Sorry, Apple, my Timex is here to stay

Yale Hollander is a dad, husband, legal professional and writer whose works have appeared in a number of local and national publications. He is currently a trustee of the St. Louis Jewish Light, however the opinions and viewpoints he presents in this blog are strictly his. Follow him on Twitter @yalehollander.

By Yale Hollander

Are you counting down the days, hours and minutes until the release of the Apple Watch? If so, on what device are you currently doing said counting, and how inferior are you going to feel having it strapped to you until the glorious moment when you can adorn your wrist with the latest miracle to spew forth from the House of Jobs?

Sorry if my sarcasm seems a bit . . . ahem, heavy-handed, but I’ve seen this movie before and I know how it ends. It ends – spoiler alert – with me looking like an idiot.

Of course you’re not surprised. But I’ll explain nonetheless.

In 2009, when I was writing a business column for the occasionally-not-defunct St. Louis Globe-Democrat, I relayed my thoughts about the iPhone and predicted, based upon two years of unscientific (but still pretty good, in my opinion) observations, that its shortcomings with business enterprise email platforms would prevent it from overtaking the far superior Blackberry. Today, I’m on my third generation of firm-issued iPhones while the Blackberry is rapidly catching up to the brick phone, the fax machine and the Radio Shack in the “visual props to suggest someone is a technological dinosaur” department. 

The following year, when Apple rolled out the iPad, I didn’t exactly ridicule its debut but I did dismiss it as little more than a toy that would never serve as a true rival to a “real” computer when it came to word processing and other forms of document production. 

It will come as little surprise to you, Dear Reader, that I am writing this very blog on an iPad. Granted, I am doing so with the assistance of an external keyboard and the only recently-released Microsoft Word app, but the folks in Cupertino have once again rendered me grossly off-the-mark in my dismissal of their magical little doohickeys.

I’m not going to waste any time this go-around in decrying the Apple Watch as frivolous and — gasp — kind of ugly. But this time I’m adding the proviso that I acknowledge that the thing is going to sell like crazy (yes, even the super-luxe version that’s predicted to sell for between $10,000 and $17,000.)

But you can take to the bank — perhaps the bank where you will place your very own $17,000 Apple Watch in a safe deposit box — that I will neither own nor wear one of these timepieces. Come to think of it, will telling time even be one of its base features, or will one have to pay $4.99 for the iTime app? 

I’m perfectly content with my $37 Timex Weekender. It doesn’t have a phone or apps, but I can customize its appearance through a wide variety of colorful bands. In a nod to modern technology, it does have a little button on the side that makes the face light up in the dark — a feature that I find a bit excessive but it would apparently cost me a fortune to have it disabled.

I don’t begrudge anyone who gets swept into the Apple Watch mania, even those of you who at this very moment are camped out in front of the Apple Store in eager anticipation of April 24. 

And I promise not to snicker or sneer as you walk around in public with your wrist in your face like some kind of 21st Century Dick Tracy. I’ll just sit quietly in the corner as I tap away on my iPad, occasionally glancing over at my watch to check the time like the caveman that I am.