I don't expect to watch a movie on it, I just want it to look stylish and help me stay connected in a less douchey way. The fact that it may replace my Polar heart strap and watch when I'm working out (Hopefully it's more reliable than the Basis watch) is just icing on the cake.
I have a feeling there will be some interesting third party applications, off the top of my head it might be nice to know when my boss is nearby, perhaps based on strength of his phone's bluetooth signal.
I don't recall Apple pitching this as something you watch to play around with for a couple of hours at an airport with.
You're right, they didn't. But I'm hard pressed to figure out a great deal of apps for the watch other than what's pretty much going to be shipping with it. reddit mail notification? point to my car?
I dunno. It seems like there's a very limited ecosystem (read:business) to spending lots of effort making Apple Watch apps for exactly the reason you're stating.
At best I think Smartwatch apps will
just be secondary notification displays
for apps you're already buying and
putting on your phone.
But this is not the kind of story presented at the keynote. What they presented was intensive interaction with apps: dragging, panning, zooming, etc.
I think any usable watch app is going to have to be pretty simple and lightweight on the interactivity side.
The first thing I thought was, other than tic tac toe, what game could you possibly display on a display that small?
I also think, a watch like that is good first and foremost as a quick check on what going on regarding your phone in our pocket.
But for this usecase, I think the price point of this watch is a bit much. I would love to have my watch buzz when getting a new text on my phone. And with a quick glance I can see if it is important or not without having to take my phone out of my pocket. This would be neat. But I don't think I would spend 350 dollars for this convenience.
The modern smartphone is a huge compromise. It has to do everything but it has to fit in our pocket and run all day. It's basically a Swiss Army knife: sure, it does everything. But it doesn't do anything very well.
I think the trend toward larger phones is exactly why wearables will be big: If you can have the little and low-interaction things on your wrist, then that lets the phone change to be better for the tasks that remain for it. A bigger screen and a bigger battery are more appealing if the phone only comes out when you actually need a big screen, rather than just to check the time or to acknowledge a text.
But as a side effect, I think moving a bunch of watch-friendly things to a watch will let you make the phone bigger. That won't reduce total power usage, but it will increase power availability.
That said, Apple didn't compare Watch to the TV. They compared it to the original Mac.
Now, you're stuck in an airpot and bored. You keep your phone in your pocket and stare at your watch with a 38mm screen. Can you imagine spending an hour or two interacting with and consuming content on this thing?
These watches deliver the information density of WAP feature phones with interactive models that are not much different (scroll wheel), plus panning and zooming on a tiny screen.
The people projecting the launch of the 2007 era iPhone as an industry defining moment that's going to kick off whole new app business models I think are extrapolating without thinking about it.
These devices are primarily best suited for sensors, and for information radiation tasks: notifying you of information and allowing quick response or dismissal.
But a 300Mah "smart" device with a 38mm screen being something you're going to spend a lot of time downloading apps and using "on the device itself" (and not on the iPhone) I think is too far of an extrapolation.
Maybe I'm wrong and this will be claim chowder thrown in my face in a few years, but to me, the trend towards bigger screens on phones is a perfectly example of why these watches will always be limited.
Humans are visual creatures, and a device that has the screen size and interactivity of a virtual tamagotchi is a fashion accessory toy, not something we will build our whole life around like mobile phones and tablets.