You probably spend a lot of time moving in and out of folders in the Finder as you navigate among your files and apps. Getting into a folder is easy: Just double-click it. But what about getting out of that folder and returning to where you were? You may be surprised to find that you have many ways to move up a folder in the Finder. Here are eight of them.
1. From the keyboard
If you use the keyboard a lot, you’ll appreciate the simplicity of this technique for moving to the folder that encloses the contents of the current window. When you have a Finder window open, just press Command-Up Arrow, and your Finder window will shift to show the enclosing folder.
2. From the Finder toolbar
The left-pointing arrow button in the Finder is the Back button.
If you double-clicked a folder to enter it, you can easily get to the folder just above it: Click the Back button in the Finder toolbar.
Note that this action goes up a folder only if you double-clicked a folder to enter it. If you entered a folder in another manner, the Back button will take you to the folder you were in previously.
Here’s a bonus tip: Click and hold the Back button to see a list of previously visited folders. This list shows folders you’ve accessed since your last login or restart, and it can be very long. Using this list is a quick way to return to a folder you’ve visited recently without navigating in the Finder.
3. From the Finder window title bar
Command-click the Finder title bar, where you see the proxy icon, to view this pop-up menu.
The title bar of every Finder window shows the name of the current folder, and includes a proxy icon for that folder. If you hold down the Command key and click that icon, you’ll see the directory structure for the current folder and all of the folders above it. You can select the folder just above it to go up one level, or select any other folder in the list to jump up elsewhere in your Mac’s file system.
4. From the Finder’s Path Bar
If you have the Path Bar displayed (when in the Finder, select View > Show Path Bar), you’ll see the full path to the current folder. This display is similar to what you see when Command-clicking the proxy icon, as in tip number 3, but it’s horizontally arranged and always visible. To move to any other folder in the Path Bar, double-click it. (For more tips about using the Finder’s Path Bar, see “Five overlooked abilities of the Finder’s Path Bar.”
The Finder's Path Bar is a great way to see where you are in your Mac's folder hierarchy and to navigate through the hierarchy.
5. From the Path button in the Finder toolbar
The Finder’s toolbar also can include a Path button. (Choose View > Customize Toolbar, and drag the Path button to the Finder toolbar.) When the Path button is visible, click and hold it. It then shows the folder hierarchy, just as the proxy icon in tip number 3 does. Select the folder you want to open.
The Path button shows a pop-up menu of the current folder hierarchy.
6. Using an ‘Up’ button in the Finder toolbar
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Finder toolbar had an ‘Up’ button? Although Apple doesn’t include one, you can add one. Download Teki’s free Up Button app. After installation, go to your Applications folder, find the Up app, and drag it to the Finder toolbar. Wait a second until your cursor changes to a green plus-sign (+) icon, and then drop the Up button wherever you want. Click that button to go up a folder at any time.
All of these methods work in all Finder window views. But if you use Column View (choose View > as Columns), you can also use the Left Arrow key to move up in the Finder. This option is visually more logical than pressing Command-Up Arrow (which also works).
8. In List View
When you’re using the Finder’s List View (View > as List), you can navigate easily using the arrow keys. The Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys let you move around in the list. You can go up a folder by pressing Command-Up Arrow, and enter a folder by pressing Command-Down Arrow. If you press Command-Right Arrow, the folder will expand in the current list, without going into that folder; in other words, you’ll see the entire list, plus the contents of the selected folder
These days a new operating system can be downloaded from the web and installed in a couple of reboots, or “purchased” for free from an App Store. It might seem like a clean install isn’t worth the time and effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. Upgrades may be convenient, but sometimes it’s better to give yourself a clean slate, and not just for that “fresh out of the box” feeling.
You probably know that doing a clean install gives you a fresh start and a clean slate. That may sound nice, but when you think about the time and energy you’ll sink into getting everything back to the way you like it, it’s pretty tempting to upgrade in place. Even more tempting, every modern operating system—like Windows 10 or OS X Yosemite (and soon, El Capitan)—make it so easy: Just download an installer, run it, get some lunch, and when you’re back you have the latest and greatest, without having to do anything.
