Apple Watch: A Take Control Crash Course

Interact with the Apple Watch

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he explained that the ideal tool to use it was not a stylus or physical buttons, but our fingers. The responsiveness of the touchscreen made finger gestures—tapping, swiping, and pinching—the new language of interaction with technology. But fingers are usually too big to do the same with a watch ①, so Apple incorporated additional interaction methods.

① watchOS doesn’t use pinch-to-zoom because it would awkwardly obscure the Apple Watch face.

The Digital Crown

Let’s start with the watch’s signature controller, the knob on the side called the Digital Crown. A crown is a staple ...