So I have resolved to wait it out. Like most things we adorn ourselves with, you have to love the way this looks on you. After a few days, I began to get snippets of information from the digital world without having to look at the screen — or, if I had to look, I glanced for a few seconds rather than minutes. Committing to technology that’s a little slow to respond to you is dicey at best, especially when it’s supposed to step in for your phone. The tiny Retina display has a new form of pressure sensitivity Apple calls Force Touch, which responds not only to where you touch the screen, but how hard you press. The Apple Watch’s most ingenious feature is its “taptic engine,” which alerts you to different digital notifications by silently tapping out one of several distinct patterns on your wrist. Take the bands off and it’s a little miracle of technology and engineering and manufacturing, a dense package containing more sensors and processing power than anyone could have even dreamed a few decades ago. After using it, I had no question that the Apple Watch is the most advanced piece of wearable technology you can buy today. Apple has had some fun with this: Because every Apple Watch is perfectly in sync with the others, if you’re in a room full of Mickey Mouse faces, Mickey will tap his foot in perfect sync on every watch.  Apple tells me that upcoming software updates will address these performance issues, but for right now, they’re there, and they’re what I’ve been thinking about every morning as I get ready for work. This side button is extraordinarily confusing — it looks and feels so much like an iPhone sleep / wake button that I still hit it to turn the screen on and off, even though I know I’m doing the wrong thing. On the right side of the Watch you’ll find the Digital Crown scroll wheel and a dedicated button (the official name is just “side button”) that opens your favorites list with one tap and activates Apple Pay with two taps. On the back of the Watch, there’s a slight dome that holds the optical heart rate sensor and the inductive charging system. What hinders many of the experiences is that the watch must pull information from the phone, leaving you with a spinning wheel that indicates data loading, rather than a quick hit of info. In some ways, it can be more distracting than your iPhone, and checking it can feel more offensive to people around you than pulling out your phone. Wearing a smartwatch like the Apple Watch is a far deeper commitment than carrying a smartphone in your pocket; you are literally putting the technology on your body and allowing it to touch and measure you while you display it to the rest of the world. It’s a supercomputer on your wrist, but it’s also a bulbous, friendly little thing, far more round than I expected, recalling nothing quite so much as the first-generation iPhone.  What’s more, unlike previous breakthrough Apple products, the Watch’s software requires a learning curve that may deter some people.
– The reviews for the Apple Watch are in, and it's clear this is no flop. Reviewers generally agree that Apple has made the best smartwatch in existence, but they also think it will take a while before smartwatches in general become necessary gadgets. Still, it seems the Apple Watch is the first big step toward that day. Some samples: Learning curve: Compared to most Apple products, this one has a learning curve, writes Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times. But he came to love it after three days, and he concludes his review with a one-sentence summary that would fit nicely on the screen: "The first Apple Watch may not be for you—but someday soon, it will change your world." Don't spend a ton: The Verge gives it a solid 7 out of 10 in its review. It's easily "the most capable smartwatch available today," writes Nilay Patel. It's also incredibly ambitious, "hoping to do and change so much about how we interact with technology. But that ambition robs it of focus: it can do tiny bits of everything, instead of a few things extraordinarily well." It is, after all, a smartwatch, and it's "not clear that anyone’s yet figured out what smartwatches are actually for." If you want to take the plunge, stick with one of the lower-priced models and wait for improvements. (Prices start at $349 and go well north of $10,000.) Style points: Users will tailor it to their own needs, writes Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal, and she turned hers "into a stylish watch to keep me on schedule and a workout companion to keep me moving." Yeah, you can buy a cheaper fitness tracker for the same purpose, but it will probably end up in a drawer. "After over a week of living with Apple’s latest gadget on my wrist, I realized the company isn’t just selling some wrist-worn computer, it’s selling good looks and coolness, with some bonus computer features." And that's OK: it's an accessory you'll want to wear. Want vs. need: Apple did what Apple does so well: raised the bar "for a whole new class of devices," writes Joshua Topolsky at Bloomberg. Next step: Helping people figure out why they need to wear it. "The Apple Watch is cool, it’s beautiful, it’s powerful, and it’s easy to use. But it’s not essential. Not yet."