by Jason Snell
Rene Ritchie on the Apple Watch
Here’s a nice iMore post from Rene Ritchie, synthesizing his own use of a smartwatch with what we know about how the Apple Watch will work:
Part of the reason I quickly stopped wearing my Pebble and haven’t had much interest in other smartwatches is exactly that lack of discretion and/or granularity — the understanding that the closer something is, the more subtle and sophisticated it needs to be.
The great failing of how the Pebble works (at least, when attached to an iPhone) is that there’s no granularity. Everything that pushes a notification to Notification Center pushes it to the Pebble as well.
The Apple Watch seems to take a two-stage approach, with a basic amount of information at a glance and a little more information if you decide to dive in. That’s a great start, but in order to not be overwhelmed with notifications we’ll need to be able to pick what we want to be notified about and what we don’t. Right now on the iPhone that happens in Notification Center settings, and it’s kind of a mess. A better approach to Notification Center could benefit all iPhone users, but most especially ones who also have an Apple Watch.