Technology

Is The New Apple Watch A Gimmick Or Useful Technology?

It can be useful to have a smart watch as a lawyer -- you can use it to better manage your day.

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Yesterday, Apple revealed the details about its new watch. You might have read any one of the hundreds of articles about how ridiculously expensive they can be (price range from $349 to $17,000). Even though I think Apple products in general are over-hyped, I’m here to tell you that you should get one. As the proud owner of a Samsung smart watch for the last year and a half, I need to explain how useful it can be to have a smart watch and how you can use it to better manage your day.

Not All Wearable Technology is Created Equal

You might have some negative thoughts about wearable technology based on reports you’ve read about things like Google Glass. I own a pair of Google Glass and a smart watch. I can say without the slightest hesitation that Google Glass is the dumbest thing ever invented. I would describe all of the many problems with Google Glass, but I could not possibly do it better than the Daily Show (a video I found through the members-only forum for Glass users):

For it to make sense to use wearables, the benefit would have to outweigh the burden. With wearables, the burdens are:

1) price, and

2) possibly looking dumb (putting it lightly).

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The main benefits are:

1) providing us with the convenience of notifications without having to take our phone out of our pockets, and

2) allowing us to take pictures or view something without using any hands. Try taking a picture of yourself eating pho with chopsticks in one hand and a spoon in the other hand. Try reading CNN headlines while riding a bike. I bet you can’t.

By weighing the benefits and burdens, Google Glass clearly loses. Smart watches are far more practical than Google Glass because they are cheaper and not as gaudy. I’ve been called a Glasshole before, but never a watch-hole or anything of the sort because a smart watch is not that noticeable. So, do the benefits outweigh the burdens with a smart watch? It depends on what your expectations are…

Be Realistic About What You Will Use It For

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I’ve seen a lot of promo photos of people using apps on their Apple watches, such as drawing, maps, star gazing, eBay, ESPN, or a voice recorder. That’s just not right. Don’t buy this watch thinking you are going to ever use these apps. You have to be a special kind of hipster to actually use a drawing app on your watch. Much like the scientists at Jurassic Park, the scientists who made these apps are so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they don’t stop to think if they should. In technology, this is called feature creep. Chip Health, author of the fantastic book, Made to Stick (affiliate link), illustrates feature creep as follows:

“Feature creep is an innocent process. An engineer looking at a prototype of a remote control might think to herself, “Hey, there’s some extra real estate here on the face of the control. And there’s some extra capacity on the chip. Rather than let it go to waste, what if we give people the ability to toggle between the Julian and Gregorian calendars?”

Just because you can make plane reservations on your watch, does that mean you should? Keep in mind that the watch is not a substitute for your phone, it is an extension of it. It’s like having a dual monitor for your phone, but one of the monitors is really small and strapped to your wrist. If you have dual monitors on your desktop with a 21” monitor and a 6” monitor, you are not going to open programs on the 6” monitor, even if it is cute or fun. There will be very few circumstances where it will be more convenient to use the eBay app on your watch than using it on your phone. So, if you use your watch to do things that you can already do on your phone, the benefits will not outweigh the burden and you will be disappointed.

How I Have Been Using My Smart Watch To Be More Productive

When I was first contemplating getting the Samsung Galaxy Gear, I was pretty sure it would just be a gimmicky waste of money, but I eventually succumbed to my obsessive need to have gadgets and bought one. About two days later, I had no idea how I got along without it. Here’s what I use it for:

Notifications

I have a lot of meetings. I am in court a lot. I teach a lot. I drive a lot. I am in a lot of places where it would be rude or inappropriate to stop what I was doing and take my phone out to see who just e-mailed/called/texted me. With my watch, I just glance down at my watch to see a preview of the e-mail or who texted or who called me. In a lot of departments, I am not allowed to take my phone out even during the reading of jury instructions because it would be rude to the jury if I could check my phone then, but they couldn’t.

If I really wanted, I could answer the call on my watch and speak into my watch like I’m some kind of really bad spy, but there has only been one situation in one and a half years where it has been more convenient to answer the call on my watch as opposed to on my phone. I also like that the notifications come in as a vibration against my wrist. I don’t always hear or feel my phone on vibrate in my pocket, but I feel the vibration on my wrist every single time. I can also choose which apps send notifications to my watch.

I have my watch set to wake up when I turn my wrist to look at it. I also have it set so that if I have a text message or e-mail on my watch screen, if I grab my phone, it automatically opens that message on my phone so I can see the whole thing.

Calendar Items

I have my watch set to show my next calendar item on my home screen. I generally know what my day is like, but if I glance down at the time and I see that it’s 10:36 a.m. and I have an 11:00 a.m. meeting, I can manage my schedule a little better.

Locator

I can have my watch send a signal to my phone to make it ring so I can find it, and vice versa. If the two devices are separated by 30 feet, my watch gives me a notification. Twice this year, I have left the house and got out of the driveway when my watch vibrates telling me I left my phone at home.

Other Apps

It has a heart rate monitor, a pedometer, and a music player that I can use to always feel guilty about not exercising. I use the camera a lot to quickly snap things when I wouldn’t have time to take my phone out and open the camera app.

Is It Right For You?

I think that my smart watch is a crucial part of my productivity tool kit. It helps me stay organized and get crucial information in the gaps of my day when I can’t get that information by pulling out my phone. If you’ve got an extra $300 to $350, try it out, but not because you think you will be taking meeting minutes with it with a note-taking app.

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by e-mail at jeff@trial.technology.

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