The Pixel Watch will fail for the same reason every other Apple Watch killer failed

Honestly, the Macalope would rather die in bed than on a hill, but one of the hills he’s willing to die on is Square Watch Hill.

Dying on a hill seems awfully convenient for people who have to move your body. “Just roll it down.” I’M NOT DOING THIS FOR YOU, KEVIN. THIS HILL HAS MEANING.

Kevin doesn’t care. Kevin only cares about Kevin. That’s why he got into the morgue business.

At this year’s I/O, Google Pixel Watch announced, their latest attempt to make something stick on the wall of smartwatches. Unlike the tuna cans of yesteryear, the Pixel Watch is reasonably sized and quite attractive.

For a round watch that is.

Yes, the Macalope did.

Most people will tell you that watches are supposed to be round. Those square watches never existed before and are some kind of abomination that Apple created just to make things easier for themselves. What people desperately want, no, need is to have the hands cover the complications twice an hour so that they only have a vague idea of ​​what the day and date is. This information should ultimately remain elusive, as it is an important metaphor for life. Time passes in mysterious ways and then you die. Your watch should be a constant reminder of that.

That’s grim, but maybe that’s the times we live in.

Let Macalope be perfectly clear here: the fetishization of round watches is silly and as retrograde as early automobiles that looked like horse-drawn carriages. Round watch faces are, without pun intended, an anachronism. The only reason watch faces are round is that a round face describes the movement of watch hands. That’s it. Not that a round watch fits better on a wrist. It doesn’t. When you take the hands out of the equation, everything about round watches is just an inconvenience: displaying complications, attaching straps, keeping the watch from rolling off the table…everything.

Time, of course, doesn’t move in the discrete increments marked by a digital watch face. It flows, like a river. In fact, it’s a river that runs through the forest of Reality in the… well, the Macalope doesn’t want to give too much away. You will know after you die. Whether you die on a hill or not.

Regardless, please bring your swimsuit and a flotation device. And interestingly enough, you still need sunscreen. But the sun is… well, you’ll see.

So yes, the sweep of a seconds hand speaks a little better of the movement of time if, in fact, your watch hand sweeps rather than ticks. But there are other ways to represent that besides hands. And even if you decide to stick with the hands, a square watch face allows you to put complications in the corners, rather than under the course of the hands. And if he uses a watch face that makes better use of the space offered by a square, it’s like that hotdog gif on the face, except with complications instead of hotdogs.

IDG

The Pixel Watch looks great when displayed with hands. It looks decidedly less cool when displaying notifications, since you can only see one at a time. Maybe that’s a “feature” (it won’t bother you that much!), but if you take that stance, you might not want a smartwatch in the first place, because part of the point is information. The Macalope has no doubt that this watch will attract many people simply because it is round and the clocks are it’s supposed to be roundeven though they were never complete and maybe from time to time you should re-evaluate how form relates to function.

The horny is ride or die on square clock faces. All the way to the top of the hill.