Pressure Rising: Is the Apple Watch too good to be true?

STORY & GRAPHICS BY

ANDREW WILLIAMS

APRIL 15, 2019

Alex Deryn never met a problem she couldn’t outrun.

A track star from West Lafayette, Deryn is used to pushing herself to the limit and knows the feeling of her heart beating out of her chest and never knowing when she’s hit her limit.

Deryn said that all changed once she bought an Apple Watch last year after being recommended the device by her cousin.

“It is a little bit of an addiction because I wear it so often,” said Deryn, a sophomore at Indiana University. “I’m always checking my calorie count and how active I am.”

The Apple Watch, which was first released in 2015, is advertised to assist with health and fitness maintenance and features an EKG scanner and heart rate monitoring. With heart disease as the leading cause of death worldwide, those claims are more relevant now than ever.

79% of Apple Watch owners say they use it for health and fitness monitoring

Deryn echoed their statements and said the watch also manages her lifestyle by alerting her to stand up and telling her when she should go for a walk. Despite her background, Deryn said she believes the watch has made her much more active.

“I would’ve loved to have had the watch while I was in high school,” said Deryn, who ran the 400-meter on her school’s track team. “I feel like it would’ve pushed me a little bit harder.”

At night, Deryn said that she sets activity goals for herself with the watch.

“You set a goal and if you don’t reach it you feel like crap about yourself.”

- Alex Deryn, Sophomore

“You set a goal and if you don’t reach it you feel like crap about yourself,” she said. “That makes me work harder at the gym.”

Deryn, who exclusively uses Apple products, said that she wasn’t sure if she would’ve bought one if the watch wasn’t made by Apple.

“I have a HomePod, a Mac, and an iPhone,” she said. “Let’s say if Android released a watch, I don’t think I would purchase it.”

Deryn isn’t the only person who has fallen into what is now known as the “Apple ecosystem”. The Apple ecosystem is a construct that refers to how Apple products work together to create an optimal user experience.

The most commonly cited example is iMessage, which delivers text messages to all Apple devices instead of limiting them to just a smartphone.

The difficulties of leaving Apple have become so widespread that experts have started to cite the Apple Watch as a gateway drug into the Apple ecosystem.

When Santiago Migliaro moved to the United States as a child from Argentina, he said that he always had some difficulty fitting in. He found that Apple products were just one way to integrate into American society.

“Just having Apple Watches and the aesthetic behind it made me say, ‘You know what, I’m going to get one.’,” Migliaro said. “I want to fit in.”

A junior at Holy Cross College in South Bend, Indiana, Migliaro said that he often sees other students walking around with their Apple Watches on his campus. With just a flash of their wrists, these students project their status in society and instantly separate themselves from the social woes of Android users everywhere.

Migliaro said that he never uses the watch for any of the physical benefits outlined by Apple but wanted it as a status symbol to fit into America’s social standards. In fact, 21 percent of Apple Watch owners say they use the device for non-health related reasons.

“I really didn’t know what an Apple Watch did,” he said. “I got it and realized that it was pretty cool.”

Like Deryn, Migliaro also said that he doesn’t believe that he can leave the Apple ecosystem after obtaining a variety of different Apple products.

“Maybe if I’d never used an Apple product, I could try to use something else,” said Migliaro, who has used Apple devices for 7 years. “It would be a huge adjustment for me to switch to PC or Android.”

For those looking to uncuff their Apple Watches, Android Wear OS alternatives to the smartwatch are available but many find their performance to be lacking due to underpowered hardware and unoptimized software.

In 2018, Apple owned a majority of the smartwatch market share, and their main competitor, Wear OS, was so far behind that the tech giant remained largely unthreatened.

Because Apple makes both the hardware and software for their devices, they can make sure that their user experience has the highest priority. IU lecturer Matthew Francisco believes this practice helps drive sales.

“I understand what Apple is trying to do,” Francisco said. “They really are sorting for quality control because their quality control is their user experience.”

Despite this, Francisco said that he too is guilty of falling into the Apple ecosystem and finding himself unable to escape.

“I get pulled into it every now and then,” Francisco said. He noted that he always ends up using less software when using Apple products.

Francisco also said he believes that Apple products provide great privacy protections in comparison to competitors, but he doubts that the technology can seriously halt heart disease.

“A watch can be one part of the solution,” said Francisco, who teaches computer ethics and Arduino prototyping. “The big part is creating neighborhoods and communities that have wholesome healthy foods that are inexpensive and easy to get.”

While researchers are still studying the Apple Watch’s health claims, public perception would have you believe that the Apple Watch is in a league of its own when it comes to both form and function.

Alex Deryn describes the feeling of Apple products and compares it to being in an exclusive club.

“I would say that I feel like I have a sense of power when I walk around with my Apple Watch on,” she said.