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Buying The Apple Watch
I was supposed to go to the media launch of the Apple Watch at nubox (Raffles City) if they can reserve a set for me. Because if I went for the event, I would not be able to queue if the queue is short. Unfortunately, they didn’t get back to me till I was in the queue, so I ended up forgoing the media event and joined the queue because it was rather short (I was 36th in line at 8.15am; launch is at 9am). I was intending to buy it online anyway if the queue is long.

The queue was deceiving, it takes about 90 minutes after the official launch timing (9am) to clear 36 people in the queue (I went in about 10.30am). The queue was moving way too slow because they only allowed 2 people into the store at a time (maybe because of Apple’s policy?).

There are four stations: choosing your watch, trying your watch, payment and setting up your watch. Only when the trying station is available then they will allow a person into the store, and hence that is the bottleneck station. In the stores, the staff to customer ratio was probably 2:1.

I wanted to get the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Milanese Loop (S$1,018), but it was out of stock. I was pretty surprised since there were a total of 300 units available and each person in the queue is allowed to buy one only. So I think there was less than 10 units of 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Milanese Loop available.
Since the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Milanese Loop was out of stock, I took slightly more time to decide as I was contemplating whether to buy the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Leather Loop (S$1,018) and get the separate 42mm Milanese Loop (S$218) or just get the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Link Bracelet (S$1,458).

I guess it was fated and hence I took the plunge and bought the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Link Bracelet instead since I am not leaving the store empty handed after queuing for 2 hours.

The 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Link Bracelet was initially my first choice but because of price, I bumped up the 42mm Stainless Steel Case with Milanese Loop as my first choice instead.

I know it is expensive, but expensive and value is subjective from person to person. I am not into luxury watches so those have no appeal to me at all and doesn’t really mean anything to me when people compare them with more branded and “worth it” watches.

Special shoutout to Raphael from nubox who served me that day at the setup station! He reads my blog!

Using The Apple Watch
The setting up and pairing of the Apple Watch with my iPhone 6 Plus is flawless, the process is even better than setting up my Android Wear using my Android phone.

The Apple Watch has pretty steep learning curve and it took me a few minutes to get used to the force touch as I was wondering how do I change the clock face.

My only complaint is the app on the watch takes about 5 to 10 seconds to launch which is kinda long. I hope the native app feature which will be released with watchOS 2 will fix this.

Another thing to note (not complain) is that the speaker on the watch is a little soft, so if you answer a call with your Apple Watch in a noisy environment, you might not be able to hear what the other party is saying. Of course, I will try not to answer any calls from the watch because it is weird when people see you talking to a watch.

With regards to battery life, it is better than my expectation, it lasted me slightly more than a day. Similar to my LG G Watch R review unit. Of course, it will not be able to beat Pebble’s watches when it comes to battery life.

Box Content
The default packaging comes with Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable (2m) (S$58) and 5W USB Power Adapter (Folding Pins) (S$42).

It also includes a cleaning cloth and a small little pouch to hold your excess link bracelet which I think is a pretty nice touch.

Now, I need to find a nice stand for my Apple Watch.