My friend and musician, Dave Wiskus, discusses what’s good and bad about Apple Music Connect:

But the worst offense of all is this: I can see no way to invite people to follow us on Connect. I can share the link. I can even tweet about it. Yet there’s no way to know how many followers we have, encourage people to follow us, or directly engage with anyone who hasn’t already purchased a song from us on iTunes. That feels broken. Somehow people were able to comment, which is great, but it makes me sad that I feel no sense of… well, connection. And I really, really want that connection.

He goes on:

As an artist, I want people to listen to my music. In the short term, Connect’s one and only job is to make my audience feel like I’m listening back.

It’s super trendy to hate the Dave Matthews Band. For those that are my age, DMB was popular when we were in high school or college. The band represents — for many — youthful indescretions and poor taste.

My favorite band for quite a few years, I feel that the Dave Matthews Band is, as they say, Unjustly Maligned.

Antony Johnston asked me to join him on his podcast about defending the indefensible. We focused largely on the album Before These Crowded Streets (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify), but discuss all factors of Dave Matthews Band.

While today you’re far more likely to catch me listening to MUTEMATH or something downtempo, you can join me as I get nostalgic and defensive about my first musical love.

Top Gear writer Richard Porter:

If the idea couldn’t pass muster in the office, in particular at the hands of chief scrutineer Clarkson who worried about this stuff more than anyone on the team, then it didn’t happen. Case in point, we once had this notion that we would re-invent the fire engine. Why were we doing that? Because it seemed like they were too big and too slow and therefore took too long to get to emergencies. The solution was obvious; Top Gear would build a small, high performance fire truck.

The trouble is, if you make a fire engine smaller there’s no room on board for all the ladders, hoses and burly men it needs to do its job. So it has to be big. And then it can’t get through gaps in traffic. So you make it smaller. And then it can’t do its job. And then…

We sat in a meetings for hours debating this round in circles before concluding with heavy heart that the ideal design was a fire engine, as in the sort we already have. The whole idea was thrown in the bin. It would have been easy to have plugged on simply for the sake of seeing Richard Hammond trying to fit a massive ladder onto the roof of a tiny van, but really we’d have been doing it purely for the jokes and, much though it may have seemed otherwise, such brazen comedy chasing was never enough for Top Gear.

Link via Horace Dediu

Some people, often those that aren’t sports fans, have described Apple as their “team”. It’s the group they root for.

As in sports, sometimes the team you root for makes mistakes, and disappoints you. Other times, it makes you proud.

Today, I’m proud of my team.

Nearly every single day, when I arrive at work, this is what I see:

I thought it was an accident the first couple times I saw it, but no, it’s not.

Every. Single. Day. That’s how this individual parks. Across two spots.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes he’s backed in across two spots, which, unfortunately, does not make me any less angry.

Every single day, this is how my day starts. I get out of my car, grab my computer and my water bottle, start to walk toward the building, and get annoyed.

I have only seen the driver a couple times, and each time I’ve thought about saying something:

Is there a reason you park across two spots?

Why do you park like such a jerk?

If you’re going to park like a jerk, at least have the common courtesy to do so in the farthest corner of the parking lot.

Would you like me to guide you into the spot tomorrow morning? Doesn’t seem like you’re able to get there without some help.

Since I’m a total wimp, and non-confrontational, I’ve never said anything to him. I just hope the stink eye I’m giving him is doing all the talking.

This morning, as I was reflecting on the most passive-aggressive way to shame this driver into compliance with my rules of parking etiquette, something struck me.

This is no way for me to start my day. Not once. Certainly not every day.

As I’ve gotten older, and busier, I’ve come to realize the same thing everyone at around my age seems to realize: time is our most valuable resource. We should only spend our time on things that truly matter.

This man’s insistence on parking like a tool? Doesn’t matter. The only thing I’m doing by noticing it is wasting my own time. By thinking about it, I’m putting myself in a bad mood before I walk into work each day. For what?

