You don’t need an Apple Watch

You don’t need an Apple Watch, and this quick guide will show you why.

The internet is basically made up of people being annoyed you disagree with them.  In that fashion, please allow me to present the best arguments I can think of for not giving Apple even more of your money to spend.  Haters to the left in an orderly queue, please.

Apple has not revolutionised the watch.

The Apple Watch is a very wealthy and popular large company’s version of a small computer which can be worn. Jony Ive (pbuH) has not created a new paradigm for telling the time and they have not made a magical new way to do anything.  They have put a small computer on people’s wrists which satisfies the basic principle that people are happier when they buy more stuff- that’s it.

There will be two types of Apple Watch users.

The ‘Hey, look at all the stuff it can do, hey, look at Mickey tapping his feet, hey, look at the calories I’ve burned, hey look at my heartbeat, hey, look at the picture I took with my iPhone on this tiny little screen, hey, lets only stay at the hotel chain where my phone acts as the door key’ people, and the people who buy them because people will think they look cool. Imagine being stuck in a lift with one of each – without phone reception.

You don’t need instant notifications on your wrist

You really don’t – you have them on your phone, which is never out of your hand.  Are you going to put the phone away, now you have an Apple Watch?  Does it really take long enough to get a weather forecast on your phone that you’re prepared to spend $$$ to get it on your wrist?

You shouldn’t have instant notifications on your wrist

That embarrassing co-worker you sorta flirted with at the Xmas party and who now won’t stop sending you messages?  Now they and their notification is tapping your wrist at every business meeting.

But I can turn off notifications!

Yeah. That’s the whole point of the watch, right there.

You don’t need apps on your wrist

Again – your phone has power out the wazoo, and anything serious or magnificent will tend on average to be designed for a screen with which it is easy and convenient to interact. We know we said that about touch screens, but the issue is scale.  Touch screens got bigger to facilitate more real estate for interaction. This is a tiny little screen.

You are now really tethered to a power supply.

With an actual watch, we go a year or so without replacing a battery, and it tells the time in between battery changes. Now, you get all the fun of taking off your watch of an evening and plugging it in. So now you just have your iPhone, your iPad and your watch to plug in together.  Invest in power splitter companies today.

Every time Swatch brings out a new model, I don’t desperately need to own one.

Good luck not upgrading your watch every year from now on in.

It’s an expensive accessory

As a basic rule of thumb, an accessory shouldn’t cost more than the phone.  For most UK and Ireland phone shoppers, we pick up a phone on Bill Pay with a serious phone subsidy.