Not On My Wrist

01 February 2013

MG Siegler gets excited about the prospect of digital, Internet-connected smart wristwatch personal assistants: > I want a Dick Tracy watch that can do all kinds of things beyond just making calls. Call/SMS notifications are a great first step.

Lining up watches as the next disruptive technology—much like the iPhone spawning the smartphone revolution—is tempting, but there are a few notable differences.

The big difference between pre-2007 cell phones and today’s wrist watches is that there are already wristwatches I want to use today.

My wristwatch is a result of the cumulative experience of an industry with hundreds of years of technology-advancement and craftsmanship under its belt, culminating in a seemingly living, breathing mechanical work of art that I get to wear on my wrist everyday.

My watch has precisely three functions: it shows the current time, the current day of the month and it has a mechanical alarm (seriously, mechanical). Its user-facing functionally is incredibly simple.

I love this watch.

In 2007, before the iPhone was announced, I owned a little Samsung slide phone. I don’t recall the model number. It was ugly, awkward to use and I hated almost every interaction with it. Before the Samsung I had owned some iconic Nokia phones, including the 5110, 7110 and 6110. All the Nokia phones I owned were good at their job: Functional cell phones. I loved none of them, but they were adequate. The iPhone changed that. It was the first cellular device that I felt genuine affection for. It was a beautiful, tactile little Internet-connected computer.

I loved that phone.

The iPhone was, at least, 100 times better than any other personal communication device I had ever owned. Moreover the iPhone was beautifully designed. It was an object of art. I felt the same kind of affection for the iPhone as I do for my watch.

Before the iPhone, cell phones were either terrible or adequate. Wristwatches don’t have that problem.

The wristwatch as a category for disruption seems like a much tougher proposition than cell phones. The watchmaking industry has a long, distinguished history of creating beautiful, functional items. Making a watch that’s 100 times better than the best in the market today will be an incredibly tough challenge.

But maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong angle. Am I acting like the people who continue to buy Blackberry phones because they absolutely must have a physical keyboard? Will the benefits of a tiny, wearable always-connected computer assistant trump the nostalgic beauty of a mechanical Swiss watch? For most people, I bet they will.

The market for watches with complicated, automatic movements will become even smaller and more niche, like vinyl record players, relegated to the realms of the enthusiast. In some ways I suppose this has been happening to high-quality watches since the advent of Quartz movements. Technology moves the purists along, if grudgingly.

I think I see where MG is coming from. He’s thinking about the customer experience first and working backwards to the technology. I do see the benefit of more portable, powerful, wearable, connected computing power. But not on my wrist.