Apple Watch and supposed skepticism

Brian X. Chen and Vindu Goel, writing for the New York Times:

In the months surrounding the much-ballyhooed release of the Apple Watch, Apple managers courted Facebook in the hopes that the social networking giant would make a software application for the new gadget.

Facebook was not persuaded. Three months after the watch’s release, there is no Facebook app tailored for it. Adam Mosseri, who oversees Facebook’s news feed, said the social network had been studying the Apple Watch but had not figured out how to deliver a good Facebook experience — including the news feed’s stream of posts, photos and videos — on such a small screen.

Apple managers courted Facebook? How about a link, or even the most anecdotal proof behind that statement? It reads like a bit of an expose, but without the proof.

OK, moving on.

The lack of support from Facebook — and from other popular app makers like Snapchat and Google, which also do not have apps for Apple Watch — underscores the skepticism that remains in the technology community about the wearable device.

Skepticism? I don’t see it as skepticism at all. I see it as the tech community trying to get their head around what can and can’t be done on the Apple Watch. If anything, I see it as waiting for higher adoption rates and for watchOS 2 to hit the mainstream.

I believe the potential for Apple Watch is huge. Apple is very slowly tweaking the model to make sure the user experience is controllable and positive. As an example, consider the customization of watch faces.

watchOS 2 opened the customization gates a tiny bit, allowing third party developers to build custom complications (a complication is a little add-on to the watch face, like those that show day, date, next calendar event, or even phases of the moon) that will, potentially, appear on each of Apple’s existing watch faces.

The addition of complications is just a single step in the evolution of the Apple Watch experience. But Apple has to step carefully here. The Apple Watch screen is small, and the communication between the watch and the iPhone is slow enough to make controlling the back and forth critical. As Apple learns from these early experiences, R&D spending will find ways to improve the tech, and the Apple Watch will continue to evolve.

And at every step along the evolutionary path, more and more developers will find the right moment for their app to make the leap.