What you might not know is there are a host of other benefits to doing a clean install, that make it worth considering. Beyond just giving yourself a fresh new OS to play with, here are a few other things you’ll get when you take the time to start from scratch.
You’ll Rid Yourself of Quirks, Bugs, and All Those Problems You Could Never Pin Down
I actually hate doing clean installs, but I love clean systems. On one of my laptops (a Macbook Pro,) I’ve never performed a clean install, ever. When it was new, I migrated directly from the machine it replaced. As new versions of OS X came out, I upgraded in place. Things went smoothly enough I just never bothered. However, as you use a computer—especially over several years—you’ll get some quirks. Maybe nothing serious, but certain bugs and quibbles that you know your computer does that you just can’t pin down and fix. Maybe it’s slowness when you do a specific thing, so you learn to not do that thing. Maybe some app crashes all the time, so you find an alternative. You spend some time researching those quirks, and find out that either no one has the same problem or lots of people do and they all have dozens of different solutions, none of which seem to work for you.
You can probably tell where this is going. A clean install will kill those bugs for you, almost completely. If there’s something specific to an program, you probably can’t get around that. But if it’s something strange about how your computer behaves, or how a program you use interacts with the OS, you probably already know in the back of your mind that a clean install will fix it. I knew, for years, and I still didn’t do it. I just assumed that the hassle and effort of doing a clean install on that system and getting everything up to speed again just wasn’t worth it. In reality, the actual productive time I lost trying to fix this Macbook Pro’s myriad wake-from-sleep problems, USB quirks, and multi-display issues was far more than the afternoon it took to wipe the drive, reinstall Yosemite, and reinstall the applications I actually used.
A good clean install also gives you peace of mind. Ever use a Windows machine and get worried you may have installed something at some point that’s not so above board, or that you may have had your security compromised at one point or another? Security software or no, there’s a reason why technology professionals blow away systems completely and reinstall if they think they’re compromised. They don’t waste time diagnosing it or running tons of antimalware tools. It’s just faster and safer to start over and restore data from known, good backups. If you’ve ever worried the same about your desktop, well, nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
You Get a Performance Boost Without Having to Clean Everything By Hand
Look, we’ve mentioned before that you actually don’t need to reinstall Windows regularly to keep your system performing in tip top shape, and that’s absolutely true. However, there’s only so much you can do tby running CCleaner , removing programs you don’t need, and cleaning out the apps that run automatically on startup. Those things are great to do on a regular basis, but over time the cruft that comes with regularly using your computer, cleaning it, and using it some more accumulates to the point where it’s tough to decide what to keep and what to remove. The key here is “regularly.” When a new OS launches, that’s when you should think about doing a clean install.
The great thing about a clean install is that you don’t need to sit at your computer for hours and research every service, every poorly named process, or every unfamiliar application sitting in the Task Manager. You don’t have to disable services and reboot your computer to see if they’re actually necessary for something you use, or some holdover from an old version of whatever. Just take the stress and blow it all away along with that ancient, cluttered mess of an operating system. You can start from zero, building back up slowly based on the things you actually use, not the things you installed once and used for a while.
Of course, with all of this comes a performance boost, and a pretty significant one at that. Windows 8 and Windows 10 largely boot faster than their predecessors, and run faster too, even on moderate systems, but they can only really do so without the baggage of previous versions, old and outdated apps and drivers, and a shorter list of startup items. Once you clear them all out and replace them only with the things you actually need, you’ll see a huge improvement. Similarly, if you’ve upgraded to Windows 8 or Windows 10 and thought “this isn’t as fast as I’ve read it was,” the problem isn’t that everyone was lying to you: It’s probably your system. Clean it out.
