One of the topics we have covered quite extensively over the past few weeks is the Apple Watch. While it’s not available for purchase in Singapore as yet, Apple fans can easily get their hands on the Apple Watch via the official website.
Since the launch of the first generation iPod, iPhone and iPad in the last decade, Apple’s revolutionary products have been immensely successful at winning over the hearts of mass consumers. Because of this, many have high expectations of the Apple Watch, and anticipate that it will change the way we interact with technology in our daily lives.
But has the first generation Apple Watch lived up to its expectations?
We spoke to Danis Lou, a designer who has owned the Apple Watch for almost a month now. Unlike most of us, Danis — a huge supporter of the Apple brand — managed to order the Apple Watch from Apple China’s main site on pre-order day. His friend then brought the Apple Watch back to Singapore after receiving it on the 24th of April.
The Apple Watch comes in three different designs, amongst them the normal Apple Watch, and the Apple Watch Sport. Each comes with different strap options. Danis opted for the Apple Watch Sport, and is happy with how it turned out, though the whole experience is still new to him.
“The Apple Watch is nice looking and comes with a very comfortable sports strap. I do exercises regularly, therefore the heart rate monitoring and activity tracking functions are very helpful. On top of that, I do get important notifications when my iPhone is in my bag. However, many times I do get confused by its messy interaction behaviors, touch, force touch, scroll crown, press crown, contacts button, et cetera.”
If you are unfamiliar with the term “crown”, it’s basically the button on a mechanical watch that lets you set the time and date on your watch. Apple Watch coined the term Digital Crown, which can be used to magnify content on the small Apple Watch display. You can also use it to scroll through lists, and press on the crown to return to the home screen. The multiple functions, according to Danis, can be really confusing for first time users as it is not as intuitive as smartphones.
“Charging Daily Is Really Painful For Me”
Another thing which most of us would not know about is that the experience of charging the Apple Watch daily can be a source of frustration, even for Apple supporters like Danis.
“Charging daily is painful. Normal watches do not require daily charges, so I have to get used to charging my Apple Watch daily, along with my other Apple devices,” Danis told Vulcan Post.
When we asked Danis if is he satisfied with the Apple Watch, and if he would recommend it to others, here’s what he had to say:
“If I consider the Apple Watch as an iPhone extension, I find the performance to be really slow sometimes. I can not say I’m disappointed, but it was below my expectation. If you really want one, you should only get the cheapest Apple Sport version.”
If you do want to buy the Apple Watch in the coming weeks, you might just be able to do that in Singapore: Hardware Zone recently spotted two models of the Apple Watch listed on IDA’s Equipment Search List.
There is no official word yet from Apple on when the Watch will be coming to Singapore, so we will just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, you can read about why we think the Apple Watch probably won’t take off in Singapore, at least for now.
