This morning I had my appointment at the local Apple Store to go try on the Apple Watch. Unknown to me, the watches you try on are in demo mode and you can’t actually operate them. There are, however, watches in the store that you can operate, but not wear. So between spending 30 minutes trying watches on fiddling with the ones that I actually could operate, I came out of it with a few thoughts:

• The rubber watch strap does not feel nearly as much like rubber as I thought it would. It’s actually kind of supple. Also, I was able to strap it on and off several times without help and did not find it nearly as difficult as some of the reviews are reporting.
• The leather watch strap does not feel nearly as much like leather as I thought it would. It feels a lot like hard plastic and was disappointing.
• The taptic feedback is just right. I love the idea of getting a tap on the wrist without anyone else in the room knowing.
• Likewise, the resistance on the digital crown is also just right. I’m guessing there is a really great story on how they tested and eventually decided upon the amount of resistance for that dial.
• The watches that I could operate only had the native applications on them. There’s probably a good reason for it but I was disappointed since some of the reviews have talked about how third party applications load slowly and I wanted to see this for myself.
• Both the 38mm and 42mm watches are smaller than I expected. Maybe it is because of those big photos on the Apple website, but I just expected it them be bigger. I actually prefer their smaller size over the larger sizes that resided in my head. Both of them are smaller than my existing Pebble watch.
• Both the aluminum and steel Apple Watches are of negligible weight. I know some people have been worried that the steel one will weigh too much. I don’t think that’s an issue. I could barely tell a difference. They are both very light and will not be a problem on your wrist all day.
• The new San Francisco font looks great. It scales nicely on the watch and definitely adds to the experience.
• Navigating the watch is a little different than a phone but not that different. I’ve read several people complain about the interface being confusing and I don’t agree. After 10 minutes I had it down. Swipe down for notifications. Swipe up for glances. Press the crown for the home screen. Press the button for your friends.
• That thing where you can draw on the screen felt pretty useless. That thing where you can tap on the screen makes a lot more sense. Occasionally when I would go to tap on the screen, the watch would detect some movement from my finger and attempt to turn it into a drawing. That made me sad.
• Siri worked fine and displayed words while I was dictating them. Many of the features (like creating a new calendar appointment) were turned off on the demo watch so I couldn’t push Siri as hard as I would have liked.
• Customizing the watch faces is easy enough. The initial collection of watch faces is nice but I sure hope they open that up at some point.
• It was 10:30 AM on a Saturday and there were a lot of people in the store that wanted to look at the watches. Just observing the Apple Store customers, it looks to me like they’re going to sell a lot more of these than I expected.

Overall, after just 30 minutes, I’m looking forward to incorporating the Apple Watch into my life. It’s a great bit of technology to make using my iPhone easier. It doesn’t feel like life-changing technology the way the original iPhone or even the iPad did. However, it does feel like a big enhancement to the existing experience.

Also, having tried on the steel and the aluminum watches, I’m happy with my decision to purchase the aluminum one (I bought the space gray with black band). The stainless steel looked better to my eye but the difference wasn’t worth the extra money to me.

If you’re anywhere near an Apple Store, you should go in and check it out for yourself. Even if you can’t get an appointment, the hands-on watches, where you can fiddle with the operating system, are worth the trip.

Today a bevy of Apple Watch reviews showed up on the Internet. They are all mostly positive. If you would like to burn a couple hours, head over to this Mashable linkwhere they have got a summary of the key reviews and links. 

There seems to be a few common threads throughout the reviews. Some early reviewers complaint that it took them awhile to figure out the new interface. For so many years now, Apple has been training us to use iOS and the “escape anything” home button. That isn’t going to work on the watch and it looks like this new paradigm is going to take some getting used to for some people.

Another common theme is the frequency of notifications. Watching the video reviews, it appears you can have a lot of control over what gets your watch but out-of-the-box, it drives them all at you. I already have most of my notifications turned off but those who like to leave the fire hose turned on should expect a lot of taps and dings from their wrist.

For me, the biggest news from these reviews was that there were no complaints about battery life. As big of an Apple geek as I am, the Apple Watch would be a non-starter if it runs out of gas at dinnertime. I was happy to see that the reviewers, who were presumably playing with these watches a lot more while writing their reviews than a normal user would, were all able to make it through a day without trouble. 

I’m still wavering between the sport and stainless steel models but having looked through the reviews, I’m definitely planning on ordering an Apple Watch of one sort or another.