You’ll Clear Out Bloatware, Old Leftover Junk Files, and Recover a Ton of Disk Space
If your computer is an OEM you bought off the shelf, it’s probably brimming with crapware and bloatware. Hell, if it’s a Windows 10 upgrade from Windows 7 or 8, it probably comes with a bunch of apps you might not want. We’ve talked about how to get rid of them before after the fact, but you’ll notice option three in that piece is the one we’re talking about here: Going nuclear and just reinstalling your operating system. In Windows, clearing out all that crap will save you precious system resources and disk space. While Macs generally don’t come with a lot of bloatware (although Apple includes enough of its own stuff you may not want that we certainly could call it bloatware) cleaning that out returns much needed disk space—and more disk space can mean a performance improvement, especially in OS X, which notoriously loves to keep cruft around from old operating systems after in-place upgrades, even if it’s no longer needed.
As an example, as I’ve been testing the El Capitan public beta, I wound up getting kernel panics trying to install the most recent updates. I couldn’t figure out why, but if I downgraded everything was fine. After researching, I learned Apple’s shiny new OS didn’t care for some ancient extension files from an old version of VirtualBox of all things, files that should have been automatically cleaned up ages ago. Of course, they never did, and caused problems years down the line.
Keeping all of that crap off of your computer (or better yet not letting any of it on in the first place) will keep your system running in great shape, and makes sure that every time you look at task manager or activity monitor to see what’s eating up all your memory, you’ll know at least it’s something you installed, and not some crap someone’s trying to shove down your throat.
It’s the Closest You’ll Get to that “New Computer” Feeling Without Building a New Rig
Those of you who build your own computers, or just like to do clean installs when you get a brand new one so you can truly start from scratch understand that “new computer” feeling. That feeling of infinite possibility, where everything is snappy and fast, your system is lean and trim, running efficiently, and ready for whatever you demand of it. Well, it may go without saying, but doing a clean install is the closest you’ll get to that feeling without actually building or buying a new PC. And it’s a great feeling, too.
Sure, you have to go through installing all of your programs, migrating your data, and setting everything back up the way you like again. You may even have to restore files from backups. It’s all worth it. Seriously, and it doesn’t even have to be as difficult as you might think it is. When I used to work in IT, I used to be able to crank out tons of clean installs on new computers every day, as long as I had the space and time to do it. That included installing the operating system, installing all of the user’s necessary apps, and even migrating their settings, setting up accounts and email, even getting their desktop to look the way it did when they gave me their old computer to be replaced. I’m willing to bet you can do the same in an afternoon or less. The benefits you get for your time outweigh the convenience of repeated upgrades in place by a longshot.
In the meantime, upgrades in place are useful and convenient, and they’re clearly the direction that Apple and Microsoft want us to go. Downloaded operating systems are easy to buy, easy to install, and easy to patch. However, before you decide to replace that laptop with Windows 10 on it that seems so much slower than it was when you bought it with Windows Vista installed, consider doing a clean install of Windows 10 first. You’ll be surprised how even that old hardware and a new OS can feel like new.
Five overlooked abilities of the Finder's Path Bar
When you’re working in a deeply nested folder (a folder within a folder within…), the Finder provides several options for moving back up through the hierarchy. But only one option provides both at-a-glance info and powerful shortcuts for working with files: the Path Bar.
Reveal the Path Bar in the Finder by opening a window and then selecting View > Show Path Bar.
Open a Finder window (Finder > New Finder Window) and then chooseView > Show Path Bar. The Path Bar appears at the bottom of all your Finder windows, showing the complete path from your computer to the current folder. (A path is the series of subfolders that leads to a specific folder or file.)
This is the only way you can see a folder’s path when a Finder window is in the background, but that’s merely the most obvious of the conveniences the Path Bar provides.
1. Access folders in the path
Double-click a folder in the Path Bar (at the bottom of a Finder window) to see its contents in the current window.
Is the path too long for its folder names to show? Just point—no clicking necessary—to a truncated name, and it expands so that you can read it. This point-and-expand technique works even on background windows, whether you’re in the Finder or in another app. Double-click a folder in the Path Bar to see its contents in the current window. Or, open a folder into a separate window with a Command-double-click on its miniature in the Path Bar.
