I’ve had the apple watch for a couple weeks now and my experience has been mixed. My quick initial thoughts:

• It’s a beautiful watch. It feels great (I have the larger size screen, aluminum case, with the white sportsband). The band feels really comfortable, like the size and feel quite a bit.
• The battery life on the watch is great, but the drain on my iphone so far has been noticeable. I think I’ve lost about 10% of my daily battery life since I’ve been using the watch, maybe more as I’ve started to rely on it a bit more.
• The software is a bit sluggish. That includes both the speed at which the watch face actually activates as you turn your wrist to check the time, as well as the lag as the watch communicates with the phone to process most tasks. I often question whether I’m actually saving time, but I think this will improve as I just get more fluid using the device.
• Notifications are going to be the killer app. But it’s going to take some getting used to. What notifications do I really want on my watch?  There is definitely the potential for overkill.  Also, when I first got the watch, my notifications weren’t really working at all.  After fiddling with it for a few days, I reset the software and it’s been fine since.
• I forget how much social conditioning happens with a new device like this. I’m definitely being a bit more awkward and potentially rude every time I use the watch in a social setting. Not really sure what the norms are yet.
• Goes without saying, but the reliance on the phone is a bummer. I’d love to be able to go for a run with just the watch and be able to stream music, check my location, etc. But for now, I don’t have bluetooth headphones, and you need the phone for maps, streaming, etc. I have to imagine that in the future, this will actually going away, maybe by V3.

As with many V1 products, there are a lot of kinks to work out. But I also had a wonderful, magic moment with the watch a couple days ago. The challenge with the watch is that it has limited input options for text.  If you want to respond to a text message, you need to use either voice dictation, or some pre-canned responses like “OK” “Thank you” “Yes”, etc.  There aren’t that many choices.

But a couple days ago, I got a text from a friend who was going to stop by my house to pick up something he had left behind.  He asked:

“Is it better for me to come around 8, or at 9?”

By chance, I just tapped on reply just to see what I would be abel to do, and the first two suggested, canned responses were:

“around 8”

“a 9”

Woah. I did not expect that. I didn’t think that Apple was analyzing the contents of my texts and would suggest a response based on the context.  It was exactly what I needed, it was totally unexpected, and it was completely magical.  I know some people may be creeped out by that sort of thing, but I was pretty excited.  It was really cool, and a interesting indication of what’s to come.