LONDON — Apple came crashing into the smartwatch market in 2015 with its unambiguously named “Watch.”
Designed by Jony Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of design at the time, and the industrial designer Marc Newson, it received mixed reviews. Techies loved it, as did younger buyers, many of whom were introduced to the whole idea of wristwatches by it. But watch critics largely wrote it off, saying it was not a watch, but a computer.
The Series 5 landed this fall. Has Apple finally cracked it, or is the latest just more of the same?
Here, two watch critics exchange their views. Robin Swithinbank has been writing about watches for The Times’s international edition for the past four years. Timothy Barber is a freelance watch journalist, contributing to newspapers and magazines in Britain and other countries.
The conversation has been edited and condensed.
ROBIN SWITHINBANK: You and I have discussed Apple Watch a lot over the years, and, if I may, while you’ve resisted its empty stare and broad un-watchiness, I’ve fallen in with the cult.
I’ll admit Series 1 to 4 had major drawbacks, notably that they did a horrible job of being a watch, but as always with Apple, they energized the category. Now, with the always-on functionality, I’m prostrate at the altar. All hail Series 5.
TIMOTHY BARBER: Well, yes, at least it doesn’t blink anymore. With the first Apple Watch, once I’d got past marveling at its exotic, cornerless beauty — so sleek! so Marc Newson! — and at the sheer ingenuity involved, it was the incessant, slow-footed blinking on and off that accompanied my wrist movements that I found infuriating.
R.S.: Perfectly put. The launch $10,000 Edition was also a massive misstep, and woefully mistimed given the seismic consumer shift towards responsible consumption and sustainability. Maybe they got unlucky there, but surely all those consultancy fees should have bought the sense that nothing could be right about a watch of that value that would be outmoded in a year?
T.B.: Absolutely, but there was more to it than that for me, and I’ll admit it comes down to proud and finely considered snobbery.
The beautiful Newson-designed objet has, in its ubiquity, become plain and neutered. It’s not that it’s bad taste, it’s just no taste — unlike a traditional watch, it expresses nothing of its wearer, other than that the wearer has nothing to express. There’s something about allowing it onto your wrist, in place of a “real” watch, that is at the very least a failure of ambition.
The watchmaking great Dr. George Daniels said that a watch should be “historical, technical, intellectual, aesthetic, amusing and useful.” I’m not saying the Apple Watch should be judged on such enlightened terms, but I’d still rather plump for something that can be.
R.S.: If you’re going to trouble yourself with intellectualizing your wristwatch, consider this then: Apple’s rapidly advancing health apps, irritating though their incessant notifications may be, are changing the way we behave.
Maybe entering my 40s is the root here, but suddenly I’m a little more receptive to being told to end a period of sustained inertia. Every decade older, more and more consumers are looking at Apple Watch and saying, “That could save my life” — or at least add years to it. There are examples of Apple’s fall detection technology doing that in real time. Swiss watch execs from brands in the below-$1,500 price bracket are terrified of it for this reason: Do I want a preppy Tissot, or a guardian angel?
And the stats don’t lie. Analysts have said this year Apple will sell more units than the entire Swiss watch industry. From zero to 100. IN. FOUR. YEARS.
T.B.: I’m not arguing with that. The health and activity apps are undoubtedly the area where the watch comes into its own compared to anything traditional, but it’s also where it ceases to be a watch at all. If I only needed it for the gym, there’s no shortage of cheaper devices.
As with everything Apple does, the health apps are wonderfully designed and insidiously guilt-inducing, and the ability to carry out an ad hoc ECG trace is both remarkable and utterly terrifying.
R.S.: O.K., so I’ve no rebuttal to the vagaries of whether it’s a watch or not, because for me that’s a nonissue. My Apple Watch and my mechanicals are only exclusive products in the sense I don’t wear them at the same time, although we’ve all seen it done.
A mechanical watch is a superior style statement, no question. But really that’s just sartorial semantics. Strip it back, and like any watch the Apple Watch is a tool — and an exceptional one at that. I miss its functionality when I switch. Whether it’s a credit card, a kitchen timer, a remote control for a podcast I’m listening to or simply a smartphone vortex bypass, it’s always offering me something. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that because it’s not a content-first device, it’s a conduit for a smartphone detox. Who doesn’t need that?
T.B.: Oh, it certainly has its uses, and these can be seductive. Being able to operate whatever I’m listening to via my watch, and to make calls on the move without touching my phone, have been truly refreshing for me.
But much of the Apple Watch’s bolt-on functionality seems like pure froth. Ultimately, it’s made me miss the distinctiveness of my “proper” watches more than it’s made me rely on its usefulness. The choice I make each day over which watch to wear can hardly be replaced by the choice of which Apple strap to put on, even though I might yearn to put the ever-growing strap range on traditional watches.
R.S.: Interesting you mention straps. Four years ago, you wouldn’t have found a top-level luxury Swiss watch brand anywhere near a quick-change strap system (think of the after-sales hit!), and yet Vacheron Constantin and Cartier have now delivered their own solutions.
The grandes dames of watchmaking have a point in saying Apple Watch is no threat to their business — no one buys an Apple Watch instead of a $50,000 grande complication — but they saw what Apple had done and realized they needed to up their game.
Whether it’s stealing market share, or feeding it ideas, Apple has shaken the luxury watch industry out of a slumber at every level. Kool-Aid or no, I’m in awe of that.
T.B.: I think you’re over-crediting Apple for the Swiss upping their strap game — it was happening anyway.
Either way, I just feel bullied by the Apple Watch. Its ultimate, unquestionable aim is to make me its dependant — it claims to aid my autonomy, but I think it just wants to defeat it. It shudders and winks when I’m not paying it enough attention, guilting me, challenging me and asking me to set endless goals, like a boorish life coach I didn’t ask for. It even has an app, supposedly to help me relax, that tells me how and when to breathe, with a soft, cloudy blob that grows and fades on the screen to breathe along to.
Handing my timekeeping and my diary over to a computer is one thing; asking it to breathe for me is quite another. I do so much more easily, as it turns out, when I take the thing off.
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