When the original iPhone was getting released, it was a big investment and I wasn’t sure whether I’d get one or not. Then just a few days before launch Apple released this video and I was hooked. Showing us exactly how the revolutionary phone worked was brilliant and, in my case at least, sold one more iPhone. Apple is going back to the same playbook with a series of guided tours on the Apple Watch. So far there are only three videos available but there are at least seven more that will unlock between now and launch.

My favorite so far is the second video, on faces. Another observation is that in the third video, on digital touch, it looks like a 42mm watch on a slender wrist and it looks pretty big.

Like a lot of other nerds, I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the Apple Watch. Over the last year, I’ve been wearing my Pebble watch a great deal and I’ve come to rely upon the ability to get notifications on my wrist. The Apple Watch, however, brings a lot more to the equation due to the fact that it is made by the same company that makes my phone. Put simply, Apple is going to give its watch a lot more access to the iPhone then it gives anybody else’s watch.

One of the points I’m most curious about is how this will affect phone usage. There have already been rumblings about how wearing an Apple Watch means you don’t take your phone out of your pocket nearly as much. That only makes sense. I’m guessing that when the watch first arrives, I’m going to go out of my way not to take my phone out of my pocket.

Nevertheless, at some point the shininess will wear off and we will reach some sort of equilibrium where we understand what tasks make more sense on the watch and what tasks make more sense on the iPhone. The question in my mind, however, is where exactly that line gets drawn and what sort of impact that will have on my choice of future phones.

For example, I carried an iPhone 6 Plus for a week. It was definitely a presence in my pocket and larger than I expected it to be. It was also definitely nicer when looking at the screen with my 47-year-old eyeballs. The deal killer for me was when I stood in an elevator with my briefcase in one hand and couldn’t unlock my phone with one hand to read a text message.

If the Apple Watch takes off and is that useful, the elevator scenario would not happen again. The phone would remain in my pocket and I’d look at my wrist. Put simply, if the Apple Watch is as useful as everybody wants it to be, it may change the tipping point for the bigger iPhone. The next six months are going to be so interesting.

I was at a family event today and talking to relatives about the Apple Watch. Everyone is expecting the notifications to be useful but the more I think about it, I’m really interested in where this is all going with the Taptic touch features. The ability to draw a picture on my watch and have it appear on my wife’s watch seems nifty but I’d argue the tap could be more useful.

With two Apple Watches I can tap on my watch which would result in my wife’s watch tapping her wrist. Just think about that for a moment. We’re using technology to remotely physically touch one another. I think this opens up a lot of interesting possibilities.

• One tap as I’m pulling in the driveway and we need to leave for our next appointment.
• Two taps when I’m leaving the park and walking home.
• Three taps while at a party = I want to go home.

John Gruber recently talked about this on The Talk Show when explaining how he’d like to use watch taps to communicate with his son when picking him up from the movies. Thinking about this, I’m not aware of any prior technology that gave these options and I have to think that when this thing gets out to the public, we’ll find all sorts of interesting ways to use it. The next few months are going to be fun.

There have been a lot of hardworking journalists putting out a lot of great content about today’s Apple event. I’m in bed sick and instead wrote down some medicated thoughts and now I’ve decided to publish them here. What could go wrong?

• Watching the China store opening I was struck by the question of how a company instills so much devotion and emotion in customers  over a new retail store opening. I think the answer is in delight.
• Doesn’t HBO coming to Apple TV feel like the tiny hole in the dike that could pull the whole thing down?
• I felt like the whole Apple TV bit was sort of a tease. Apple TV still needs an overhaul.
• 700 Million iPhones. That’s 700,000,000.
• At the next Apple event or earnings call, every time Tim says “customer sat”, I’m going to have a shot.
• As technology becomes more ingrained in our every day life, using our iPhones for medical research makes so much sense. Also, open sourcing this is wonderful.
• The new MacBook is very sexy. My current laptop is three years old. I’m currently in the reality distortion field so I’ll have to sit tight for a week or so.
• The way Apple managed to customize the battery to fit every nook and crany of the MacBook is brilliant. It almost seems as if they poured the battery in.
• One port. In the future we will look back on one port as a bold step (like USB in the iMac) or the 2015 equivalent of the round mouse. They didn’t mention that getting to VGA or HDMI requires a $79 adapter.
• It’s pretty interesting that the new MacBook does not have build-to-order configurations. There are two configurations. Pick one.
• I’m pretty curious about how hot the new fanless MacBook gets. I’m looking forward to the in-depth reviews.
• I really like San Francisco, both as a city and as an Apple Watch font.
• The Apple Watch’s friends list UI changed since the initial watch announcement. I’m not sure the tap targets in the old version were big enough or ever intended to ship.
• Tim Cook was much less awkward with Christy Turlington than with Bono. I wonder if they practiced. That may also be because health and fitness are clearly some of Tim’s favorite subjects.
• Remember how we all bemoaned Kevin Lynch and his Flash post? I’m eating crow today because I thought he did a great job demoing the Apple Watch in a usual day. That was the best Apple Watch demo yet.
• I’m going to have so much fun screwing with my nerd friend’s watches and “Hey Siri”.
• 18 hours of battery life is good enough if that holds true. This is another one I’m looking forward to seeing real world experiences but Apple has given more detail than I expected and it’s promising.
• The 42mm Sport Watch plus the leather loop band will cost $550. The Stainless Steel version with the leather loop band is only $150 more. I didn’t expect them to be that close.
• Did you notice how there was no slide with the number $10,000 on it?
• Overall, Tim carried a lot more of the load in this presentation than he has in the past. He’s not Steve (who is?) but he also seems to have found his groove in front of an audience.
• Wow. I can hardly wait for April.

