In case you haven’t heard, the Apple Watch has now been declared a failure because of at least two categories of shortcomings:

  1. It has failed humanity: It has not cured cancer, curbed the incidence of global terrorism, and it has neither confirmed or denied the Big Bang theory
  2. It has failed developers: No one can program around the same splash screen: a 60-second spinner

Maybe I’m a Watch apologist, but the Watch’s failures have not made me wear the Watch any less or feel that the roughly $400 I spent on the Watch was wasted.

Considering the frequency with which I’ve used the Watch every day for nearly a year now, the graph of my investment in the Watch per unit of utility is an asymptote teasing zero. For me, all of the following have been enough in Watch version 1.

  • The time on my wrist. I foolishly let the iPhone replace previous wrist watches. The Watch fixed that.
  • Weather. The Apple weather complication is always current, forecasts load quickly, and I find the clockface-like weather forecast superior to virtually every iPhone and desktop weather app UI.
  • Next meeting complication. It’s useful.
  • Activity. I move more when I know how much I haven’t been moving.
  • Notifications. I’d rather see most of them on my wrist than have to fish a an ever-growing iPhone device out of my pocket.
  • Hands-free calling. This was the most unexpected benefit, but the Watch is my preferred way to take calls in private, especially in the car.
  • Easy Siri questions. “What time is the sportsball game tonight?” or “when is Easter this year?”

I’ve all but abandoned using third-party apps on the Watch, but the breaking of that promise hasn’t made me want to discard everything that does work.