The Apple Watch and the battle of fashion and functionality

Fashion is tricky. Some looks emerge white hot but don’t look great in history’s rear view mirror, others stand the test of time.

The Apple Watch is a marriage of form and functionality and has to answer to two masters. It has to pass muster as fashion and has to pack a lot of functionality into a small form factor.

There’s no doubt that the Apple Watch is elegantly designed. The detail on the watch body and bands is flawless. Divorced from fashion, the Apple Watch is museum worthy.

Will people buy it? That is the billion dollar question. The Apple Watch is being judged in a way that no previous Apple product has been.

Fashion aside, there’s a lot of punch in that small package and, given that Apple is giving developers access to the innards via an Apple Watch SDK, that punch will continue to evolve over time. The only issue that might hinder adoption from a functional standpoint is the question of battery life.

Charging is done via induction and requires a special cable. If life between charges is long enough (say, at least 24 hours), that shouldn’t be an issue. No doubt, someone will create a brick capable of charging both your phone and watch about the size of existing iPhone/iPad charging bricks. Keep one in your backpack or your pocket and you’ll always have a charging solution.

As to fashion, it’s difficult to predict someone’s specific tastes, certainly impossible to create a single design that fits everyone’s ideal sense of fashion. But that’s not what the Apple Watch has to do.

Just as those little white headphones started appearing everywhere and, eventually, reached critical mass and became fashionable, the Apple Watch will face its own adoption critical mass. My take? At some point, enough people will be seen wearing their personalized Apple Watches that the Apple Watch will become iconic.