Putting the digital world, on your wrist

When Apple unveiled its watch last fall, the company showed only demo models of the new device - polished prototypes of the hardware running nonworking loops of the software.

Last week, the company gave a closer look at the Apple Watch, including the working software. The company also said the device would start at $350 (Rs 22,082) and, depending on the band and finish you chose, go into the thousands of dollars. I spent two long sessions with the watch in Apple’s demo room. Here are my first impressions.

The Hardware

It’s a perfectly nice-looking watch. In its higher-end configurations - for instance, the stainless steel middle tier, with the steel-mesh Milanese loop wristband, which sells for somewhere around $1,000 (Rs 63,093) - the Apple Watch comes close to being beautiful, and it is certainly one of the best-looking computers you can buy for your wrist.

Yet it’s hard to forget that it is a computer for your wrist. Even in its top-end versions, it lacks the understated elegance of old-fashioned high-end analogue watches. Apple is doing something unusual here: It is trying to create an electronic device that matches the timeless appeal of a piece of jewellery.

I’m not quite sure Apple pulled that off in this version. The electronic watch face is a bit chunky compared with the high-end band, so the overall impression is one of a mash-up between jewellery and gadgets. I’m reminded of the first-generation iPad or iPhone: The Apple Watch may look a bit more stylish than any other techie watch you can buy, but I can’t help but dream about the third- or fourth-generation version, when everything is likely to become smaller, thinner, tighter and more elegant.

The Interface

Last fall, Apple made a big show of the rotating crown on the side of the device, the company’s take on what most of us call a watch dial. The company held up the crown as its next great interface, something on the order of the mouse, the iPod’s clickwheel or the touch screen on the iPhone. I was surprised, therefore, to discover how small a role the crown plays in typical use of the watch.

It has two primary uses: When you press it, you get to the watch’s main screen of apps - or, if you’re already on that screen, the watch switches to displaying the clock. In other words, the crown works as a home button.

It can also be used for scrolling and zooming. In the music app, for example, you turn it to scroll through artists; if you’re in the photos app, you turn the crown to zoom from a set of tiny tiles of your photos to focus on a single one.

But you can also scroll using your finger on the screen, and in my brief time with the phone, I found that method much faster than the crown. Overall, I found myself touching and tapping much more than turning the dial. In addition to standard taps, the screen also has another tap mode called force touch, which works just as it sounds - press the screen harder. Force touch uncovers an extra level of settings in apps. For instance, force touch an email and you see options to delete, reply or mark it as unread.

The diminished use of the crown strikes me as a wise choice. It’s not another thing you’ve got to learn; for the most part, you control the watch just like your phone. It’s less busy, and much more intuitive, than I’d suspected it would be.

The Uses

Apple spent a long while going through most of the watch’s major functions, including its use as a fitness tracker, texting app, email reader and payment device for locations that accept Apple Pay. I boiled down the list to this rule of thumb: Just about anything you can do with your phone, you can do with your watch, faster.

To me, this is the most interesting potential of the watch. Whether it’s calling an Uber car, checking into your hotel or answering a text, the watch will allow you to interact with the digital world at a glance, in a less outwardly antisocial way than you now do with your phone.

But because the watch needs the phone for connectivity, it’s hardly liberating you from that device. It’s just giving you less of a reason to look at it. Should you really spend hundreds of dollars, let alone thousands, on a gadget to free you from the inconvenience of accessing your $650 (Rs 41,010) smartphone? That remains the deepest unanswered question about the Apple Watch. For now, at least.