It’s just not worth it.

The traffic I hit on the way home from WWDC? Not worth being angry about. What’s more? In this case, the traffic was caused by a pretty rough accident. One that necessitated at least one ambulance. Someone didn’t come home to their loved ones that night, possibly by no fault of their own.

Don’t I feel like an idiot for firing off that angry tweet now? (Yes, I really do.)

It’s not the turn of a year, so I can’t call this a New Year’s Resolution. It’s better that I don’t — those never work anyway. What I can say is, I’m working on being far more deliberate about not letting thought parasites into my world.

Because when I rid myself of these time sucks, I’ll be ready for what’s really important.

As last year, I’m presently sitting on the plane reflecting on how WWDC week went.

In many ways, WWDC is one of the highlights of my year. I get to spend time with my friends — many of them dear friends — that I don’t get to see often. I get to learn about platforms I’m passionate about. I get to be rejuvenated and find my enthusiasm again. It’s always a blast.

This year brought new ideas and behaviors, as well as a continuation of some of the things I love best about WWDC. My immediate reactions were captured on this week’s ATP, which was recorded Monday evening.

With the conference behind me, I have a few more thoughts.

Still Together

Last year I wrote about a newfound feeling of cooperation with Apple:

Apple’s tone — or perhaps their spirit — was more than just confidence. It was also about cooperation. The spirit of WWDC 2014 was about doing things together.

So many of the features Apple released were about fixing problems that face all developers in their platform, of all sizes. Improvements in iOS 8 and OS X aren’t about giving gifts to the huge corporations. Smaller developers also reap the benefits of all of the same new features and tools.

This year, that continued, but in a new and unexpected way.

I had the pleasure of attending The Talk Show Live this year, as I have every year I’ve been to WWDC. It’s always a blast. Given last year’s guests were so great, no one was sure who would join John Gruber on stage this year.

When Phil Schiller walked on stage, every mouth in the room dropped. The Apple we know doesn’t do this.

As Marco said:

That [Apple & Schiller] agreed at all is a noteworthy gift to this community of long-time enthusiasts, many of whom have felt under-appreciated as the company has grown.

It was a really phenomenal event I was very glad to be able to witness. It meant a lot to me as both a commentator and a developer to see Apple make that step. I hope that Phil’s appearance on The Talk Show was the sign of things to come, rather than a wonderful anomaly.

watchOS

Apple’s watchOS announcements were a mix of the expected and the unexpected. Developers will now be able to run apps native on the Watch, as opposed to having to phone home to the iPhone for all functionality. This was expected.

Unexpected, however, was Apple announcing APIs to allow for creating third-party complications. They gave me the gift I’ve been asking for. I’m super excited about this, and will be spending the rest of the plane dabbling with some ideas I’m kicking around in my head.

iOS

iOS got quite a bit of love — particularly iPad. I’m excited about some of the changes coming to the iPad, though not as excited as some are.

Despite multitasking being quite neutered on older devices, I quickly installed iOS 9 Beta 1 on my beloved but nearly two year old “RetinaPad Mini”. I’ve been playing around with Slide Over and Picture in Picture, and both are excellent. Clearly a lot of work has gone into this beta, and it has more polish than we tend to expect from Beta 1.

A great example is PIP. I made a low-fidelity GIF to demonstrate:

Note that the video will dance up and down in order to prevent the dock from being occluded. Nice touch.

Additionally, iPad now has far more robust support for keyboard shortcuts when using an external keyboard. Though I often travel with my laptop, on occasions when I don’t have my laptop with me, I usually take my iPad with an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. Having shortcuts like ⌘-Tab will be hugely useful.

OS X

The Mac also got some welcome improvements. The forthcoming El Capitan includes a lot of nice touches, such as also supporting Split View, like the iPad. Much in the same vein as the dancing PIP player, El Cap gets touches such as cursor improvements. When you shake your mouse in order to find where your cursor is, it pulls a page from Bruce Banner’s playbook and gets quite a lot bigger. Another nice touch.

