Unbearable wearables

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about technology journalists. Frankly, it’s something I probably shouldn’t tell you. Are you ready? 

We’re technology journalists.

Wow, it’s as if a great weight has been lifted off my chest. What’s that? It doesn’t seem like much of a revelation? Allow me to explain. 

Technology journalists are not like most people. We write a lot. A real lot. And we’re keen on technology. Like, very keen. And we’re always on the lookout for something new. When there’s new technology for us to write about, we’re frankly not entirely responsible for our actions.

Therein lies the problem. 

Most people who buy technology are not technology journalists, yet they are expected to make purchasing decisions based on the ramblings of people who are. Which makes no sense.

Case in point: the MacBook Air. Early reviews focused heavily on what it could not do and criticised it for being no kind of desktop replacement, as if it were ever intended to be a desktop replacement. 

It wasn’t a product designed for technology journalists to use, therefore, we didn’t like it. The subsequent success of the MacBook Air and the Ultrabook product category demonstrate how wrong we were.

At the other end of the scale: wearables. How many articles have you read proclaiming the glorious future of Google Glass? Now, how many actual real-world people do you know who have expressed any desire to own Google Glass? 

That reality is starting to bite, with developers who were previously committed to Google Glass moving away to other projects and even Google talking about it less. The likelihood of it becoming a mainstream consumer product any time soon is close to nil, despite what tech journos might want to believe.

[Related: Google Glass future uncertain as some believers lose faith]

Same with smartwatches. I know quite a few people with smartwatches. Every last one of them is a technology journalist or working for a company that sells smartwatches. The civilians I know have smartphones and stopped wearing watches years ago. Of the people I know who own smartwatches, precious few wear them.

The devices are, quite simply, not very good. 

I have my doubts  about the forthcoming Apple Watch. It may turn out to be the best product in its category, but if the category is expensive sources of buyers’ regret, is that a good thing?

Do people want a watch they have to recharge every night? Do people want to make phone calls via their wrists, Dick Tracy-style? Do people want a watch that periodically needs software updates? Do people want to spend fairly big money on a watch, only to see it superseded by a better, faster one a year later? How often do people replace watches anyway?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m not “people”, remember – I’m a technology journalist. I suspect, though, that the answers are "no", "no", "no", "no", and "not as frequently as Apple will want them to".

Nothing I have seen in the various videos of the Apple Watch leads me to believe it will have much appeal outside the tech geek crowd – basically, the same people who have bought every smartwatch so far and either left it in a drawer or put it on eBay once the novelty wore off.

My prediction is that it will sell like hotcakes on its release and that sales will taper off pretty quickly. 

Subsequent releases will be less impressive, sales-wise. I’m loath to predict numbers, but I’m guessing they’ll be in the millions or maybe tens of millions – great by smartwatch standards, but ultimately unimpressive by the standards of iOS devices.

But still more than Google Glass.

Matthew JC Powell is a technology commentator, philosopher and father of two, in no particular order