. My heart broke when I saw the same thick obloid in their first product images. Maybe someday someone will compete in this space, but I already wore the best thick obloid for ten years. I still wish them well, and perhaps someday they’ll be a viable option I can recommend to non-tech people who want a thickscreen charge-often smartwatch! One can dream.
ps. My ideal watch face has one hand that circles once per day. No digits, no inset dials, no “well surely you need to know the exact time” bullshit. There’s more about face design, but as best as I can determine, no one else wants this at all. Fine. I’m sure it’s possible to code an app for competitors to watchOS. I’m also reasonably sure I haven’t run my watch into something in months, and I don’t miss charging it at all. Turns out even I am willing to compromise on design ideals for a watch that doesn’t make me regret owning it, at least so long as I’m not wealthy enough to commission a custom watch.