Jay Yarow at Business Insider pulled together a variety of reactions to some hands-on time with the Apple Watch. These are snap reactions, given without the opportunity to live with the technology, without the benefit of true immersion.

In a nutshell, the sense I get is one of confusion with the interface. Stephen Pulvirenti at Bloomberg:

Since the first Apple Watch announcement in September 2014, Apple has been touting the digital crown as a groundbreaking interface that will set the Apple Watch apart from its competition. So how is it in practice? On first use, the device felt a little confusing and clumsy. Sometimes it seemed to do one thing; at other times, just the opposite.

Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:

First things first: it is really confusing to have both the Digital Crown and the communications button next to each other on the side. As I tried to navigate the Watch interface, I found myself pressing one or both several times, without knowing which one would take me to the home screen, back out of an app, or launch a feature. Coming from the traditional iOS paradigm of a single home button that always takes you home, it’s a notable difference.

There are certainly some positive comments, but the tone is more hopeful for future improvements, rather than kudos for the existing Apple Watch.

John Gruber called the reactions worrisome. In reference to confusion stemming from restricted access to glances:

Worrisome. Compare this description of the “slide up from bottom of display” Glances to Control Center on iOS. Control Center is available and works the same way (again: slide up from bottom of display) everywhere: the lock screen, the home screen, and within any app.

To me, this gets right to the heart of the matter. To be successful, an interface must have rules that are intuitive and consistent. Sounds like there’s some work still left to do here. That said, this is, fortunately, a software problem. Software is fixable. Software can evolve over time.