Your Latest Trick

Let's be honest: right now, if you are approaching a till in a shop with the intention of paying with your smart watch there's a high probability that the person behind you thinks that you are a pretentious idiot.

I've had this happen to me a few times now, where I've been standing in a queue with my ever-so-last-century coinage in my hand, ready to take out a small payday loan so that I can afford to pay the extortionate amount being asked for in exchange for a cup of coffee, only to be delayed as someone in front of me insists on pushing back their sleeve, twisting their arm (thus spilling half the drink) and holding their wrist at the correct distance from the scanner for the signal to be transmitted and paying without the arguably quicker but less flashy alternative of getting their debit card out of their wallet.

I must admit to being a little bit guilty here myself because after some initial grumbling about not seeing how it can make transactions any safer I now regularly pay via contact less with my bank card, thus saving me having to input my PIN and probably shaving 20 seconds off what would have otherwise been a more lengthy purchase interaction.

Now I know this is going to sound out of fashion and like an old man grumbling but the basic, single purpose I wear a watch for is because I want it to tell me the time.

Back at school when I was a kid I experimented with digital watches.  Most of them had two or three buttons and a read out based on an 8888 square in poor LEDs.  One or two even had alarms.  As a kid I was even banned from wearing a watch at school - the culprit being a clockwork Mickey Mouse watch from disneyland that ticked so loudly it disrupted the class.

Eventually i returned to a simple watch with hands - I've probably had my current one for 15-20 years with only the occasional change of strap or battery and am in no immediate rush to upgrade.

But the thing is with the smart watch is that I can't help but feel that people are jumping the gun a bit.

Take the mobile phone,  When these first came out in the 1980s they were exclusively used by Wall Street types and came with big battery packs, antenna and a transmission distance only slightly better than standing at the other side of a room and yelling at the person you wanted to talk to.

Nowadays of course you have phones that can control drones, book you a table at a restaurant, organise your fitness regime and take prize winning photographs - but the problem is the rate at which the technology is changing.

Apple and their contenders seem to be releasing new, improved iphones every six months ago that via a tiny improvement or change immediately render your previous phone as obsolete as a penny farthing bicycle - I've personally resisted buying a new games console since the Playstation 2 largely because I got tired of having to buy a new one every year or so because the new version wouldn't play my old games (and because of the price of the games themselves)

And I'm not convinced by the 3D systems going around at the moment - they seem clunky and gimmicky

Personally my suggestion is to hang on for a while and see what comes next - meanwhile in the short term if your watch is still telling you the time then surely that's good enough?