Tomorrow Apple is having their “Spring Forward” event to discuss further plans about the Apple Watch and, hopefully, a few other new and shiny things. There’s been a lot of speculation lately about pricing. I’m sure looking forward to that being over. How much they may charge for that gold watch is purely academic for me and probably 99% of everyone else reading this. Unless the stainless steel model is remarkably close to the aluminum model (which doesn’t make much sense), I will be purchasing an aluminum Apple Watch. I know myself well enough to know that when the tech gets better in a year or two, I’ll buy a new one.

All that being said, I sure am looking forward to getting one of these things. Lately I’ve found myself spending time at the Apple Watch website and re-watching the original videos when it was unveiled. I’ve also been wearing my Pebble watch again since last October and find that the ability to get notifications on my wrist with my phone in my pocket is really convenient. It will be even better with the Apple Watch that has much deeper ties into the operating system than Apple would ever permit Pebble.

While I am pretty stingy about which notifications I let through on my phone, those that do come through are absolutely essential. For example, I set notifications for nearly all of my appointments. If I don’t have my phone reminding me, there’s a good chance I will miss it. Because I often stack meetings together, this requires me to take my phone out of my pocket while I’m in a meeting when it inevitably goes off to tell me I have to get to the next meeting. Doing this by just glancing at my watch makes a lot more sense and is a lot less intrusive.

Likewise, I ultimately gave up on the iPhone 6 Plus earlier this year when I was in an elevator and got a message that I could not read because I couldn’t unlock my phone with just one hand without risking dropping it. That problem completely goes away with an Apple Watch.

Also, Apple Pay without taking the phone out of my pocket seems like a pretty good idea. While I wish more vendors supported Apple Pay, I find myself gravitating to those that do and use it several times a week.

There are a lot more good reasons to use an Apple Watch including the ability to track fitness, communicate easier, and (hopefully) turn on the lights in your house once HomeKit gets sorted out.

Because I’m an iNerd, there’s no way I can avoid buying one of these things. I will also be watching the event tomorrow and look forward to learning more. While Apple has been teasing the Apple Watch so far, I suspect after tomorrow’s announcement, the media blitz will really begin.

Today Apple had its financial call where Tim Cook and the gang explained they’d sold 74 million iPhones and earned $18B in profit during the last quarter, which by any generally accepted accounting principle just seems crazy. More interesting to me was this little nugget Tim dropped about the Apple Watch,  “Apple Watch will ship in April, right on schedule”. Okay, I’ll accepted that April is early 2015, but just barely. Either way, I think it is interesting that Tim would so casually share this information on an earnings call. I can’t remember Apple ever disclosing something like this on an earnings call before. It all sounded so casual but I find it hard to believe anything said on a financial call wasn’t planned and vetted first. If it truly was off the cuff, you go Tim.

Speaking of the Apple Watch, I’m getting pretty eager to learn more and get one. If you haven’t looked at the Apple site lately, you should go back and check our their Timekeeping page. They added that page a month or two ago and I really like the look of the watch faces (particularly the Utility face) and the little on screen widgets, called complications. While I originally crinkled my nose at that name, complications, upon further research, it appears that is indeed the name given to objects on a watch face. I’ll have much more to say about the watch as further details are disclosed but for now, I’m just looking forward learning more.

I remember in the months leading up to the debut of the iOS App Store where every app in development would merit its own news story. Looks like those days are back, for a little while at least.

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