I’ve tried running with my phone in nearly every imaginable way: armband, waist pack, pocket. The armband gets sweaty and gross about five minutes into the run, and if you want to send a message or change playlists you have to unstrap the apparatus, try to punch through the thick layer of plastic to engage the touchscreen, and then strap it back up. The waist pack feels restrictive, and, again, it’s a hassle if you need to access your phone. The pocket is the best of the options, until your phone bounces out of your pocket and pinwheels down a hill. I have, I do believe, stumbled upon the Platonic ideal of a First World problem.
I like watches. I like watches to the extent that, with a Hodinkee-esque air of pretension, I would probably categorize myself as a watch enthusiast. For the most part, however, that enthusiasm is reserved for non-smartwatch watches. Digital: fine; quartz: great; mechanical: say no more! The only thing that annoys my fiancée more than my incessant discussion of law school is my havering about watches. But for years I have refused to get the ugly brick of metal and glass named “Apple Watch.” While Apple was waving in my face a solution to all my running media problems, besides it looking like something excreted by WALL-E, I wasn’t particularly keen on having a communications device lashed onto my corpus, thereby destining me to twitch like a hamster on crack at the slightest indication of an incoming notification.
And then, tragically, as my last act of 2021, I ordered an Apple Watch. I wanted to be able to run while listening to podcasts and music, have a map in case I got lost, and have an emergency services alert option in case I got hurt, and I wanted to do all these things without carrying my phone around. Because I’m firmly rooted in (read: a slave to) the Apple ecosystem, the WALL-E stool was the only game in smartwatch town for me. I bought the Series 3 because it’s the cheapest of Apple’s current options, and the internet—that great bastion of unadulterated truth—told me it was a better value proposition than any of the other watches coming out of Cupertino. I decided that I’d purchase the watch but wouldn’t commit myself to it until I had spent some time with it.
I took delivery of the device on January 1 and was immediately seduced by the Apple unboxing experience, an inarguably sexy affair, up until I pulled out the Apple Watch charging cable. For some unresearched reason, I thought that I could charge the device on a standard wireless charging pad. Instead, I was greeted with a small, magnetic charging dock that was required to power the watch. I’m a problem solver not a problem finder, I told myself, so I found a free socket and plugged in yet another charging cable.
I booted up the watch and immediately had to update my phone to make the two devices compatible. Again, problem solver. If I do one update, I can forget about updating for another year or three as I am wont to do.
At last, the home screen. My Apple Watch was connected to my iCloud account and I was ready to go. But then: buzz buzz. A Uniqlo notification, mirrored from my phone, popped up on my wrist—I had experienced my first taste of life as a cocaine-ridden hamster. From then on it was a series of buzzes and pings that I would ordinarily deal with by tossing my phone in a drawer. This wasn’t the end of the world though, since I purchased the watch as a running aid, Raymond Holt be damned (if music is a crutch, it’s a crutch I’m willing to pay $249 to own).
But then the coup de grâce occurred: I tried to download a podcast. I couldn’t figure it out, so I turned to the only reliable source in such situations: Reddit. After sifting through an hour of discussion threads in which I was recommended multi-step processes and various alternative podcast apps from third party developers, I still couldn’t get a single podcast to download. This thing was more trouble than it was worth, especially when I could quantify down to the cent exactly what it was worth. It was then that I downloaded the return slip from UPS.
Frankly, though, I just didn’t like the way the Apple Watch looked on my wrist. I couldn’t bring myself to unstrap my “real” watch from my left wrist, so I tried double-wristing it. I thought it would make me feel like Tony Stark with his Iron Man gauntlet from Captain America: Civil War. Instead, I just looked like someone who wears sunglasses indoors. There’s also something calming about wearing a simple time and date watch—you’re not bound to your email and texts; instead, it’s just you and your watch, counting down to your inevitable demise.
I guess I’m running with my phone in my hand for now.