2. Drag a file or folder into the Path Bar to move it
You can save a lot of window-juggling and folder-opening by dragging things directly into Path Bar folders. Notice a document or folder in the current window that should be elsewhere in the hierarchy? Simply move it into the appropriate folder in the Path Bar (something you can’t do with the Path menu available from a Command-click on the window’s title). You can even drag an item from one window into another window’s Path Bar; just hover over the target folder a moment so that the window you’re dragging to becomes active.
3. Drag a folder out of the Path Bar to move it
You can manipulate the folder icons in the Path Bar in many of the same ways you work with folders in windows.
Drag a Path Bar folder into any other folder or window, or onto the Desktop. You can even hold down Option as you drag to make a copy of the folder, or Command-Option to make an alias. Want to access one of those Path Bar folders frequently? Drag it into the sidebar. As with standard folder icons, if you drop a Path Bar folder in the wrong place, use Edit > Undo Move (Command-Z) to put it back. Or, if you change your mind while you’re dragging the folder (when making an alias or copy, for example), press Esc to cancel the operation, and the “drag ghost” disappears from the arrow pointer.
4. Drag a folder within the Path Bar to move it
Working with files in the Path Bar can be a big timesaver. Say, for instance, you notice that something is in the wrong place in the path (you put FebNews inside JanNews instead of inside the parent folder Newsletters). You can fix everything within the Path Bar just by moving the FebNews folder icon into the Newsletters folder icon.
You can work entirely in the Path Bar when you want to change a folder’s position in its hierarchy. Just drag the folder into the desired parent folder.
5. Navigate search windows with the Path Bar
The Path Bar is an everyday, every-window convenience, but is especially useful in Finder search windows. While a standard window displays the contents of a single folder and the Path Bar shows its path, a search window lists items from all over the place, and its Path Bar shows you where any selected item lives. (If you make multiple selections, the Path Bar cleverly shows the nearest folder that they all have in common.)
So, if you get a dozen hits for, say, FebNews, you can select each one in turn to see its path. When you find the one you want, you can check what else is in its folder by double-clicking that folder in the Path Bar or—even better in most circumstances—using a Command-click to open it in a separate window, keeping your found list at hand so that you can check the other items.
Select an item in a Search window to see its path. This technique is especially convenient when you have identically named files or folders.
THE GOODThe Apple Watch is a beautifully constructed, compact smartwatch. It's feature-packed, with solid fitness software, hundreds of apps, and the ability to send and receive calls via an iPhone.
THE BADBattery only lasts a little more than a day; most models and configurations cost more than they should; requires an iPhone 5 or later to work; interface can be confusing; sometimes slow to communicate with a paired iPhone.
THE BOTTOM LINEThe Apple Watch is the most ambitious, well-constructed smartwatch ever seen, but first-gen shortfalls make it feel more like a fashionable toy than a necessary tool. That may change with a big software update later this year, though.
Apple Watch review:
Beautiful, bold watch, with some complications
The Apple Watch came out at the end of April. I've been wearing one for over three months. How much has changed since my original review? Well, not much.
There has been one firmware update, mostly addressing performance and reliability (and adding extra language support, plus access to more emoji). Otherwise, for the most part, the Apple Watch still does what it did before. I still use it in the same ways: mostly, as a simple way to stay connected without always checking my phone.
The Apple Watch is still available in its original configuration of three different models, two different sizes, and six different finishes, all with a range of swappable bands. The digital timepieces are priced from $349, £299 or AU$499 all the way up to $17,000, £13,500 or AU$24,000.
The company's first smartwatch is an evolution, of sorts, of the iPod Nano that could strap to your wrist. But it's far more advanced than that. It's a device that can act as a wrist companion for all sorts of things: fitness tracking, communication, phone calls, Apple Pay, wireless music playback, and a lot more. But for most of those functions, right now, you need an iPhone nearby that it can pair to.
I use it mainly for message notifications, and for fitness. It's become a reliable go-to type of basic Fitbit: it counts steps and tracks my walks, and reminds me to stand. Its handling of notifications is, mostly, better than Pebble or Android Wear: it's fast and efficient. Apple Pay is great, if you can find places that accept it.
