Users who got early access to the Apple Watch almost universally hailed the company’s flagship wearable as a major product release, and a transformative moment in mobile technology.
But does that mean you need to run out and buy one? Maybe not.
“It took three days — three long, often confusing and frustrating days — for me to fall for the Apple Watch. But once I fell, I fell hard,” Farhad Manjoo wrote for the New York Times.
Bloomberg’s Joshua Topolsky weighed in with similar, albeit qualified, praise.
“So Apple has succeeded in its first big task with its watch. It made something that lives up to the company’s reputation as an innovator and raised the bar for a whole new class of devices,” he wrote.
But at the same time he had a caveat: “The Apple Watch is cool, it’s beautiful, it’s powerful, and it’s easy to use. But it’s not essential. Not yet.”
For sure, virtually all praise for the Watch also included some criticism.
Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist, who was impressed overall, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that exercise kills the Watch’s battery life. “[D]ays when I went to a 45-minute spinning class, it was dying by 8 or 9 pm,” she said.
Still, she was impressed at how well the Watch works on its own, describing how she went out for a morning run without her iPhone, and was able to stop at Whole Foods for coffee and water and paid using only her Watch.
“For me that was one of the breaking points where I said this thing is freeing from the phone,” she said.
Edward Baig, USA Today personal technology columnist, told CNBC that the watch isn’t an essential item to own, but it is “awfully nice to have.”
He used it to hail a ride using the third-party Uber app and although he was a little bit confused by the interface, he did get a ride. He added that Apple Pay on the Watch works better than on his phone because “you are just hitting a couple of buttons, putting it right to the register and it worked very well.”
Ben Berkowitz
Matt Hunter









