The Apple Watch with Voiceover review – Day 7

Jun 11, 2015 | Accessibility, Apple Watch, reviews, Technology | 0 comments

Someone made a comment a few days ago about the Apple Watch and specifically Voiceover that I found kind of interesting. She said that the Apple watch isn’t like a normal talking watch. A normal talking watch has very slow speech feedback and the volume is static. It also usually chimes before announcing the time to the world. An Apple Watch might not be as discrete but it has a coolness factor at the moment that slightly negates the annoying factor for people around me. I can only hope that lasts. Her point was that the Apple Watch speaks much faster because I have it configured at that speed and if I’m going into an environment that’s quieter I can set the volume of the speech appropriately so that while in a quiet meeting for example it doesn’t shout my notifications out to the world.

In most reviews of the Apple Watch I’ve read that people get annoyed by the number of notifications. I have to say that I’m not annoyed by them at all. I find that I actually miss most of the notifications that come in to the Apple Watch. This is because the tap is so slight that unless I’m not busy I really won’t notice. The iPhone demands attention but the Apple Watch quietly asks for it.

I’m a techy. I love all things techy therefore it’s a given that I’ll get to like the Apple Watch but I don’t love it. I don’t see myself feeling naked without the Apple Watch like I do when I forget my phone. Sorry. That’s not quite true. I don’t feel naked without my phone but I feel like I’m missing something important. The Apple Watch isn’t that important to me. Apple announced on Monday that Apple OS version 2 will be out in September or October. I’m really hoping they address the short comings I’ve outlined on this blog in the past week. I’ll be emailing accessibility@apple.com to make sure they are aware of my problems, complaints and annoyances. I can only hope that every other Voiceover user of the Apple Watch does the same thing. If people don’t tell Apple what they are doing wrong they really can’t expect them to fix the problems for the next release.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.