Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham



Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Our Apple Watch arrived this morning.

However you feel about smart watches as a concept or the Apple Watch in particular, the fact of the matter is that this wearable already has momentum behind it by virtue of being a brand-new product from the world's biggest consumer electronics company. Developers are already here, although many of them are still trying to figure out how an Apple Watch app should look and work. An order placed today won't make it to your doorstep until four-to-six weeks from now. None of this guarantees long-term success, but it does mean that Apple's Watch is a product to... watch.

This is our first experience with the Apple Watch outside of controlled demos at Apple events and some limited hands-on time during Apple Store try-on sessions, so for your reference we've documented the process of extricating the watch from its multilayered packaging and pairing it to a phone. More detailed impressions will follow in the coming days—we'll be wearing the watch around for several days to get an idea of where it fits into our digital life and, more important, what it actually changes for people who buy it.

The Apple Watch Sport comes in what we would call "a lot of box." The watch itself is buried three boxes deep, and every layer is covered with some plastic covering you need to peel off first. Apple is normally known for its minimal packaging, but not in this case.

We bought the 42mm space gray model—we've seen a lot of "space gray" Apple products, and none of them is quite the same shade. The iPhone's coating is a bit lighter, the iPad's and MacBook's are a little darker, and the Apple Watch's is actually closer to the darker black color used in the iPhone 5. Not a big deal, just keep it in mind if you were really hoping your iPhone and your watch would match.

Poke the lower button on your watch to power it on, and then tap Start Pairing on the watch and on your iPhone's Apple Watch app to begin the pairing process. Apple's pairing method is sort of neat—it asks you to hold your phone's camera up to the watch, and if the animated pattern on the watch's screen matches what it's looking for, it will pair automatically. There's also a manual pairing method if that doesn't work, but we had no trouble with the camera method.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

If you're setting up an Apple Watch, you already know what it's like to set up an iPhone, and the process is basically the same. Tap through the various setup screens, plug in your Apple ID, and you're all set. Depending on how many Apple Watch apps are already sitting on your phone waiting to be installed to the watch, the initial syncing process may take a few minutes. Once you're through setup, the Apple Watch app becomes a hub for controlling and configuring your watch. Sadly, the watch app doesn't improve at all on iOS' cluttered and sometimes confusing Settings app, and there's no search option to help you find anything you're looking for.

There are a few you'll immediately be interested in: first and foremost, you'll want to shuffle your watch home screen icons around in the Layout tab. In General, you can download software updates (none available as of this writing) and set the watch to automatically download apps when you've installed an iPhone app that comes with an Apple Watch app. The Do Not Disturb setting is already set to mirror your iPhone—when you toggle it on your phone, your watch will pick it up, too—and the same setting is true for most app notifications. If there's any app you definitely don't want buzzing your watch, go to Notifications and take care of it. Configure the Friends wheel with some of your most frequently used contacts for easy access. And finally, the Activity settings will let you turn those "hey you've been sitting, get off your butt" reminders on and off and configure other fitness features that may not appeal to everyone in the user base.

Whatever the Apple Watch's other features, it's going to spend most of its time buzzing you with notifications. My iPhone is already set up to show me a few notifications, but I'll need to wear the watch for a few days to figure out if that balance needs to change at all. We suspect it will be the same for most of you, too.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Most early Apple Watch reviews have already run, and we're not interested in re-covering ground that's already been thoroughly covered. We'll be wearing the Watch all the time over the next few days and writing up our impressions, but if you have specific questions you'd like answered that haven't been answered by other reviewers, let us know below.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham