Hasta La Ideas

I want an Apple Watch for four main reasons: Because of the nature of my work, the fact that I own two dogs, the fact that I live in a noisy city and because I hate Bluetooth earpieces. Now I realize that there’s no way Jony Ive and Apple’s design group has a profile fitting that description in their design briefs, there is no picture of me on their corkboard with a red circle around my face…

…but what they excel at is figuring out universal needs and designing solutions to those. Which is why it feels like the Apple Watch was designed precisely for me and for what I need to do on a daily basis.

I’ll start with the two dogs. They require a lot of exercise, which I’m happy to give them to counterbalance the effect of IPAs on my waistline, and I am outside with them a lot—up to two hours per day, every day, rain or shine. This is possible because my work enables me to set my own schedule and work from home.

Which brings me to the nature of that work. In addition to my Core77 duties, I run a rental photography studio in a highly competitive market, and if I miss a single phone call or text message, which may come in at any hour, there are hundreds or potentially thousands of dollars at stake for each message I miss. Clients want answers right away, and if you don’t pick up, they go down their list and contact the next studio.

Which raises the problem of me living in a noisy city. When outside with the dogs, my phone lives in a pants pocket. Thus if I’m walking or running I cannot always feel the vibration of an incoming message, nor hear the ring over jackhammers and bypassing ambulances. I’ve lost a three-day booking before because I couldn’t hear the phone and called back five minutes too late.

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