Ironically, Gruber's review is perhaps one of the more critical one that I've read so far of the Apple watch. My takeaway was that he didn't think, as a life-time watch wearer, that it wasn't as good a time piece as any of his watches, that the battery life didn't meet almost any watch in existence, that the delay in looking at the watch was annoying. Gruber care's about design, quality, and fit/finish, and from that perspective, the Apple watch is significantly more advanced than watches like the Pebble, and so he spent a bit of time talking about it.
Here's the thing - John Gruber is a partisan (to quote Siracusa), but so is his audience - so it's entirely reasonable that he would offer a partisan's analysis of the Apple Watch.
Even so - I thought he was more critical of the watch than most other Apple products - and perhaps it's because he does wear a watch, and was trying to decide whether he was interested in wearing an Apple watch instead.
His conclusion seemed to be that it wasn't clear he would.
Put another way, of the four reviews that I've read so far (NYT, Recode, The Verge) - Gruber's was the first one that made me think that buying a version 1 Apple Watch wasn't such a great idea - simply because it was a partisans review that was clearly calling out disclaimers.
Here's the thing - John Gruber is a partisan (to quote Siracusa), but so is his audience - so it's entirely reasonable that he would offer a partisan's analysis of the Apple Watch.
Even so - I thought he was more critical of the watch than most other Apple products - and perhaps it's because he does wear a watch, and was trying to decide whether he was interested in wearing an Apple watch instead.
His conclusion seemed to be that it wasn't clear he would.
Put another way, of the four reviews that I've read so far (NYT, Recode, The Verge) - Gruber's was the first one that made me think that buying a version 1 Apple Watch wasn't such a great idea - simply because it was a partisans review that was clearly calling out disclaimers.