Apple Watch reveals the paradox of tech innovation

Whenever new tech emerges, there’s a clash between how you: “should” use it, want to use it and how normal people actually will. The Apple Watch is a great demo of this.

“Should” is the designers’ view. The intention, the ultimate fulfilment of the concept. With Apple Watch, this is simple: do your most common phone interactions on your wrist instead. With should, it’s rare the first product is the ultimate fulfillment. Think the original iPhone or iPod v later models. But they stake out a design shape which can be coloured in over those iterations.

But this clashes with…

How you want to use it. Because the design brief pushes you toward its ultimate expression, you quickly find you’re hitting the walls and limitations of the first gen expression. Current apps are sluggish, crashing mirros of ‘today’ widgets from your phone. Siri is effortless when it works — but inexplicably dies on you just enough to fracture your confidence in it.

You end up pushing toward the promised future but ultimately banging your head against the brick wall of what technology can provide at this price point, in this form factor today.

Finally, and most interestingly, is how it feels people actually will use it. And I mean normal people. This is the other end from the designers’ vision. It’s whether my uncle will be patient with its flaws. Whether people really dislike how much time they are spending with their phones yet.

We’re creatures of habit, we don’t rush to change fast. The biggest change often comes from new solutions to old, very deep behaviours. For more than half my life, I’ve had a little box in my pocket that allowed me to conjure bursts of endorphins on demand. From early SMS and Nokia Snake to Instagram and Tinder, an old item was reconstituted to become trojan horse for a new, normal behaviour.

But you have to remember, it started with communication. And that’s the least spoken about element of the watch while it’s still snaking its way into the world. Watch this new Apple ad before I continue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4TbOiaEHpM&app=desktop

I don’t know anyone to try the fancy digital touch features with yet. But, I can use the horrible ugly emoticons. Yesterday on the train, I made the ugliest face I could out of Apple’s default widgets and pinged it to my other half.

There was no real message, no rhyme or reason, it was just an affectionate gesture. So far, these have been mostly missing from digital communication — other than improvisations similar to my ugly emoticons. We are hung up on the idea that a message has to have content worth sending. But with those closest to you, it often really doesn’t. Touch is the perfect description.

So. Here’s the thing. Technology keeps moving. Next year, we’re sure to see an S model with better speed, better battery. The year after, the same again. Inherited old models was propogate out to the relations of us early adopters, just like they did with iPhones. The second hand market will put previous devices into the hands of masses. If millions bought fitbits and Jawbones, how many might take a punt on these?

Technology progresses, native apps will be released, developers will grow in their experience of what creates real value on this small format. The device will get closer and closer to that vision of how it “should” be. We’ll be more and more able to use it as we want to. And if my hunch is correct, the communications features will play a big part in how people actually will come back to in their daily routine.