5 years ago, I thought Apple Watch was very ‘meh.’ Here’s why I changed my mind

I was not always a fan of the Apple Watch. I bought one as soon as it went on sale in 2015, hoping it would blow my mind, but it spent more time in my drawer than on my wrist. It was three years and two important functions – LTE and the EKG app – before I finally wore them regularly. And now it has earned a permanent place on my wrist.

The ‘iWatch’ has arrived

I only treated the Apple Watch for CNET en Español months before its official existence. I ran a weekly Apple Rumor Show in the summer of 2014, and there was already talk of Apple announcing an “iWatch” in the fall.

After Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the iPhone 6 at the event on September 9, 2014, he announced one more thing: the Apple Watch. It was by no means the first of its kind – Samsung, Motorola, and Sony, to name a few, had already launched smartwatches at the time – but Apple didn’t always bother to have the first product. Still, it was a brand new category for Apple and the first of the post-Steve Jobs era (Jobs died almost three years earlier).

After the keynote, I had the opportunity to see them up close in the demo room. It was definitely fascinating – I remember thinking that it was one of the best looking watches I had seen. But the bar had been set quite low. Most of the previous smartwatches I tested were bulky and definitely more geared towards men than women. The fact that the Apple Watch had two size options (38mm and 42mm) meant that at least more than one gender was considered. But this first encounter was short – it took another eight months before I could test it in the real world.

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The Apple Watch: turning point

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Test the original Apple Watch

The aluminum model with the light green sports band that I pre-ordered arrived on April 24th on the day it went on sale. In retrospect, I probably should have opted for a muted tone, but I was thrilled with the variety of color options.

One of the things I liked from the start was the ability to review notifications from my wrist. I still like that. I don’t care how silly I look when I speak into my wrist, like Dick Tracy when I dictate an answer. There are also more ways to respond to notifications than before, including the scribble feature.

I liked having Apple Pay on my wrist. When I first used it on a jamba juice in town, the clerk looked at me as if I had just done a magic trick. At the time, however, there were only a handful of merchants that accepted Apple Pay, so you really had to look for them.

But my favorite feature, and the one that I use the most until today, was Find my iPhone. It’s right there with the time stamp. The ability to ping my phone has saved me countless hours of searching over the years.

But I also had a lot of complaints about this original Apple Watch. Apps were slow to load and had few functions compared to their iPhone counterparts. It took ages to load Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and most of the time I pulled out my phone instead of waiting for it to appear on the watch. In addition, insta stalking on a tiny screen was not as satisfactory. Now these apps don’t even exist anymore.

Fitness tracking was also missing. The watch didn’t have built-in GPS or altitude tracking, so I still had to walk on my phone to map my route, which nullified the purpose of a fitness watch. The only way to access your summary statistics on the summary screen was right after you finished your training. Once it’s gone, you’ll need to search the iPhone app to find your stats.

And I could hardly get through the day without having to charge the battery.

After wearing it for a week, I still couldn’t figure out why I needed an Apple Watch. Instead of posting a regular review video, I decided to let people answer this question myself by showing them what it was like to live with the Apple Watch. As soon as I finished filming the video and the buzz of the release subsided, I used my watch sporadically to test the occasional software update, but it ended up going straight back into the drawer.

The Apple Watch breaks free

Three years later with the addition of LTE on series 3my perception of the Apple Watch started to change. I saw the Apple Watch as separate from the iPhone. Adding my own cell signal freed the watch and freed me from having to keep carrying my phone around. Sure, the first time I left it behind, I had a big phone pull, but I felt like I didn’t have it to distract myself.

Finally I started turning off my phone when I got home from work to spend more time with my baby. I could still log his sleep schedule in the Glow app, answer a text, or check the headlines during these nightly feedings, but I wouldn’t spend endless hours scrolling through Instagram like a zombie at 3 a.m.

It also became my normal running buddy. Before trying the Series 3, I had used the Apple Watch as a fitness tracker, but I preferred to run alone for pleasure rather than to meet a quota for a tracker. I didn’t even listen to music on my runs. For security reasons, I only ran with my phone. But taking my cell phone with me was cumbersome, it would be in my sports bra or in the back pocket of my running pants if you had one at all. If I had LTE on my watch, I could finally leave my phone behind and still be connected. Finally, I started relying on it during training.

I had two babies within two years and suddenly I had no time or energy to do these long trail runs. I tried to maintain the same level of activity as in my previous life, and the ring system on the Apple Watch helped me stay honest about how much or how little I was doing. I became the person I made fun of and who is obsessed with closing her rings at the end of every day. Now I’ve even started using my fitness data to get back to my old walking pace. Six months after birth, I still have a long way to go, but I have better ways to track my progress in the Activity app. The watch now measures your cardio fitness (VO2 Max) and your running speed over a longer period of time.

From fitness tracker to health tool

The second Apple Watch features that change the game were those EKG app (or electrocardiogram, sometimes called an EKG) and heart rate notifications that started with Series 4. With the update to WatchOS 5, the Apple Watch (Series 1 or higher) was able to notify the wearer if their heart rate drops below or peaks above a certain threshold or if their heart rhythm indicates atrial fibrillation (a dangerous heart disease). Series 4 users can also send an electrocardiogram to their doctor using the EKG app.

And then things got real. I tested the EKG app together with a hospital EKG for a CNET story when the doctor noticed something strange about my heart rhythm that appeared on both the watch and his machine. It didn’t turn out to be anything serious – just stress and lack of sleep that made my heart beat faster, but it got me down. As a healthy, active 32-year-old, I didn’t think I had to worry about heart problems.

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We tested the Apple Watch EKG against a hospital ECG

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That Christmas I gave my two parents an Apple Watch. They live in El Salvador, so I can’t be physically there to check their health, but the Apple Watch has given me the ability to at least keep an eye on their heart health from a distance. The fall detection function that calls emergency services when you have a severe fall (Series 4 and 5) is also a nice safety blanket for aging parents.

What 5 years of Apple Watch look like

The Apple Watch can do a lot better: battery life is at the top of my list, a design update, other health features like sleep tracking and blood pressure. But I managed to prove myself in my book. Five years later, I finally understand what the Apple Watch is for, and it’s different for everyone. For me, to stay connected without the additional distractions and motivate me to stay healthy despite the challenges of being a new mother. Cheers to the next five years.