Above Avalon: AirPods Are Becoming a Platform

The Apple Watch was the first device to genuinely begin questioning the current app paradigm. The Siri watch face on Apple Watch is all about providing the wearer glanceable amounts of information, data, and context in the form of cards chosen by a digital assistant. These cards are personalized to the wearer based on the time of day and schedule. In essence, we are moving away from pulling data from various apps to receiving a curated feed of data that is dynamic - always changing and tailored to our needs.

Far be it from me to push back on Apple Watch enthusiasm, but this paragraph rubbed me the wrong way. Android Wear (now Wear OS) did something very much like what the Siri watch face does today, but it did it first. Was it great? No. Was it adopted by millions of people? No. But this isn’t about being best or most popular, it’s about who was “first” and I think it’s misleading to frame the Siri watch face to be the first platform, even the first wrist-based platform, to do this.

Go ahead and ask the few Android Wear lovers why they preferred it to the Apple Watch for years.