The Problem with Apple Watch in a Nutshell - Paul Thurrott

But the thing about the Apple Watch is that it transcends the normal Apple complaints and even the normal Apple accolades. It’s not intuitive, because you really need to train yourself to use it. It’s not simple to buy, and for a wide variety of reasons. It’s not obviously better than anything else in the market.

Let’s rewind to early 2007. Apple was about to release the iPhone, and their website was loaded with tutorial videos showing how you do everything on the phone. Some of these tasks were as simple as getting to the home screen or navigating the email app. These are things we take for granted today, but were anything but obvious 8 years ago. The idea that the Apple Watch takes some time to learn to use, and is therefore a failure, is ridiculous.

Let’s look at it another way. The most experienced Apple Watch owner has had their Watch for 3 days (excluding reviewers, of course). How many of them do you see on Twitter expressing their confusion about how the interface works? I see zero in my timeline, and I bet you do too. New owners are commenting on limitations in the software, but they’re not wailing about the difficulties of understanding the product. The people who are complaining that the Watch is unintuitive are motly people who haven’t used one yet.

Smart watches usher in a new interactive paradigm, and they require a little bit of learning to get going. I guess Apple could have replicated the iPhone experience on the Watch, but then it would have been a bad product.

Thurrott drops this gem as well:

Had Apple Watch been made by any company other than Apple, we wouldn’t be even having this discussion. And the New York Times wouldn’t be writing about it at all.

Sure, becasue Windows 8, Android, Android Wear, the Microsoft Band, Pebble, and all other computing devices have zero learning curve. The New York Times is writing about the Apple Watch because there is a ton of interest around the product, and Apple has sold millions of them.