Latest Review
The Apple Watch is not a very good watch. I’d even go so far as to say that it represents everything I don’t like in a watch. It’s disposable, generic to the point of ugly, and demands a level of focus and engagement I find downright offensive. To borrow a phrase from the inimitable Peter Griffin, “It insists upon itself.” And yet, the Apple Watch has become an invaluable, irreplaceable part of my life.
This spring marks a decade since the Apple Watch first went on sale. I bought mine shortly after launch, in anticipation of my freshman year of college, at a point when I was still trying to sort out what interests and identity I would carry with me into that new phase (turns out, tech-head, sort of no; watch geek, undoubtedly yes). The Apple Watch, along with a beat-up Victorinox and a vintage Hamilton, made up my total stable of wrist-borne options my first year in Granville, Ohio.
You’d think with that few watches available to me, the Apple Watch would have gotten a lot of wrist time, and it did, at least for the first few months. Still, by the end of my freshman year, I was basically done with the Apple Watch. It was clear even then that the premise had some promise, but I felt like I’d gotten all I could out of the nascent device. The first Apple Watch was, if I’m being honest (and I think Tim Cook would agree with me), kind of useless — more a proof of concept or statement of intent than a finished product. It did very little, and what it did do was so entirely dependent on physical proximity to your cell phone that you wound up opting to pick that up instead.
I also wanted something lower key. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when an Apple Watch invited comment — and commentary. After a year of involuntary service as an Apple spokesperson, I was more than ready to fall back into the under-the-radar Seikos, micro brands, and vintage watches that mostly fueled my enthusiasm through college. I kept a loose eye on the Apple Watch as it evolved over the next few years. I watched as it spread from a rarity to a ubiquity, and took notice when big changes hit the lineup, like the introduction of cellular connectivity or an always-on screen (hands down the two biggest improvements made in the ten years since its launch).
But I never had any interest in one. That’s not to say I was done with wearables — far from it, actually. I’m no Luddite, and over the years since I put down my Apple Watch, I’ve experimented with Fitbits, Oura rings, and everything in between. I devotedly wore a Whoop for nearly four years, including through most of the pandemic. But all of those were done in concert with my “old-school” watches, and none have stuck, at least not permanently (though credit where it’s due, the Whoop really hung in there, and remains my recommendation for a dedicated fitness tracker).
It really was easy enough to leave the Apple Watch in the rear-view mirror, or at least it was until last summer when, inspired by a wild fire sale, I was able to pick up a then-previous generation Series 8 Apple Watch for what can only be described as absolute theft. I gave in for a few reasons, but the most significant was that, after several years of professionally telling people what they should put on their wrists, it seemed like I should try and understand what I was telling people not to wear. A cheap previous-gen Apple Watch seemed like the perfect way to experience how far the world’s best-selling not-a-watch had come in the near-decade since I’d last worn one.
My hunch bore out. That midnight blue Series 8 has proven to be the perfect entry point into the modern Apple Watch. And the Apple Watch really is far better than I ever could have expected. On an objective level, I’m not sure there has ever been a better use for the real estate on your wrist. I wear my Apple Watch Ultra 2 (which I picked up a few weeks ago) for at least some part of just about every day. Certainly, anytime I exercise, play golf, or go for a walk or hike, the Apple Watch finds its way onto my wrist, but I’ve found that — especially since I upgraded to the Ultra — it’s creeping onto my wrist more often than even I would have expected.
That’s because more than just being a really good smartwatch, the Apple Watch has increasingly moved away from being a phone-dependent device, and become more of a phone replacement option. Or at least, it’s gotten to the point where it’s a really good phone substitute. Having an Apple Watch doesn’t mean you can ditch your phone permanently, but it does give you the freedom to leave the phone behind more than you might expect.
Much as we might not care for it, we live in a world where being entirely disconnected — even just some of the time — is hard to justify. Immediate access to people has become our norm, for better or worse. The Apple Watch offers a happy medium between inaccessibility and connectivity, which ironically puts the modern Apple Watch in a position of direct contrast with its earliest editions, which (in my experience) made its users too connected, too accessible, and too digitally dependent. All this is thanks to the introduction of cellular features, which move the Apple Watch past its initial invisible six-foot tether to the iPhone and transform the device at a time when so many of us (myself included) are trying to take our health — both mental and physical — more seriously and use our phones less.
It doesn’t hurt that Apple also finally made an Apple Watch with some curb appeal. Over the years, I’ve often thought about a sentiment I first heard articulated by Adam Savage (a personal hero of mine), and it’s a simple but impactful idea: Making (or creating) isn’t just the process of building a thing, it’s the act of applying one’s perspective to the solving of a problem. That problem could be as small as sewing a button on a shirt, or as big as designing the world’s most successful wrist-worn product of all time. Either way, when I am looking for the objects that will eventually surround me, I naturally gravitate toward pieces that exhibit a perspective, big or small.
The ‘Series’ Apple Watch, to me, utterly fails to convey any sense of perspective. It’s a product meant not to offend, meant to disappear onto as many wrists as possible without so much as a whiff of impact. But the Apple Watch Ultra (and Ultra 2) is proud of its place on your wrist. It feigns no bashfulness, and it finally feels like an Apple Watch that exhibits a perspective, whether you like it or not — and that’s kind of the point. It’s hard to object to the standard Apple Watch because there’s nothing noticeable enough to object to. The Ultra’s design invites opinion in a way that gets me excited. It draws a real reaction, while also doing all the Apple Watch things better than a normal Apple Watch.
And yet, it still manages to blend in. A decade on, it’s funny to think about the level of interest my first Apple Watch elicited — a level of commentary now reserved for my most esoteric pieces. In that sense, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has become my camouflage watch, the one I reach for when I want to play the part of the civilian rather than the watch enthusiast, and yet, as I sit here finishing this story, I don’t have an Apple Watch on my wrist.
Barring certain extreme circumstances, any justification for wearing a watch other than an Apple Watch is, at best, emotional, and more than likely just stubborn. And admittedly, I am wildly stubborn, and possibly too emotionally invested in my own watches, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s been ten years since the Apple Watch came out, and in that time, it has transformed itself from a half-baked iPhone accessory into something incredibly useful, but there’s value in the emotional as well. It’s all about what you need in the moment. It’s very easy for watch enthusiasts to draw a line in the sand around smartwatches, but in a world very different from that of a decade ago, I’m really glad we don’t have to, and I’m glad to have my Apple Watch for when I want it, even if it sits on a charger, and not in my watch box. Apple
