The Apple Watch: Half Computer, Half Jewelry, Mostly Magical

A lot more is riding on the arrival of the Apple Watch than how you’ll use it to check your incoming text messages. The Apple Watch is the first truly new product from Apple since Steve Jobs died. Millions of people have been asking since then, “Can Apple still make hits without Jobs?”

We’re about to find out.

Three new strategies

The Apple watch is many things. It’s a timepiece, a fitness tracker, and a compact billboard for incoming messages, mail, and phone calls. If you have the right credit card and you’re at the right kind of shop, you can pay for things by waving yourwrist with it. It runs very, very tiny apps and games.

And, of course,it sells iPhones. You can’t use an Apple Watch without an iPhone, just as youcan’t use an Android Wear smartwatch without an Android phone.

Once you get to know the Watch, you realize that Apple carefully observed its rivals’ failures, and adjusted its product accordingly. Three things about the Apple Watch are very different:

* It descends from watches. Apple has put as much effort into thestyle of this device than the electronics. (That’s definitely not true of many Android Wear watches. Wearing some of them is like sporting a VCR on your wrist.)

The Apple Watch is available in three models—all identical except the metal that forms the case. There’s aluminum alloy (the Apple Sport, $350 and up); stainless steel (Apple Watch, $550 and up); and hardened 18K gold (Apple Watch Edition, $10,000 and up).

(Did a word get lost in that name? Apple Watch what Edition? Gold Edition? Pricey Edition? Sucker Edition?)

Each comes in two sizes, referred to by jeweler-standard measurements, 38mm and 42mm (1.5 inches and 1.65 inches diagonal); the 42mm size is usually $50 more.

The Apple Watch is much smaller, sleeker, and more beautiful than any other smartwatch. That is so important. It’s the difference between wearing jewelry and strapping on a little phone.