Between checking our car’s emissions and renewing my license, I’ve spent some time in Illinois government facilities over the past two weeks. One thing I noticed was Apple Watches on a good number of employee wrists. Both people I worked with owned one, and both happened to be middle-aged women. Once we got chatty, I asked them how they like and use their Watches.
Here is a roundup of the anecdotes they shared:
- They both really like their Apple Watches
- Both stated early on, almost apologetically, that they were “not very technical,” and “I don’t know everything this does. I just know what I like.” Somehow we’ve made too many non-tech folks feel bad for not having PhDs in their gadgets
- They both text fairly often
- They make more phone calls than they expected to
- They like the nudges to get more active
- One had RunKeeper installed but she didn’t mention it
- One said she likes to look at her pictures, and made a point to add an album of just the ones she wants
- They both use some notifications to stay in touch with things but “definitely turned off a lot of them”
- Both hope to get 4G model so they can leave their phones home sometimes. “I can do everything I want most days without it, so that would be nice”
- On that point, one said “my girlfriend’s Watch has the red dot so you know it’s the nicer one”
- Neither of them seemed worried about the extra fee required to use 4G on their watch. One said “oh it will be totally worth it”
I don’t have a grand thesis. But maybe this can help inform some of our thinking around the Watch’s surprising popularity and the appeal of the 4G version, especially when it comes to semi-untethering the Watch from the iPhone.