The wearable tech market has been growing quickly over the past few years, with many companies looking for ways to make tech less intrusive.
How do Android Wear and the new Apple Watch stack up in terms of making technology less intrusive?
Both Android Wear and Apple's Watch OS, which is the operating system running on the Apple Watch, offer users quick notification alerts to their wrist. That move alone already decreases how intrusive their tech is by a lot - no pulling the phone from your pocket to see who's trying to reach you.
Android Wear is essentially a version of Google Now strapped to the user's wrist. Google Now has evolved into Google's personal assistant, going up against the likes of Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana.
Just putting Google Now in a watch is not necessarily a bad thing. One of the things that Google Now has over other personal assistants is that it is far more visual than the likes of Siri or Cortana. Google Now is essentially a hub for all of a user's information for that particular day. Turning that into a watch interface not only makes the information on a user's wrist relevant, but it is also a way to differentiate it from Android, making it not just a phone strapped to the wrist.
The Apple Watch, however, is a little different. While the term is perhaps not "intrusive," the goal of the Apple Watch does not seem to be as much about getting technology out of the way. In fact, an Apple Watch is very much about fashion, about showing off and about status. It's a different way of approaching marketing.
The Apple Watch seems much more like a smartphone strapped to the user's wrist. It offers an interface to browse through apps much like the interface on iOS. Apple recognizes that users can't scroll through Watch OS the same way that they can with iOS, but it still puts apps at the center of the Apple Watch experience.
Because of this, strapping an Apple Watch to the user's wrist seems a little like strapping on an iPhone. An Android Wear device, however, is a completely different interface. While it does, of course, make use of apps, this is more to augment the Android Wear experience rather than to be at the center of it.
Google Now also pulls information from things like email, essentially taking a lot of the grunt work out of scheduling calendar events and planning travel. Android Wear is clearly better at serving the user in the background. The Apple Watch is far more flashy and more the center of attention. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, for those who want tech to be less in the way, an Android Wear device is the better choice.
