Don’t buy the Apple Watch version 1.0 (2024)

We've all had about a week to think about the Apple Watch, which is all we can really do with it between now and when it launches in early 2015. There have been plenty of strident pieces written about it since the announcement, and as usual it's pretty easy to find one that reinforces whatever opinion it is that you already have. It's terrible! It's perfect! It's totally irrelevant!

We're not going to be so quick to judge the Apple Watch as a product category, at least not based on our blink-and-you'll-miss-it hands-on session. That said, you probably shouldn't buy the first one. The Apple Watch has promise, and it will have even more once actual people (and developers) can sink their teeth into it. But remember, this is a 1.0 product, and nearly all tech companies have a less than perfect track record when it comes tobrand new releases. A quick look into Apple's past is no different, revealingthat you rarely want to own the very first generation, version 1.0 iterations of the company's products. Apple's first tries are rarely bad, but they're almost never the company's best work.

The iPad

The initial reaction to the first iPad's announcement in 2010 was not entirely dissimilar to the reaction to the Apple Watch. Some swore it would succeed, some called it an oversized iPod Touch. But although iPads in general redefined the tablet category and remain Apple's second-largest revenue source (recent sales stagnation notwithstanding), the first-generation iPad was not the one you wanted to buy.

That tablet certainly was an excellent proof-of-concept for the form factor, and it was a decent launching point for users and developers, but it had some problems that cut it off at the knees. Its original case-turned-stand was rather large and bulky, adding size to a tablet that was already fairly large by today's standards. Its Apple A4 and 256MB of RAM ended up being a big performance bottleneck—complaints of slow performance in iOS 5 were common, and Apple stopped updating it when iOS 6 was released in 2012, barely two-and-a-half years after release.

Compare that to the iPad 2, released just one year later. It included a much faster Apple A5 SoC with 512MB of RAM, a chip that's still shipping in multiple lower-end iDevices. It used a slimmer chassis that lasted through two subsequent revisions and is still being sold today in the form of the $399 iPad 4. Its Smart Covers were a more streamlined, flexible version of the stand-turned-case, and iPads today continue to use them. And, finally, it's going to get an iOS 8 update later this week—assuming Apple drops support for the tablet in a hypothetical iOS 9 update in 2015, that means over four years of updates for people who bought it when it was new.

The iPad Mini drives this point home, too. The first was essentially a shrunken-down iPad 2. It wasn't a bad tablet, but in retrospect it feels like a bit of a stopgap. That's mostly because the Retina iPad Mini, released just one year later, quadrupled both the number of pixels in the display and the tablet's speed without drastically increasing its size or weight.

The MacBook Air

Everyone is all about ultra-slim Ultrabooks now, but back when the MacBook Air was first introduced in 2008 it was novel for a laptop to fit into a manila envelope.

Unfortunately, "fit into a manila envelope" was the only thing that first version of the computer really did well. Today, ultra-low-voltage CPUs and svelte, speedy SSDs are commonplace. Back then, you'd have to get by with a regular laptop processor and a tiny, slow, 4200RPM hard drive or a slow, expensive SSD that had little in common with today's fast, reliable models.

The processor throttled aggressively because of heat issues. The hinge in the original models was so prone to breakage that Apple launched a replacement program for out-of-warranty devices. And to add insult to injury, the thing started at $1,799 despite being outperformed by MacBooks and MacBook Pros that cost less money.

Fast forward to the lineup's first (and to date, only) major physical redesign in 2010—the name was the same, but these new MacBook Airs were effectively a reboot for the entire lineup. A more sturdy aluminum unibody chassis contained a processor much less prone to overheating issues, one that could outperform the original Air despite a lower clock speed. Solid-state storage had worked out most of its early teething issues, and it came standard with all the computers. An ultra-portable 11.6-inch model joined the 13-inch model. And most importantly, the prices were slashed to $999 and $1,299, effectively positioning the computers as Apple's mass-market laptops rather than pricey curiosities.

The iPod

In retrospect the iPod (released November 2001) was the first step down the road to Apple's multi-billion-dollar iPhone business, but, in its first few years, it was a much more modest success for the company. Early versions were Mac exclusives, which back in those PowerPC days limited their reach to just the Apple faithful. When official Windows compatibility rolled around in July of 2002, it was initially hampered by the hardware's FireWire requirement, since the port wasn't widely used outside of Apple hardware. And the price of these early models was pretty high—the first cost $399 for a now-paltry 5GB of storage.

It was only in the third-generation product, launched in May of 2003, that these problems were kicked to the curb. Apple switched to its 30-pin dock connector and released USB cables in June of that year. It released its first Windows version of iTunes in October of that year. Once all those pieces were in place, the launches of the cheaper, smaller iPod Mini and iPod Nano and the budget iPod Shuffle helped drive the product to the mass-market success it became known for.

Practice makes perfect

These aren't the only examples of Apple products that didn't live up to their full potential on the first try—the first iPhone lacked 3G connectivity and the App Store that it would later pick up, and without carrier subsidies it was pretty pricey. These early Retina MacBook Pros have been reasonably good, but they aren't entirely without performance problems or panel-related screen burn-in issues. The first Intel Macs used 32-bit processors that kept them from getting more than a couple OS X updates. Early iMacs introduced the world to the oft-maligned "hockey puck" mouse. The list goes on.

The point is, Apple usuallygets a few important core ideas right in its first-generation products, but other areas of the execution are often lacking in ways that aren't fixed until the hardware has been revised a couple of times. You can pick out some of those things in this first Apple Watch even based on the limited amount we know about it—it gets points for being customizable, and its fitness tracking capabilities are very promising, but it's a little chunky looking, and battery life probably isn't going to be where people want it to be.

When we say "don't buy the Apple Watch," it's not a prediction of doom for the product line. We're sure there will be plenty of users and developers excited to jump on the train as soon as they can, just because Apple commands a devoted group of fans who are willing to give most of its stuff a try. What we mean is that you shouldn't buy this first Apple Watch, not right when it comes out. Whatever the first-generation product does well, a second- or even third-generation product is going to do it much better. That's the hardware to wait for.

Listing image by Megan Geuss