Battery life still isn't great. But at least it lasts a full day, plus a little more. I've stopped carrying a charger around, but I still need to take it off at night -- or charge first thing in the morning.
Do you actually need an Apple Watch -- or any smartwatch? Right now, probably not. Smartwatches may one day be the future of phones, or a seamless extension of both them and your home, or any number of connected devices. Right now, they function as phone accessories. And that's where the Apple Watch lands. Apple designed the watch to help us look at our phones less. I'd call it more of a smaller screen in Apple's spectrum of differently sized screens. It has its own functions, its own uses. It's meant to be a small assistant, to help you look at your phone less. It's helped me stay more connected, but I still use my phone more than I should.Know that the Apple Watch will get a ton of updates this fall: a whole new version of the OS, new watch faces, new features, and real, native apps that will do a lot more. In the meantime, third-party apps (those not made by Apple) are annoying: they're slow to load and don't do much. I mostly avoid them, except for a few great apps (Overcast, Twitter, Alarm.com are some of my favorites).
The Apple Watch has a lot of promise, and a lot of unrealized potential. It's also expensive, and limited to iPhone users. If you're considering one, get an entry-level Sport. Or, wait till the fall and see what the update is like. (We'll update this review in detail at that time.)
Editors' note: This review has been updated from its original April 8, 2014, version with a new introduction, additional perspective on life with the Watch after a few months of use, some details on the upcoming Watch OS 2 software upgrade and an expanded look at what the Apple Watch can do when it's not paired to an iPhone. The rating has not changed.
What it does, what it is
Much like most other smartwatches, the Apple Watch isn't a standalone device -- it's a phone accessory. Android Wear, Samsung Gear, Pebble and others work the same way. But here, you must own an iPhone 5 or later to use the Watch. A few Apple Watch functions work away from the phone, but the watch primarily works alongside the phone as an extension, a second screen and basically another part of your iOS experience. It's a symbiote.
Communication, fitness, information, time: these are the core Apple Watch functions, but the Watch is incredibly ambitious, packed with many, many features and apps. In scope, it reminds me of Samsung's ambitious Gear smartwatches, but more fully realized.
Apple Watch receives messages from friends, send texts and lets you dictate messages, make speakerphone calls, ping people with animated emoji, give love taps long-distance or send your heartbeat as a sort of long-distance hug. It tracks your steps, logs runs and monitors your heart rate. And yes, you can use Apple Watch to listen to music via wireless Bluetooth headphones. You can play songs like an iPod, get notifications and run apps like a mini iPhone and make payments with Apple Pay. And it has a totally new force-sensitive display that's never been seen before.
And yes, it tells the time.
But, once again, this watch needs your iPhone to do most of these things. And it either needs to be in Bluetooth range (30 or so feet), or it can connect over Wi-Fi in a home or office to extend that range further.
Design
Apple wants you to think of the Apple Watch as fine jewelry. Maybe that's a stretch, but in terms of craftsmanship, there isn't a more elegantly made piece of wearable tech.
Look at the Apple Watch from a distance, and it might appear unremarkable in its rectangular simplicity compared with bolder, circular Android Wear watches. It's clearly a revamped sort of iPod Nano. But get closer, and you can see the seamless, excellent construction.
I reviewed the stainless-steel Apple Watch, with a steel link band -- a $1,000 configuration. I also wore it with two different Sport Bands, one white and one blue.
The Apple Watch feels a bit chunky compared to Apple's stable of super-slim gadgets, but it doesn't look big on the wrist. The larger 42mm version has length, width and thickness similar to the Pebble Steel, one of the smaller smartwatches available. The 38mm version is even smaller. The 42mm version I reviewed felt great on my wrist and didn't feel uncomfortable at all.
Compare the Apple Watch to the Moto 360, the Pebble Steel and the 2011 iPod Nano with wristband.
Apple Watch's curved-rectangle form will polarize: some will find it looks great, others will see it like some sort of space-age iPod. Others will be annoyed it's not circular, or isn't thinner. Some won't like the curved glass (or sapphire crystal) that covers the edges and makes it seem like scratch magnet. The steel version I've worn for months has gotten a lot of scuffing and scratching all over its polished body, but the display has stayed pretty scuff-free.
