My "regular guy" impressions of using the Apple Watch for a few days

I was asked by friends to give my impressions of owning an Apple Watch. I guess it all comes down to:
Is the Apple watch worth about a dollar a day for the first year, and free thereafter? 
I guess that depends on how much value you put on being able to leave your phone on silent, remaining in your pocket most of the day.
Because of the Taptic notifications, which are distinct "taps" on the wrist by the Watch for different things, I no longer have to keep my phone volume on all day (iPhone vibrations weren't strong enough in my pocket to notify me reliably) leading to a much nicer all day experience. On top of that, when I do get a notification, I can quickly flick my wrist to see what it is instead of digging my phone out. Much nicer to quickly glance at the latest 20% off offer from "YouNeedThis!.com" and dismiss it than dig the phone out, unlock it, click on mail, ...grumble.
The ease of notifications alone makes it worth it to me. It is easy to quickly respond most of the time, too. I find myself using my phone WAY less, which is refreshing (and I am sure appreciated by those around me.)
And the chirps, pings, whistles that used to emanate from my pocket all day are gone. Ahhhhh.
A few other things I have found convenient:
Actually knowing the time, date, weather etc. easily.  Sure, I could have been wearing a wrist watch for some of that, but for the last few years I have used my Smartphone for these things. They are just so much simpler on the wrist.
Answering the phone easily when doing something.  I am not one to wear a Bluetooth headset around like a Borg, so being able to easily answer when my wife calls as I am fixing lunch for the kid is really convenient.
Having the next thing on my daily calendar right there visible when I look at the Watch. I use the Mickey Mouse watch face normally (hey, I have an 18 month old daughter who loves pushing and seeing Mickey "dancing") and right there on the bottom it tells me the next thing on the list. I don't know how other folks do things on their phones, but I always had trouble sifting through notifications on the phone seeing what was on the agenda for the day. Yeah I could go to the calendar several times during the day on the phone, but it wasn't convenient. It is simple on the Watch seeing what is coming up during the week. And I say "week" because the Watch only shows you what is coming up in the NEAR future. To me that makes sense. Again, it is all about quick information and what works best in a glance. On the Watch it makes sense to quickly see what is coming soon. On the phone it makes sense to meander over months and make full edits in a more convenient manner.
Setting quick timers, reminders or alarms is a breeze using Siri on the Watch.  So much more convenient than digging out the phone.
Getting a quick overview on the Watch on how active I have been (or not been) has already spurred me to get up and move more often. Yes there are other devices that help with this (I had a Fitbit previously) but having it all self contained within the Watch is nice and (here I go again) convenient.
A few things that are not perfect on the watch:
The speaker is pretty quiet when trying to have a hands free "Dick Tracy" conversation. Any kind of louder noise in the room and you will have trouble.
Apple is synonymous with consistency. Their entire platform is built on making a consistent experience for everyone that just works.  On the Watch, however, there are some inconsistent uses of actions to do certain things. For example, sometimes when I get a notification and I want to dismiss it off the watch I can "Force press" which brings up a "Clear All" button to tap. Other times I have to scroll to the bottom of the notification to "dismiss." I like the "Force press" thing... let's make it happen consistently.
Most apps now are really pretty useless on the watch.  For one thing, the screen times out too quickly for them. For another, anything in which one needs more than a glance to get the information is MUCH easier to do on the phone. Of all the apps in the Watch App store, the only things I have downloaded and find I actually use are a quick note dictation app, a "what is nearby me" type app, and a sports scores app. That being said, I am perfectly OK with that because that is really not what the Watch is for in my opinion. We aren't SUPPOSED to be doing things on the Watch that are more easily done on the phone. Things that are designed to be quick (check time, check weather, check who just sent a message) are great on the Watch. Things like searching for the best item on Amazon are just ridiculously silly on the Watch (really, Amazon?)
Conspicuously missing from the core apps on the Watch is Apple's "Notes" app. A perfect use for the Watch is to quickly take a note of something you need to remember later. I was forced to download a 3rd party app, Evernote, for this. The Evernote app works well, but I am very surprised that this was missed by Apple as a perfect example of what would be helpful to use the Watch to do.
There is no way to set the "screen on" time to a custom time period. Six seconds or so is default and unchangeable. This makes the Watch worthless for anyone in a health profession. Nurses and EMTs still take pulses using their watch to time the heart rate. Often, with irregular heart rates, a full 60 seconds must be observed. One just can't do this with the Watch. This is quite surprising as the Watch has actually been marketed to health workers with apps even designed solely to assist health workers in their daily planning. Apple clearly wanted to be able to control battery life with such a quick screen off "feature" but allowing us to decide for ourselves the tradeoff of battery life vs. usability would be a much better choice.
There are ways to make Tweets, Facebook status updates and the like on the Watch, but it really doesn't make sense to try to do it "all" socially on the Watch.  It is so much easier on the phone to actually interact socially, that it really only makes sense to do so on the Watch in more of a "one off" way. When you just have to share something quickly, but don't really have time for give and take.
Finally, some things work a bit slow or wonky right now. I expect this to improve greatly over time with future versions of the software. Stuff like this ALWAYS gets better.
So for me, the Watch is working as I expect it should. There are certainly improvements that Apple can and will be able to make, but it is saving me time, adding ease of use to many actions I do every day, and is kind of fun to use. I am enjoying it because I am not expecting it to do things for which ANY wearable would not be well suited. The things it is best for, it does pretty well.
That is worth a dollar a day... to me at least.

To put the iPod into forced disk mode, this is what you should be doing.
Press and hold the Menu and Select buttons for at least 6 seconds until the Apple logo appears.
When the Apple logo appears, release the Menu and Select buttons and immediately press and hold the Select and the Play/Pause buttons until the Disk Mode screen appears.
Have you also seen this?
iPod shows only an Apple logo and doesn't start up.

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