I can’t get excited about the Apple Watch

It’s been out for a while now, long enough for everyone to write their day-one reviews, and then write their “What it’s like to live with Apple Watch for a week” reviews, and then to do the long-form essays about the implications of Apple Watch (I worked with a guy who used to call that kind of story a “thumb-sucker”) — and after all that I still have no desire to own one, or even any desire to go to the Apple store and look at one or hold one in my hand.

I’ve seen exactly one in the wild — one of the moms at soccer. She loves it. She can check text messages and her calendar on it. But, she points out, “I’m a huge Apple fan.”

Apple fans keep trying to say that this is like the rollout of the iPhone back in 2007. But it doesn’t feel that way to me at all. When the iPhone came out, it was beyond anything I had ever seen. I remember going to a doctor’s appointment while carrying a review unit of the original iPhone. The doctor walked in and saw it and got all excited. “Is that the iPhone? Can I check it out?”

I suppose people are curious about the Apple Watch, but not in the same way. Meanwhile, analysts have been lowering their projections. The product doesn’t seem to have any lift. I suspect in a few months the analysts will be lowering projections again.

The only question, it seems to me, is this: At what point can Apple Watch be declared a swing and a miss?