FTFY: I still think the Watch is the perfect symbol of post-Jobs Apple.
Its a solution looking for a problem - an expensive watch that you can't read in bright sunlight. IMHO a SmartWatch needs to do two things: (a) tell the time as well as a regular watch and (b) display the sender of incoming text/email so I can decide whether I need to take out my phone to read it. It also needs to survive at least one night of not being charged - or a 24 hour plane trip - otherwise its going to let you down just when you need it most. There seems to be a niche market amongst fitness enthusiasts, but who wants to do sport with a big, heavy lump of a Smartwatch when you could have something lighter and designed-for-purpose like a FitBit that only cost a fraction as much to replace when it ends up at the bottom of the sea or gets nicked from a changing room? Meanwhile, if you're serious about monitoring heart rate then you don't put the sensors on the back of your wrist...
Then there's the UI - its got a force-sensitive touch screen that can distinguish between touch, tap and hard-press (more dimensions of input than the original iPhone) and its got voice recognition, so why on earth does it need a physical button and a "digital crown"? A watch crown is horrible ergonomically and is barely acceptable on a standard quartz watch where you use it a few times a year to set the time. In any case, unless you use valuable screen space to say what the wheel is going to do in any situation, its going to be 'mystery meat' navigation (but then modern UI "design" seems to love mystery meat). One of the key design decisions of the iPhone was to focus entirely on touch-screen input and avoid the mess of buttons, keyboards, jog wheels, joypads & toothpick styli on contemporary phones. At most, the Watch should have had the touch screen and a home button (with the familiar iPad functionality). If it did need another dimension of input, then pretty much anything but a watch crown (the bezel on Samsung watches seems better). A braver decision would have been to say "hey, it sucks to use two hands to operate your watch so lets make Siri the default UI".
Then there's the target market. TLDNR: adopt a bit of enlightened self-interest, support Android and double (at least) the number of potential buyers. How hard can it be? Samsung are working on iPhone support for their Gear S2 watches. Remember, iPod didn't take off until it supported Windows - and then proceeded to sell a lot of Macs.
Meanwhile, watches have a dual role as jewellery and, however nicely the corners are rounded, a square lump with a normally-black display doesn't really cut it. Face it - "function-over-form" is not a selling point for fashion. Heck, if I was going to spend more than $200 on a watch I'd probably buy a mechanical skeleton watch because clockwork is cool and I wouldn't be buying it for functionality.
However, if you ignore all those issues and decide you are going to make the Watch anyway, there's nothing wrong with the $10,000 model, provided you understand that its an advert, not a product. If you're going to try to sell the Watch as a fashion item then you need something with an obscene notional price tag to give away to celebs (or even pay them to wear) to promote your product (no point giving a pop star a watch with a RRP less than her 2nd worst pair of shoes - which she didn't pay for either).
Anyway, even if I do decide to get a smartwatch it will either be a Pebble (daylight-readable, always-on display, acceptable battery life - but looks cheap) or I'd give the Samsung G2 a closer look (looks like a watch & if you are going to have physical controls the rotating bezel makes sense). The Apple Watch leaves me cold.
Also, if we're bashing Apple's recent attention to detail:
The Magic Mouse that you can't use while charging. Logitech worked out the rocket science of "put the charging port where the wire would go on a wired mouse" years ago.
The Apple Pencil: leave your pencil sticking out of the iPad like that to charge and it will get broken - maybe not today, but soon. Why doesn't it magnetically snap to the smart connector to store & charge? Or snap to the other edge and charge inductively? Either of those would let it charge alongside the iPad without needing a separate adapter and cable. Why is the M-to-F adapter a separate bit to lose and not built into the cap? Where's the Pencil loop on the Apple keyboard & cases?