The Digital Crown, Apple's specialized way of interfacing with the watch, sits off to the side, looking just like the part of the watch that used to wind older watches. But in this case, the crown is a mini scroll wheel. You can click it or turn it, and it moves smoothly and beautifully. A second button below brings up favorite contacts, or triggers Apple Pay with a double-click.
Most navigating happens by swiping and tapping the display, but that crown can be used for some navigation in some apps, or as a pinch-to-zoom replacement. I kept forgetting to use it at first, except to press it to get back to app menu (that grid of apps which I'll get to in a bit). Over time, I got used to it, but I still tended to use my finger for swipes instead.
Under the hood
All Apple Watches have a new S1 processor made by Apple, that "Taptic" haptic engine and a force-sensitive and very bright OLED display, which is differently sized on the 38mm and 42mm models. The watch has its own accelerometer, gyrometer and heart-rate monitor, but no onboard GPS. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz Wi-Fi to connect to your phone or your home network. There's a built-in speaker and microphone, but no headphone jack.
The many-nested worlds of the Apple Watch interface
The old iPod Nano had a grid of apps to swipe through, like an iPhone. Samsung's Gear watches use a similar approach. Google's Android Wear uses a blank slate at first, pushing notification cards while hiding its apps behind a scrolling menu.
The Apple Watch has its main watch faces, but also two levels of apps: Glances, which are a lot like the quick-glance app summaries in iOS 8's pull-down "Today" menu (or the occasional cards that appear in Android Wear), and full-fledged apps. You swipe up for Glances, down for on-watch notifications like texts or Twitter/Facebook alerts and click the Digital Crown button in to get to that "home screen" grid of glowing circular apps you've seen in all the ads.
Let's start from the top.
Watch faces: Things of beauty
Apple has spent a lot of time making its collection of watch faces great, and the effort shows: these are a beautiful bunch. The old iPod Nano had fun watch faces, but many of Apple's are actually clever and useful: a chronometer becomes a customizable stopwatch; a solar cycle face shows actual sunset and sunrise times, presenting changing arcs depending on the season; a jaw-dropping planetary face shows the Earth and Moon, but properly lit to reflect day, night, and lunar cycles. You can see all the planets in their current alignment, or spin the crown and see their positions change by date. There's also Mickey Mouse.
The watch faces are customizable, to a point: numbers can be added, colors changed and many "complications" (a watch industry term for extra information on a watch) altered. You can see battery life, calendar appointments, daily fitness and more at a glance. Tap, and those zones open the full app.
Apple's clock collection won't currently allow third-party extensions or watch faces to join in the fun, but that will change in the fall with WatchOS 2. Apple will also add more watch faces then, including a few that can add customized photos or photo albums. But, still, the watch face assortment feels limited compared to Android Wear. It's also odd how many of the 10 watch faces opt for round analog designs even though the watch is rectangular. I would have preferred more digital-style options like those on the Pebble Steel. Notifications pop up as they do on the iPhone, and can be managed individually.
Glances and notifications, taps and pings: How you get information
There are a lot of ways to look at little bits of info surfaced by the Apple Watch. Notifications pop onto the screen as on most smartwatches. You can swipe down and look at them all, if you want, or delete them. There are also Glances, permanent little slides of mini-info that basically work like Widgets on iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite. Swipe up, and you can swipe back and forth through little interactive tiles. Most apps work with Glances, but not all. Battery life, weather, music control, basic airplane mode and find-your-watch pings, quick news headlines -- you get the picture.
What a Glance looks like on the Apple Watch.
As I wore the watch on the first day, I felt a rippling buzz and a metallic ping: one of my credit card payments showed up as a message. Apple's "Taptic Engine" and a built-in speaker convey both a range of advanced taps and vibrations, plus sounds. Unlike the buzz in a phone or most wearables, these haptics feel sharper: a single tap, or a ripple of them, or thumps.
