Wearable tech is in its infancy right now, but I think the idea is to bring digital reality of the screen and into your life. The watch doesn't really do too much to accomplish this, but it's more about normalizing a higher level of immersion. VR and augmented reality glasses are the next step, once people are used having a higher level of interaction with computers. (The watches won't be replaced, they'll remain part of the ecosystem.) Smartphones were the first real step in this direction. As insignificant as it seems, having to pull them out of your pocket is a pretty big barrier to total technological immersion. Those five seconds are enough time for some of your sort term memory to flush, and to make more trivial tasks less worth the effort. you might check the weather in the morning on your phone, or you might not. But if it's there on your wrist so readily accessible, you wouldn't be able to not check it.
This is a very good point and one which I forgot to make. I agree with you - they're trying to immerse you in data. My problem with this, and something I could have phrased better: is that immersion beneficial to us? I've made my own decision long since - "no, it's not." But I check Facebook once every other day or so, Twitter maybe once a month and the stock market maybe twice a year. I have the majority of my notifications turned off and often miss calls by leaving my phone several rooms away. I'm willing to acknowledge that many people prefer a greater level of immersion than myself, but am skeptical that enough people would use the level of immersion possible from an iWatch to bother developing the market. But I wouldn't have made this post if I weren't interested in being convinced. I'm looking for insight. I'm not the market for wearables. But I'm also not sure who is. But I'm also fairly certain that just because I don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Does that make sense?
I think the people who replaced their watches with their phones are fogeys like me. I was a late adopter of cell phones and I've had one for 12 years now. Extrapolate that to 18-25 year olds and you're talking about kids that pretty much got cell phones as soon as their parents would let them have them - they've never really been "watch" people. If they're looking at fogeys like me, they're dealing with people who have already lost their Fitbit, already let their Twitter feed die, and have already Friended their entire high school class on Facebook and whose wives are gonna get sick of having crudely-scrawled hearts "messaged" to them about half an hour into the adventure. Ergo, fogeys like me aren't their market. Or if they are, they've misjudged it worse than the two-key mouse.
This saddens me because watches have more aesthetic viability than phones ever will, tbh. That's 1/2 the reason I have that pocketwatch - it's cool looking, in a way that I don't think phones are. All those little parts moving together. And you can see them all! And it could last multiple generations, if I take good care of it. Can't say the same for the phone market. they've never really been "watch" people.
My wife tried to buy me a pocketwatch. She bought her first husband one. I appreciate them as fetish objects but they lack the utility I need in my life. That's something about the iWatch- I need to be able to tell time, with polarized sunglasses on, in broad daylight. "Hands" have an advantage there.