Not-quite-hands-on with the Apple Watch, and the questions it doesn’t answer

It would be exaggerating to say we got “hands-on” time with the Apple Watch that the company announced this morning. Apple had several tables sprinkled throughout its hands-on booth (the large white building you may have seen in pictures), and you could try on some watches at those tables. But those watches were in a non-interactive demo mode, and the only opportunity we got to see the watches actually working were in carefully guided mini-presentations given by the people at the tables.

Those little song-and-dance routines ran us through the same kinds of things that Tim Cook talked about on stage when he introduced the Apple Watch earlier today—using the “digital crown” to scroll and zoom, drawing and tapping out small messages to people in your contacts list, and a surface-level glance at some of the fitness information. We saw what it looks like to change watch faces, and to customize them. We experienced the "taptic" vibration the watch uses to let you know it wants something, and it was indeed as subtle as Cook said it was. We just didn’t get to actually take the watch's software for a spin, something that’s kind of integral for an accessory that you’re meant to have with you all the time.