Apple Watch

Put me down as being pro Apple Watch.  It all feels very reminiscent to when the original iPhone came out.  A revolutionary device (granted, significantly less so in this case) that a lot of online commenters are already "hating on."

People are already upset about the battery life, predicting it will not meet sales expectations, saying they can't see any real need for it, upset about the lack of health-tracking abilities, and up in arms about the price.

Sport model.  $349-$399 depending on size.

Let's look at the positives.  For $350 you can put a great-looking watch on your wrist that happens to basically be a computer.  I can envision using the watch as a handy walkie talkie to, say, avoid having to fish out my phone with my one child-free hand in 10-degree weather to ask my wife what I should do now that I learned there are no whole chickens available this week at the farmers' market.  Or send her a tap to say "I'm on my way home," or two taps to say "I got held up a bit, but should be coming home just in time to be slightly too late to eat dinner with the family and a bit too early to avoid throwing off the kids' nighttime routine, thereby creating a 2-day cycle of grouchiness and general irritability, and also I love you."

The iPod controls, and no doubt controls for apps like Audible eventually, I think will also come in handy.  I often want to jot a digital note and bookmark a certain passage in an audiobook, but don't because I'm commuting to work and my phone is too deeply buried in my layers of clothing.  I could come up with several other nice conveniences, though I would have to admit the list is not super long; yet, anyways.

One of the key things for me is that the watch just looks really good.  It's true to long-established rules of watchmaking, yet is also bravely forward-thinking.  (For example, at first I was bothered that they opted to go with a rectangular design, thinking that this made it too conspicuously geeky relative to a traditional circle, but then I learned that Jony Ive and the design team quickly came to the conclusion that if people are going to be using this largely to read lists, well then the watch demands to be rectangular.  It's final design ended up being somewhat similar to the 1904 Cartier Santos.)

As for the complaints about the price, yes the $10-17k gold versions are ridiculous, but when your product caters to the entire globe, you're going to run up against some interesting consumer preferences.  Also, it seems like a neat opportunity for Apple to really dig in to metallurgy and do some groundbreaking things with gold (making it more scratch-resistant than most anything else currently out there).  And it doesn't extend just to gold; they're also forging steel in the mountains of Khazad Dum (joke Lord of the Rings reference) and making it 80% more durable than standard.

Sleek & stealth watch face with stainless steel case.  Venezia leather, handcrafted strap.

And the straps are a breakthrough in and of themselves.  A year or two ago I wanted to get a black leather strap for an automatic Seiko watch.  Trolling through hundreds of nearly identical eBay and Amazon ads for watch straps was boring, overwhelming, and eventually unsatisfying.  This new system Apple has spawned is both more simplified and more exciting.  And the modular nature of the straps (i.e. being able to slide-snap them in and out with the watch case) is a real breakthrough, especially considering how pricey the bands are.  Yes, the bands are very expensive ($450 for a steel link bracelet) but if you take the time to read on their website about the thought and materials and craftsmanship that goes into them you just might be persuaded.  And if not, again, you can always buy a handsome $350 version.