A Few Thoughts on Apple Watch Series 4
A device comes into its own…
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in…
A couple months ago, I was just about ready to walk away from the Apple Watch. Not so much by choice as by frustration. My Series 3 watch, not even a year old, decided to spontaneously combust one day. When I took it in for repair, Apple suggested that I had broken it somehow and wanted to charge me nearly the full price I originally paid to fix it. I would have been happy to pay to fix the device if I had broken it. But I had not. And so round and round we went. Just as I was ready to give up, I got it back, fixed. Just in time for the new one! Funny that.
Naturally, I ended up buying the new Series 4. Both because I’m a sucker but also because I had a new Series 3 sitting in a box, so I traded that one in and used the money for the latest model. Good choice. Actually, great choice.
While the first three versions of the Apple Watch have without question seen steady improvements, they’ve always been a bit ho-hum. I’ve worn once since the day it was released and again, have upgraded to each subsequent new one. They’ve always been nice; by far the best smartwatches on the market. But that’s saying basically nothing, given the market. With the Apple Watch, it has always seemed like you could see the potential with just a little more refinement. Given the pace of previous such refinements, I figured we were a couple years away from a truly great device. But I was wrong. This is the year.
The Apple Watch Series 4 is not just an improvement in every way over the Series 3, it’s a significant improvement in a number of ways. The biggest and most important way is the biggest and most important feature: the face — aka: the display. While the move from 42mm to 44mm (the larger model) may not sound like much, in reality, it’s a huge leap forward in usability.¹ I no longer feel the need to sand down my fingers — to borrow an old Steve Jobsism — to use the touch screen. It’s now finger-touchin’ good.
Granted, watchOS still needs some work in this regard. Namely, it’s time to acknowledge that the honeycomb app UI was a mistake. I have a feeling we’re about a year away from such a change, but at least the bigger screen gives you slightly larger tap targets for those apps.
And that’s important for a very important reason: unlike with the previous versions of Apple Watch, I actually find myself using some apps on this model. Yes, the thing is finally fast enough to make some apps viable. And again, the larger screen makes a big difference. That mixed with the fact that the initial round of crummy Apple Watch apps have largely fallen by the wayside, while many that remain finally understand how to actually leverage the device, means actually useful apps!
The following statement may be considered blasphemy. Typing it out now, I’m sort of cringing. But I need to say it: I actually enjoy checking email on this thing. Most people are aware that I hate email. But because I can check and triage most email on the Apple Watch now, it has actually helped my workflow quite a bit. Particularly in the morning — I don’t need to pull out my phone to see what urgent (read: not urgent) thing I’m (not) missing.
Did I mention the Series 4 is fast? Series 3 was pretty fast. Series 4 is fast in a way that you never think about it; things just work, fast.
By now, you’ve probably heard the pros and cons of the new complications. Namely, there are some great new ones displayed in different ways thanks to the larger screen. At the same time, Apple does seem to have gone a bit overboard with some of the new watch faces when it comes to information density. Still, I like the general direction in which they’re taking things. Subtle things like the temperature complication showing you not only the current temperature but the highs and lows of the day. It’s nice.
There is this weird dichotomy between the old and new watch faces and complications. The Series 4 can run all the old ones, but the older Watch models can’t run the new ones. At the same time, there are older-style complications that don’t work on the newer faces. It’s all a bit strange, in the same way that running iPhone apps on the iPad is still strange, years later. I’m guessing they’ll remedy many of these things in the next iteration of watchOS, but it’s a bit confusing for now when you’re trying to figure out what you can set and what you can’t.
Speaking of watchOS, beyond the aforementioned honeycomb situation, Apple continues to hone in on how the OS should be situated. In particular, I love the new recently used app carousel. Again, with the new, larger screen and faster speed, it’s seamless to jump between apps. The new Walkie Talkie app is also a fun idea to showcase exactly the type of app that should be built for the Apple Watch (even if it doesn’t work exactly flawlessly all the time — bugs will be ironed out).
My favorite bit of the new watchOS may be the ability to start (and stop) workouts after the fact. That is, instead of having to remember to start (or stop) said workout, the watch will recognize if you’re starting a long outdoor walk, for example, and will retroactively give you credit for said walk. It also can check if you’ve stopped, so you don’t have to worry about manually doing that. Again, it’s a little hit-or-miss in these early days, but that will get solved. This is clearly how this should work.
Back to the hardware, the new haptic feedback on the watch crown is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
Can we also get an extra “amen” for the fact that all the Apple Watch bands since the inception of the device work with this model despite the larger screen (the bigger version bands still work with the bigger version here and the same is true for the smaller versions).
In terms of nits, I’m now mildly paranoid that I’m going to hit this larger screen on something and break the device. But perhaps that’s related to my aforementioned fiasco with Apple around my Series 3. But there is a lot of surface area on this face! I also find myself noticing the battery life being slightly worse on the Series 4, but I’m 100% certain that’s because I’m actually using apps, and the device itself, quite a bit more, as mentioned.
So yeah, unlike with the iPhone XS Max, which is nice, but seemingly unnecessary for most people, I think this new Apple Watch is a substantial upgrade over all previous models, even last year’s Series 3. The screen upgrade alone is worth it, and everything else is just icing on the watch. Including the new gold color — which, at least in stainless steel, is really nice looking. Not tacky at all.²
I won’t even go into how much of a game-changer the Apple Watch is when you have a newborn baby to take care of. This is a must-have device for any new parent. Especially in an age where our phones are the size of surfboards.
¹ In fact, the display area on the new smaller (40mm) watch is larger than the display area on the older larger (42mm) watch — 759 sq mm vs 740 sq mm.
² Which is to say, not Trump-style.