The new Notes app also looks really impressive, and I’m anxious to try it out, since I’m in many ways falling out of love with Evernote.

Otherwise, El Cap focuses largely on stability and performance improvements, which is welcome.

Apple Music

Despite a terrible taste left in my mouth from the exceptionally awkward end of the keynote, I’m anxious to look more into Apple Music. As a devout Spotify user, I’m not sure if I will find much appealing about Apple Music. However, I do trust Apple in this department, and I’ve heard regularly how great Beats Music is. I’m anxious to give it a shot.

In a lot of ways, this year’s WWDC was the yang to 2014’s yin. Last year brought a grab-bag of new, exciting, and overdue changes. This year, Apple did what they do best: listen, learn, iterate, improve.

My dear friend _David Smith has made another new app. He is the Energizer Bunny of app developers.

This new app, Take Me There (iTunes Link), is designed to make it very easy to get you directions to somewhere from where you’re standing right now. Designed for use on Apple Watch, it is in many ways the Fast Text of navigation apps. Take Me There has a ton of great uses — setting up Home as a destination is an obvious one.

I’ve been testing it for the last few weeks, including during a recent trip to Morgantown, West Virginia. Once I arrived in Morgantown, I knew I’d be walking to one of a few different destinations during my time there. As a nervous traveler, I wanted to make walking around an unfamiliar place as easy on myself as I could.

I decided to load the destinations I’d be visiting into Take Me There before I left home. Take Me There makes it really easy to do so using your iPhone.

When I arrived in Morgantown, as I wanted to walk to various destinations, I simply opened Take Me There on my Apple Watch. I was presented with a list of destinations, and selected the one I want. At that point, I’m punted to the Maps app, where I can get either walking or driving directions.

Thanks to the Taptic Engine on Apple Watch, I just need to keep walking until I feel a bunch of pulses, and then I turn as Apple Watch has directed me.

Fast, easy, and only $1. You should definitely check it out.

David has taken things a step further, however. He actually captured a timelapse of him building Take Me There. It’s a fascinating 6.5 minute video, and a really great way to show friends or family what it is you do for a living:

Even if you’re also a developer, I found it fascinating to see how one of my peers works. Plus, since it’s _David, he put quite a bit of care into the video, too. As with Take Me There itself, it’s worth your time.

As a parent, there are times you would give everything you had to make something better for your child. As is often the case in life, the times you want to help the most, you’re the most unable to do anything.

Over the weekend, Declan wasn’t feeling well. He’s fine now — without getting into the details, he had to endure some temporary but significant discomfort while at home.

Generally a very happy baby, it’s rare that he’s upset for more than a few moments. When Declan is crying — really crying, we take notice. It’s uncommon for him to wail just for the sake of being fussy.

Over the weekend, Declan went from content to unhappy to upset to inconsolable nearly instantly. Erin and I were pretty convinced we knew what the problem was, but we were completely unable to help. We just had to ride it out with him.

To watch your child lay there, writhing, screaming bloody murder, is impossible and intolerable. It is one of the worst pains I’ve ever experienced.

At a glance, it seemed most similar to when Erin gave birth to Declan. Even with an epidural, it was clear she was going through something that took everything out of her. I was just along for the ride, trying desperately to figure out something — anything — I could do to help her.

There was nothing I could do but be there, and encourage her. I knew she could handle it. She knew better than I that it would all be over [not] soon enough, and we would soon meet our son.

For Declan, it’s not so simple. He’s just shy of seven months. He doesn’t understand when I tell him “Just hold on, it’ll be over soon”. All he knows is that he hurts, and he doesn’t understand it.

He looks up at me, and at Erin, with pain across his eyes. You can see what he’s thinking, even though he doesn’t grasp language: “Why are you letting this continue? Why aren’t you fixing this?”

