Last week, Apple rolled out a potential game-changer that isn’t getting much attention — the Apple Notes app is (finally) on Apple Watches.
For those of us who collect huge puddles of brain drippings, it’s a godsend. Have a thought while scaling Yosemite? Dictate it. Need to jot something down during a silent retreat in Tibet? Swipe-type it. Think of a joke for your Nobel acceptance speech while skydiving? Scribble it into Notes on your watch face.
No thought goes unrecorded, no scenario overwhelms — and you don’t even need to reach for your phone.
This morning, for instance, I stood in the shower, shampoo dripping into my eyes, screaming, “Siri, note to self!” and it dutifully captured my extremely useless thoughts-in-the-moment on shampoo-bottle design. (Procter & Gamble: Call me. I have ideas.)
Sometimes it’s incredibly handy. On the way home from a meeting yesterday, I clicked on my watch and dictated a brain-dump while everything was still fresh. In five minutes I captured what would have taken an hour to recreate later. And the note was already waiting on my Mac when I got back to my desk.
Other times, it’s both handy and completely useless. At 3 a.m., I woke up, tapped the watch, and dictated the phrase “cheese worker.” Just that. “Cheese worker.”
Why? I have no idea. I don’t even remember waking up. And, what the hell is a cheese worker? Did I dream I was visiting Gouda? Was it a message from the Great Beyond? Beats me.
But I don’t question — Apple knows best. Perhaps my watch senses a great discovery — just as Newton imagined gravity and Beethoven conceived the Eroica, thanks to Apple Notes, I now have a Big Idea, too:
“Cheese worker.”
Well, at least I have it written down. Thanks, Apple.