Most of the tech press has been lukewarm on the Apple Watch. I think they are missing the point. Drew Crawford gets the technology. He also provides a great dissection of the business, positioning and marketing aspects:
We’ll set an Apple Watch ad against a luxury clothing brand ad. Which one is which? The point is, you’d be hard-pressed to tell these apart.
Drew Crawford’s On the Apple Watch
We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change.
What makes a successful company? People and culture must be at or near the top of the list. Sometimes company cultures need fixing. If you’ve ever been involved in an effort to change culture you’ll know that it’s hard. Really hard. Atul Gawande has a great article on changing social norms in the world at large in the context of medicine. Culture is a social problem. Forming it and changing it is as low tech as you can get.
… people follow the lead of other people they know and trust when they decide whether to take it up. Every change requires effort, and the decision to make that effort is a social process.
Atul Gawande’s Slow Ideas
Julian Adams 