It’s heartbreaking.

The only thing I could do is to be there for him, and for Erin. To stay composed, while I was dying inside. To assure the two of them that it would be okay, and it will be over soon.

I did, and it was.

And once it was over, I stepped away, and I cried my eyes out.

App Camp for Girls is a wonderful organization that seeks to encourage young girls to pursue their interests in technology. App Camp does this by coaching young girls and helping them write their first iOS apps.

This year, App Camp is doing a fundraiser & happy hour during WWDC. The fundraiser is Wednesday night, shortly after the conference ends for the day, and is being hosted by WWDCGirls. All the proceeds from ticket sales go toward App Camp for Girls.

Marco, John, and I are sponsoring the event on behalf of our show, the Accidental Tech Podcast.

We’d love it if you would consider making a donation, and joining us.

When I was told that an Apple Watch had been bought for me, my first reaction was surprise, until I remembered who my husband is and realized I actually wasn’t that surprised. So I decided to go along with it. I am never the kind of person who wants or desires the newest shiny toys, but really wanted to give the Watch an honest shot. It definitely helped that there is a 2 week “grace period” so I could really give myself some time to decide if this was something I really wanted in my life.

Casey asked me to write a review from my perspective about the watch, a week in to using it. Much easier said than done, while watching an infant all day who is a terrible napper and has decided to get up earlier and earlier every morning for the past week (mommy is quite tired)! Forgive my terrible disjointedness; these are my thoughts that have been floating around since using the Watch.

From the day I first received it (surprisingly, I got it about a month earlier than originally thought), I have worn the Watch faithfully. All day, putting it on first thing in the morning after I shower, and taking it off right before bed. To be fair, I don’t really have time to fiddle around with it, but I have taken in everything I can about it, and frequently ask questions about how to do something. I really want to love this Watch.

Unfortunately, I don’t. I know it absolutely breaks Casey’s heart anytime I say something desparaging about it, and that does make me sad. I want to love it as much as he does, but I really just don’t.

Likes

What DO I like about it? Not to be trite, but the band is extremely comfortable. I’ve never been opposed to wearing watches, and having something on my wrist usually doesn’t bother me, but this is one of the nicest feeling watch bands I’ve ever felt. (On the downside my wrist doesn’t seem to like any of the set band holes - it’s either slightly too large or slightly too small for me at all times.) I also like the color. Given my propensity towards the color pink, Casey ordered that band for me. After seeing it in the store when Casey had his try-on appointment, I was not impressed. It looked to be more of a salmon color, which was ok, but I likely would have chosen a different color had I seen that first. What I received though, is more of a coral color, which I really like.

In addition, the fact that I can check a text message when I am doing something that limits me from checking my phone immediately (such as washing dishes or changing a poopy diaper), is genuinely convenient. Even if nothing can be done about it right that second, it can at least be checked when my hands are otherwise occupied completely.

Dislikes

These about sum up what I have found to be enjoyable about the Watch. What do I not like about it? The best way I can exemplify my feelings, as I’ve told others: you can see a lot on the Watch, but you can’t do a lot on the Watch. For example, if someone texts me a link to something, I have to look at it on my phone. Related, I will get a “an image has been sent; check your iPhone” message which must lead me back to my phone. For both of these, on numerous occasions I have forgotten that there is a link or image to look at by the time I get back to my phone. The sender either eventually asks if I received it (because of my lack of response) or I will finally notice when I go to send them a text about something completely different. Extremely frustrating!

When I do receive a normal text message and want to respond, many times the canned reply texts are not good enough for what I want to say. Usually, “yes”/ “no”/ “can’t talk now”/ etc. do not do enough. So, I have to go back to my phone again. I know I could use the dictation feature, but I have thus far refused to talk to my wrist, and do not see that changing.

