Apple Watch Review Diary - The Controls


The Apple Watch is both familiar and different from iOS devices. The digital crown is interesting. I think I might wish to have some feedback in the turn, sort of like a mouse scroll wheel. So, maybe some ticks as it moves, or maybe not. it just kind of spins and I'm feeling like a little resistance would give the UX of it doing something. The crown can be pressed as sort of home button or spun to zoom or scroll. If you hold it down, it activates Siri. What's interesting is if you hold it down just enough to activate Siri, it will stay active and automatically shut down when it thinks your done talking, just like on iOS. But if you hold it down a bit longer, it works like a walky-talky. I dig that because sometimes I feel Siri isn't cutting off fast enough or too fast as my brain tries to formulate a Siri-friendly command.

The other physical button is a power button to turn it on and shut the watch down. If you press it once, it's a favorites/contacts button. If you press it twice, it activates Apple Pay.

You can also take a screenshot of your watch, just like iOS, by quickly pressing both the digital crown and side button. Screenshots are sent to your tethered iPhone's photo library.

Another button of sorts is the the force touch on the screen itself. To do force touch, you press down on the touch screen. This is a contextual command sort of like a mouse control-click/right button. Depending where you're at it will present different options. The trick here is there's no UI clues, which makes it a learned vs intuitive command.

The final control is the touch screen, which offers various click and swipes depending on the situation.