Sometimes the feelings are too subtle: I don't know if I felt them or imagined them. My wrists might be numbed from too many smart devices. I set my alerts to "prominent" and got sharper nudges on my wrist.
Notifications do feel distinct from each other thanks to those haptics, but associating the feelings and sounds with what they are takes getting used to. The range of feelings the Apple Watch can pull off is greater than other smartwatches, and the accompanying sounds also help give the nudges extra dimension (you can silence those sounds, too, but I kept them on).
One great thing about the Apple Watch's notifications is that you can individually manage them, like on the iPhone. You can also set them differently than the iPhone, depending on what you need. I haven't even begun to dig deep into customizing mine, but Apple offers a lot of ways to tweak your settings.
Siri works hands-free, or by holding down the Digital Crown.
Siri on your wrist
It turns out that Siri, a feature I barely use on my phone, is noticeably useful on Apple Watch. Like Google Now on Android Wear, it's a catch-all way to speak and do things in ways that can cut through the menus and swipes. Opening apps, sending messages, getting directions or finding out the core temperature of the Earth to settle a debate with your 6-year-old while on a drive. You can reach Siri by pressing and holding the crown button, or by raising your wrist and saying, "Hey, Siri." Voice recognition was excellent, surprisingly quick and more useful than you'd expect. (Apple's first software update for the Watch includes improvements to Siri's functionality, and WatchOS 2 will add even more features.)
I didn't even use Siri for the first few days, but then I realized how useful it was. Just like on the iPhone, it can also bring up things like movie times and sports schedules with graphics and tables, too. The small display can sometimes induce squinting, though.
My wife had mixed feelings on emoji.
Communicating: Talk, text, emote
Apple has offered a strange spectrum of ways to communicate: a clever friend wheel, which pops up when you click the flat button on the Apple Watch's side, stores favorites. You can dial up someone, literally, and then text, call via speakerphone or headphones, and send a variety of "digital touch" messages if that person also has an Apple Watch.
Those digital touches feel mostly like flirting: quick sketches in glowing light, taps the other person can feel, or sending your heartbeat via thumping haptic vibrations by holding two fingers down. I tested these with a willing Apple employee on the other side, and my wife kept wondering why I was getting smiley faces and throbbing heartbeats in the middle of the day. They might be cute for new couples who like buying Apple products together. Over time, I've stopped using it (also, there aren't that many people I know that have Apple Watches).
Sending a little triceratops doodle.
Apple Watch's calling and speakerphone elements are like what Samsung's Gear watches have offered: the watch connects with your phone remotely. Apple's microphone is excellent: people I called had no problem hearing me and didn't even know I wasn't on my phone, even with the watch down at chest level. But I found that I had to lift the watch up to my face, mainly so I could hear them. It wasn't always easy: the speaker's volume is on the low end and a little tinny. You can use Bluetooth headphones, but oddly, you can't use the Apple Watch as a remote to place calls while your phone is in your pocket and your wired headphones are on.
Sending messages via the Apple Watch can be accomplished by dictating texts, much like sending a message via Google's Android Wear, or by sending actual recorded audio messages (as you can do on iPhones with iOS 8). Both come in handy, and audio messages help when transcriptions fail. There are no onscreen keyboards, but Apple supplies canned responses you can pick and customize, like "be home soon."
Apple's own set of animated emoji are weird and cute: massive smiley faces that melt into hearts, tears, tongues or any in-between combination. (My wife called them "fun but creepy!") Or, you can pick hearts or hand gestures. No omelettes, airplanes, silverware or pets yet, alas: a full emoji assortment seems called for. (Thefirst software update for the Apple Watch adds support for hundreds of new Emojis).
Apps
The iPhone and iPad have, collectively, one of the most amazing app collections ever created. Games, productivity, entertainment; it's fantastic. On the Apple Watch, for now, you'd better curb your expectations: many of the current apps feel like shaved-down "lite" versions of the larger apps, at best. Yes, there are thousands of them. But, these are all going to get updated very soon. In the fall, a new WatchOS 2 software update will allow full-featured apps that can live natively on the watch. Until then, know that current third-party apps mostly feel like a letdown.