There have been many times when I have missed notifications completely. Though since I first mentioned this to Casey, he bumped up the sensitivity, and it has gotten better, it’s definitely not 100%. So sometimes it might not be until quite a bit later (I don’t look at my watch “just cuz” very often) that I see something. Similarly, but more disheartening, is the fact that some sketches/ taps just don’t go through at all. I know one will be sent (I will hear or see a text saying something like “omg that is the worst thing I’ve ever drawn”) and it will never make it to my watch. However, I believe that the novelty of sketches/ taps/ heartbeats will wear off for everyone fairly quickly, so perhaps this will not be a problem for long!

The fitness part of the Watch is cool, but I already have a FitBit (and have for years), that satisfies that need. While there is something very satisfying about seeing a ring being completed, I actually prefer to see my fitness status on my FitBit (I feel its not as fiddly and easier to see at a glance). In addition, I’m told to “stand up” multiple times throughout the day… when I am already standing and usually have recently gone up or down stairs! (I’m also told this if I’ve been in a car for a while, which I can understand, but it still grates on my nerves a bit.)

Finally, many of the apps that are on the Watch I would rather check on my phone anyway, because the Watch screen is just too small for that kind of use (I know I have the smaller size watch but I don’t see this being much different on the bigger one, though perhaps I’m wrong in thinking that). Related, several of the apps on my iPhone aren’t supported by the Watch so I couldn’t use them even if I wanted to.

I honestly am not sure what I’m going to do about keeping or returning my Watch. That may come as a surprise given the amount of cons I have to pros. It certainly is not worth the money, in my opinion. The problem is, I want to love it. I really do. I just haven’t found any reason to do so.

In order to get an opinion from a different perspective, I’ve also asked my wife Erin to share some of her thoughts about Apple Watch. This is my review, but you can also read her review.

I’ve had my Apple Watch, a 42mm Space Gray Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band, for about a week now. (Could that model name be any longer? Oy.)

Mine arrived on Thursday, 7 May. Well, except it wasn’t actually mine, strictly speaking. A listener had ordered two watches, not sure which one he would want more. It turns out he wanted a different model, and his extra was the same kind I had also ordered. He sold me his extra Apple Watch at cost, which was exceptionally kind of him to do. Needless to say, the grey market is quite lucrative.

The watch I actually ordered — at around 7:05 the morning of the Apple Watch launch — was due to arrive between 29 May and 11 June. I’ll be paying it forward and selling to a friend.

We also ordered Erin an Apple Watch, since I thought they’d be better in pairs. Hers is a 38mm Silver Aluminum Case with Pink Sport Band. I was very nervous about this selection, as I have previously lamented that the “pink” band looked salmon to my eye in the store. Having received it, the “pink” sport band looks better than I remembered it. Not salmon, but not pink either. Erin has told me the band is more coral than anything else. Hers was also ordered at 7:05 on preorder day.

So, both Apple Watches having arrived this past Thursday, by pure coincidence, we have now had them for a week. What are we thinking, a week in?

I really like my Apple Watch a lot. Many of the things that I expected to be annoyed by have not annoyed me at all. Erin has other thoughts, which she covered in her own post — the first guest post I’ve had on this site. You can read that post here.

Screen & Battery Life

I find that raising your wrist to see the face works most of the time, and the times it doesn’t, a small flick of the wrist or tap of the face will light the screen.

Battery life has been stellar. Because of Declan, the beginning and end of our days are extremely predicatable. We always wake shortly before 7, and we go to sleep around 10:30. Thus, we have roughly 15 ½ hours that we are up, awake, and moving.

With average usage, having no regard for battery life, my Apple Watch has ended the day at 26%, 37%, 34%, 31%, 27%, and 41%. That includes at least 15 minutes of exercise on most days in the form of a brisk Outdoor Walk. The last one — 41% — was actually a couple hours later than the others thanks to recording ATP.

