An Apple Watch, being stroked by a disembodied hand.
I don’t have any use for an Apple Watch. I have my smartphone, my tablet, my Chromebook and my desktop; I already have far more technology than within my grasp than should be deemed necessary, with me being wired up to the internet at all times, only one click away from my emails, my Twitter and my Facebook account. If I’m walking down the street and suddenly a question pops into my head (e.g. “What was the name of Jude Law’s character in the 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence?”), I am always only a few seconds away from Googling it and immediately finding out the answer (Gigolo Joe).
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I would say that this is the same for many people in Western society, particularly those who would have enough money to fork out for an Apple Watch. I have a tablet that I don’t use because I have a Chromebook, a Chromebook that only gets used when I want to browse Netflix but my girlfriend’s already watching something on TV, and a Kindle that’s gathering dust as I still prefer to read printed books but I just wanted to buy one out of curiosity. I have no need for the majority of these things, save for my smartphone to stay in contact with the outside world and my desktop to, y’know, do my job, but I still own them. So when people scoff at the Apple Watch being “useless” and whilst predicting that it will crash and burn, I have to question whether or not the past decade or so of technology has completely flown over their heads.
The iPad Comparison
Prior to the 1st generation iPad’s release back in 2010, people predicted that it would finally see Apple make a misstep in the company’s post-iPod skyrocketing trajectory. While tablet sales in general are now dwindling, the iPad has been an overall success for Apple, and while a tablet can be easily forgotten in among your bundles of technology, something that’s permanently attached to your wrist will likely fail to suffer the same fate.
“It’ll never catch on,” they said.
This is how I believe the Apple Watch will prove to be a success for the company. It will only take a fraction of Apple’s brand loyalists to purchase the wearable in order to drive in big sales numbers, and then those people will essentially become walking billboards for the new device. The Apple Watch looks as sleek as you’d expect from an Apple product, with it certainly being better-looking than the grotesque Pebble, and more instantly eye-catching than the round-faced Moto 360 or LG G Watch R. Those latter smartwatches are too concerned with actually looking like a watch, whereas the Apple Watch, with its smoothed edges and brightly colored cloud of apps on its interface, does its own thing when it comes to aesthetics.
Peer Pressure
Apple thrives on peer pressure. People see someone else with an Apple-branded piece of tech and they then want one for themselves, with the Apple logo often treated as some sort of badge of honor, except instead of signifying an impressive achievement it instead highlights that you have the ability to throw piles of cash at technology you don’t really need.
Replace this iPhone 5 for an Apple Watch and everyone will want to be this man.
But there’s not a problem with simply wanting to have new technology without necessarily needing it, and it’s certainly not something that has proven to be a roadblock for Apple. When the Apple Watch is released there will be a slew of consumers waiting to lap it up – thus leading to posts surrounding the new tech on social media – and people fiddling around with it in public places.
The Apple Watch will be a success despite it not doing anything that your smartphone can’t already do.
All it takes is someone to start playing with it on their wrist while sitting on a busy train carriage, and there’s another ten or twenty people who are intrigued by the tech. You don’t get that kind of coverage with an iPad, and that managed to become a success despite it being “doomed to fail,” too.
I’m going to put all my chips on the table and say that the Apple Watch will be a success, despite it not really doing anything that your smartphone isn’t already capable of doing. People like new, shiny things, especially when those new, shiny things are manufactured by Apple, and when new buyers proudly sport them on their wrists following the wearable’s launch, a slew of people are going to want to jump right onto that bandwagon, just as they did with the iPod, iPhone, iMac, MacBook and iPad before it.
