Like many, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of my new Apple Watch Sport. I was fortunate enough to be one of the consumers who was scheduled to receive their watch on the day of release.
I only ran into a slight snag: Apple’s site says they will allow you to pre-sign for their deliveries (since they do require signatures), but apparently they would not allow this option for the Apple Watches “due to the high demand.” Their site does not indicate this at all and I found out when I contacted Apple to ask why it was directing me to click something that wasn’t showing on my screen. Apple’s customer service had already developed a “tough” sort of attitude about this. After all, they’d already gotten my money and knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it, right?
This was only a minor snag, though, and I was able to contact UPS and have them hold my item at the facility for pickup. I certainly didn’t want to wait the additional day for a “failed” delivery!
I expected the box to be small, so I as a bit surprised at the actual oblong packaging of the eagerly anticipated item. Not only was it carefully packaged, but the also somewhat elaborate. They had thing plastic protecting the hard protective case of the watch. Each part of the watch had it’s own plastic wrapping to it. It was like unwrapping a Christmas present that had been broken up into several parts.
Finally! I got my watch out and turned it on. Set up was a breeze. It only had a small hiccup once at the beginning so I started over. The watch has an option to manually pair with the phone, but I already had to do that with my Pebble so I selected to automatically pair. It put a swirling image on the watch face and then I simply had to line up my phone viewfinder. They auto-detected each other and their screens changed. The watch walked me through the rest of the process. It was simple, yet thorough. They even have an option to allow the constantly late person to set their watch “ahead” by a certain amount of time in their efforts to actually be punctual.
They offer to allow the user to manually install the watch apps available that match the ones on your phone or you can select to have them all automatically install. I chose that option and then wound up wanting to delete so many of them so I’d recommend manually installing.
Setting up apps involves a lot of jumping back and forth between the phone and the watch, but once you’ve set them each up, you don’t have to worry about touching your phone unless you want to send something longer than you want to speak. Most of it is pretty straightforward, so I didn’t look at the instructions except for how to change the face of the watch. I couldn’t find that setting so I resorted to the video. This feature is changed by pressing into the actual watch face. Tapping does completely different things, but the pressure behind the push is what tells the watch what you are attempting to do. I’m curious to see how this will be affected by any screen protectors later.
The initial “missing” pieces that I noticed were surprising. Facebook was supposed to have a watch app available, but it was not one of the social apps listed. The only way to post to Facebook right now is through a third party app that can post to both Twitter and Facebook at once.
Email was where I was surprised the most, though. I’ve never really liked the native Mail app and tend to reserve that for work and my personal emails have run through Gmail or, lately, Inbox. Neither of these were available! I looked around and tested CloudMagic, myMail, and TL;DR. Cloudmagic is working the best because the phone app still allows me a lot of the features I enjoyed in my other apps (easy access to move to specific folders); myMail seemed ok, but it had difficulty displaying the emails on the watch. I actually couldn’t get a full email to display before I gave up. TL;DR is great for those emails that are more like conversations through email because someone doesn’t have an instant messaging service. You can display and read all at the main page if it’s short.
I’m pleased with the ease of the setup process, but disappointed about the current app store. Fortunately, we know that many of the best companies are working diligently to get versions available for the watch. I’m already testing what’s out there and looking at what’s to come. I’ll let you know more about my experience after I’ve truly tested more functions in an “everyday life” capacity. I’m planning on looking into the screen protectors, cases, and third party bands as well. It’s going to be fun!