Activity

Speaking of exercising, I’ve immediately become a sucker for the activity rings. There are three rings, representing three fitness goals:

• Move — Hit your personal and adjustable calorie burn goal by moving more
• Exercise — Accumulate 30 minutes of activity at or above a brisk walk
• Stand — Stand up for at least 1 minute of every hour

These goals are, for a man that exercises far more rarely than he cares to admit, attainable. While trying to fill my rings, I don’t feel like I’m attempting to climb Everest. At best, I feel like I’m just being more cognizant of what I’m doing with my body. At worst, I’m pushing myself just that much farther than I would without this external goal to achieve. My goals are always within reach, if a bit inconvenient. I get the feeling that’s exactly how they should feel.

Once we put Declan to sleep, I’m typically close to done with my Move goal, done with my Stand goal, but need a little boost for my Exercise goal. That leads to some questionable choices on my part:

No, YOU just walked around your neighborhood in the dark like a creeper to reach your exercise goal. pic.twitter.com/JREY10ZhqA

— Casey Liss (@caseyliss) May 9, 2015

I may look like a creeper, but I am also more active than I’d be without these silly activity rings encouraging me. That’s a positive change. So far, I’ve been able to fill in my activity rings every day I’ve had my Apple Watch, which I’m not only excited about, but proud of as well.

Watch OS

I’ve seen a lot of people grumble about Watch OS’ interaction model. For me, I don’t find it very confusing at all. For sure, I’ve occasionally lost parity between my mental model and what’s on screen. This feels exactly like losing track of what gear your car’s manual transmission is in — a momentary bit of confusion, but a quick recovery.

There are, however, some things that really bother me. First and foremost, I haven’t figured out a way to Digital Touch someone that isn’t on my Friends list. I don’t necessarily want the 12-person limit increased; I just wish there was a way to send a digital touch to someone who isn’t on my friends list. Perhaps in the Messages app, there could be a second option to send a Digital Touch, as well as a New Message.

Early on, I can’t help but wish for the inclusion of some sort of demo reel. I know that’s never going to happen, but it’d be convenient to have. The demo reel that is shown on the try-on devices does a great job of demonstrating the visual and tactile features of Apple Watch. The handful of times I’ve been asked about my Apple Watch, it’s been hard to give a really compelling demo, unless Erin happens to be around to send messages and Digital Touches to help facilitate it. One of the best parts of Apple Watch is the Taptic Engine; it’s hard to force the Taptic Engine to fire without help from a friend. Having a demo reel as an app would be really nice, at least early on.

A week in, my complicated wishes have only become stronger.

I’ve built a love/hate relationship with Siri. While dictation is far better than it has been in the past, responsiveness is not. I often find that if I wait for Siri to show on-screen, Apple Watch often gives up on me before I even get a chance to stop talking. Getting the timing right has been a constant annoyance.

The tip that I’ve read, and usually works, is to say “Hey Siri,” and then immediately start your request. Don’t wait for the screen to catch up, just let it rip. While my success rate is better this way, I still end up missing Siri’s listening window a lot of the time.

One small annoyance I do have is that I wish there was a way to set the default view for the Weather app. I like having the current temperature complication on my Watch face. I don’t like having to Force Touch^[1] to switch from the condition view to the temperature view every time I load the app.

Another annoyance is receiving Digital Touches. If another notification comes in, or if I twist my wrist too much, or if Apple Watch decides it has had its screen on too long, I’ll often miss the sketch/heartbeat/taps. Only some of the time do I get the play button in the upper-right corner of the screen to re-play them. Since Digital Touches are ephemeral, sometimes I accidentally miss out on one forever.

Last night I happened to lose my iPhone in the house. Since I had my Apple Watch on me, I used it to ping my iPhone. Unlike Find My iPhone, which causes your phone to make a racket for quite a while, pinging from Apple Watch results in one ping only.

