Yesterday was an exciting day for me, I got in my car and picked up my Apple Watch Sport from the post office. This was quite a surprising day for me, as my Watch was estimated to be shipped at some point in May. This just goes to show that you never know what to expect with Apple's shipping times.
Moving on, my first 24 hours with Apple's first wearable was quite interesting. Not knowing I would be receiving my device that day, my iPhone was still running iOS 8.1 and Jailbroken. Meaning that I would need to update and lose my Jailbreak to be able to use my Apple Watch on iOS 8.3. While I only use my Jailbreak for a number of tweaks, it pained me to become restricted once again.
Restoring took quite some time as I have over 100 gigabytes filled up on my iPhone 6 Plus. I was also surprised that there wasn't a way to use basic features on the Apple Watch without an iPhone pairing to it first. I finally paired up my iPhone and started messing around with the long-awaited Apple smartwatch.
Due note that I only played with the Apple Watch for a brief moment at the Apple Store, so having it on my wrist was an entirely different experience.
First thing I noticed on the device was the beautiful Retina display, which can be seen perfectly fine in the sunlight. I messed around with it a bit more and noticed that the Force Touch feature would take some getting used to. While after a day with the device I think I've gotten the hang of it, but at first my taps were registering as holds and vice versa.
As you know, the Apple Watch has two physical buttons on the side, the Digital Crown and the side button. The Digital Crown is actually pretty fun to fiddle with, even if you're not doing anything with it, but also acts as the Home button on the device. My lack of knowledge also made me think that the bottom button was a sleep/wake button, as found on other iOS devices, but instead acts as a hotkey to get to your favorite contacts.
Next I checked out the Activity app, which is mainly what I purchased the Watch for. I like to run on a treadmill a few times a week and don't have an armband for my iPhone 6 Plus, nor do I think that would be comfortable. An Apple Watch stays on your wrist to track calories, exercise and amount of time standing throughout the day, so having my iPhone laying on the treadmill is no longer a problem to track fitness. The device gives you three different activity choices, each with different goals to reach by the end of the day. Unfortunately since I didn't receive my Watch until mid-day, I didn't go to the gym and I didn't reach my goal. I don't want to bore our readers by only talking about the fitness aspects, but I have to say they seem spot on.
Messaging on the Apple Watch seems to take some time to get used to. There is no physical keyboard so users need to use voice dictation or voice messaging to send texts or emails. So far I've found it easier and faster to say "Send text to [person's name], [I'm going on a walk, see you in 15 minutes]", instead of "Send text to [person's name]", wait for the messaging prompt, then "[I'm going on a walk, see you in 15 minutes]". Saying the former will send the text message in a two step process, while the latter takes three steps. I would like to note that at first my Apple Watch would only send messages from my iCloud email and not my phone number. However, the issue seemed to resolve itself after I rebooted both my iPhone and Apple Watch, signed out and in of my iCloud on my iPhone, signed out and in of my iMessages on my iPhone, and unchecked everything but my phone number in iMessage settings.
Watch-faces seem to be somewhat lacking on the Apple Watch. Currently there are only ten faces that you can sort of customize with different colors, which seems weird as the watch-face is what you'll be seeing the most. Hopefully Apple will either add more or allow third-party developers to create new faces. All of the faces do their job by telling the time, but some will also show things like the weather, activity, date and upcoming calendar events. Tilting my wrist towards me wakes up the screen and shows the actual watch-face. Although I did find it annoying that the display would turn on when driving my car on several occasions.
After the day was over and I decided to unwind in bed, I decided to download some games made specifically for the Apple Watch. iOS 8.3 has a designated Apple Watch application, which not only allows settings to be configured, but also has its own version of the App Store (limited only to Apple Watch apps). So far I've tried out two games; Poll Party and Runeblade.
I didn't expect much from Apple Watch gaming, but Poll Party is a simple game that asks players a "would you rather?" question with two options below. Afterwards the game will ask how sure you are that your answer was chosen by the majority, and if you're correct, you'll be rewarded with coins or something... very simple and minimalist game.
I expected a little more from Runeblade, but in the end I was asking myself, "why am I playing this?". The first screen of the game is a quest screen, while players can also swipe to other screens to upgrade their character and check what level they are currently on. The quest screen usually has two options, to attack or open the dungeon door to fight the boss. There is literally no skill involved in this game, you simply tap the fight option over and over again through an automated battle system and rank up with no realistic goal in mind. Runeblade even goes as far as to have "runes" that have your character automatically attack for 15 minutes, even if the game isn't currently running on the watch.
So far I'm really liking the Apple Watch, and not to brag, but it feels good wearing it around town. There is still a myriad of features which I have yet to check out on my 42mm Space Grey Apple Watch. During the next week I'll try to test out as many features on the watch as I can and follow up with a new post about my experience.
Feel free to leave any comments below on any features I should cover next week.
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