I don’t know that the Apple Watch is a flop. I don’t know that it’s not a flop. It’s probably somewhere in between. I know that I’ve never noticed another one in the wild. Maybe that’s because, like me, other early adopters prefer to use theirs inconspicuously.
But clearly, there are questions about whether the Apple Watch is ready for prime time.
For one, the apps continue to load too slowly to be useful.
Yet I find the complications and notifications to be extremely useful. When they work.
And there’s both the rub and the reason I am considering throwing in the towel and relegating my Apple Watch to the drawer of shame, where I keep other things I bought and didn’t or couldn’t use. There’s an Android tablet in there, and that early Samsung pre-tablet but handheld computer thing. And my Instacube.
While I can do without the apps that never load, what I can’t do without is the information that’s supposed to appear on the watch face. The complications. In my case, these include the temperature and the sunrise and sunset times. These two (of my five total) complications rarely appear on my watch.
This madness began not long after I received my watch. A complete iPhone wipe and DFU restore solved the problem, for a little while. Now it’s back. Like Sharknado, but not as fun.
In fact, it sucks. It should not be this hard. It should just work. But it doesn’t. So far, the Apple Watch experience seems more like building a radio with some kit you bought from the back of a comic book than a traditional Apple experience.
I’m in wait and see mode. Maybe an update will fix this issue, which is clearly a failure on the part of the watch and iPhone to reliably communicate with each other. Maybe if I get to the end of my patience, I’ll make a desperate stab at the watchOS 2 beta.
Or maybe I’ll just go back to a bare wrist and a Fitbit One.
Newsome.Org 