Watch.app

The Apple Watch app on the iPhone is pretty good. It makes me extremely happy that I can rearrange my apps using the larger screen on my phone, rather than being limited to only doing it on Apple Watch.

The only wish I have for it is to be more intelligent about Glances. Several times, I have gone to the Glances settings, and added a new Glance to my Apple Watch, only to find it never got installed. The reason it isn’t installed is because the parent app wasn’t on my Apple Watch, and the Apple Watch app isn’t smart enough to install it when you add a Glance.

Bands

The only bands in the house are the Black and Pink Sport Bands. I continue to be surprised by how wonderful the Sport Bands are. When ordering my Apple Watch, I had told myself that I’d likely get the Milanese Loop in the future, as a standalone upgrade. Never say “never”, but having lived with the Sport Band for a week, I doubt I’ll ever change it.

The Sport Band looks like a traditional athletic watch band, but in feel it’s actually quite a bit better. No matter how hard I try, I can’t come up with a way to properly describe it. Furthermore, I’ve not yet found it to be any more sweat-inducing than any other watch band I’ve ever worn. The Sport Band is also nearly completely odor-free, which is more than I could say of the leather band I wore with my last watch.

Another perk of the Sport Band is that all Sport bands include three pieces:

• The piece with the pin
• A large sized second half
• A smaller sized second half

When I unboxed my watch, I tried it on first as-shipped, which is with the large sized band. That didn’t work at all. Within 15 seconds I had swapped to the small/medium size. Based on which hole I push the pin through, my approximately 165 mm wrist is quite literally in the middle of the medium band.

Putting the Sport Band on takes a little getting used to, but I was rather quick with it only a few days in. Taking it off is actually very fast — I simply pull up on the portion of the fluoroelastomer where the pin is, and everything releases. Don’t let that dissuade you — the Sport Band is very secure when on the wrist.

App Store

In rethinking how Overcast for Apple Watch works, Marco Arment summarized it best:

It’s unwise and futile to try to shove iPhone interfaces and paradigms into the Apple Watch. Instead, design for what the Watch really is.

It’s clear that developers did not live with Apple Watch before writing early Apple Watch apps. Given the scarcity of Apple Watch even now, nearly a month after its release, many developers haven’t had the chance to really use one yet. However, as they do, they will surely rethink their apps like Marco has.

The apps I do find myself using at least occasionally are (all of the following are iTunes links):

• Slack for chatting with friends
• HipChat for chatting with colleagues
• Overcast for controlling podcast playback
• 1Password for getting two-factor passwords
• Dark Sky for more robust weather forecasts
• Deliveries for package tracking
• Workflow for a couple of utilities
• TripIt for travel itineraries
• Uber for getting around while traveling

These apps are all good enough, and fast enough, to keep me using them.

I also dearly wish that some of my most used iPhone apps were available on Apple Watch:

• Baby Connect for keeping track of, and updating, Declan’s activities
• AnyList for shared grocery & hardware store lists^[2]
• Chamberlain MyQ for opening/closing my garage door
• Honeywell Total Connect Comfort for adjusting the thermostat
• Find My Friends to see where some close family are

Doubt

Despite all this, something keeps eating at me about Apple Watch. I really do quite like mine, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I’m an engineer, and I can understand the decisions that went into making Apple Watch. With this context in mind, I give Apple Watch a bye for so many of the things that would — perhaps should — annoy me. The screen turns off so aggressively to ensure all-day battery life. The latency when loading data is because of Bluetooth Low Energy. Slow third party apps are because of BTLE and the presently-neutered WatchKit.

I make excuses for Apple Watch because I want to like it. Because it does make many things quite a bit more convenient. Because I understand the engineering choices that were made in order to make Apple Watch a reality.

I keep asking myself, though: would I like Apple Watch as much as I do if I didn’t understand how hard it is to make it a reality in 2015?

Then again, if it makes me happy to wear the future on my wrist, does it really matter?