Like most of my life, it really comes down to one thing. Marketing.
Not just the marketing I’ve seen for the Apple Watch itself. All of which makes it look like the cleanest, slickest, biggest (have you noticed how HUGE they make it look. Targeting the folks with bad eyesight over the folks with small wrists must work), coolest watch ever made.
Not even the marketing of Apple itself who’s historical record of advertising and marketing is one of ideas that changed everything. One of the first companies to see graphic design and maybe especially, typography, as an important element in everything they designed, from the systems themselves to the manuals that shipped with them to the ads that talked about them. I’m a graphic designer for a living, I have a job because Apple made design cool.
No, it comes down to the marketing of my generation. I was turned on to sci-fi early by being able to bring Chewbacca to my house via action figure and told that by the time I was old enough to drive the cars would FLY. (LIARS! Damn liars). I want to be able to talk into my wrist and have something happen. I want to be able to read email on this watch because that is a short, short step from being able to read it on my arm.
The practical side of me says “but it doesn’t really do anything yet”, and “you have much better ways to spend $400”, and “you don’t even wear a watch!”. And yet, deep down in that quivery spot in the bottom of my heart, I want it. The deep, deep spot in my heart where I fell in love the first time the Mac Classic smiled at me. That’s what marketing can do. It can make you love things you never knew you needed.