With the release of the new Apple Watch in-stores, we just had to get one…for R&D of course! The great news is that ECAL events, calendars and alerts sync very well with the Apple Watch.

All your favourite sports schedules, fitness classes, education curriculum, TV programming, powered by ECAL…straight to your wrist, in a really nice display!

The calendar has a range of displays. A ‘month’ view, ‘list’ view and ‘day’ view. Tap into an event to see a detailed ‘event details’ view.

What is noticeable, is that the calendar is very accessible on the watch, and easy to use. Along with the clock (yes, it tells the time!), and the daily activity tracker, the calendar is a real mainstay of the watch experience.

The ‘glances’ feature (a ‘quick view’ dashboard showing a range of important updates) is a quick way to see ‘what’s on’. The first swipe will show you the next event coming up; Tap and you will see events for the next week; Tap again to dive into the event details.

You can also access the full calendar from the Calendar app on the home screen display.

Event alerts are instantly displayed on the screen, with a vibration (more of a mild ‘thump’) to let you know. What’s best, I can’t help thinking about the ‘dynamic bars’ of the ECAL logo when I look at the various events, as they are all nicely colour coded. Very cool.

Unfortunately the quick links in the event details (eg: Buy Tickets, Video, Latest News etc) are not clickable from the watch, as Apple Watch doesn’t have a browser….yet.

Although the Apple Watch is really just a pairing device for your iPhone (your phone has to be within 10m), it is very useful and seems to ‘makes sense’. The calendar is a really nice experience, it ‘chunks’ the calendar down into easy to view event ‘bites’, in order to give me a great view of what’s coming up.

The calendar, once seen as a separate piece of logic, is now so much more integrated than that, and the watch demonstrates this really well. It makes sense right, it’s a watch! The calendar is fast becoming the default tool for which we all manage time, and as such a great conduit for time based alerts, “right-time communications”.

There’s lots to explore on the watch, it’s pretty cool. There are some great apps. Twitter has voice recognition for making tweets, there’s Siri, some cool watch faces, and a camera. You can even be like ‘Dick Tracy’ and make calls. I like it. For mine, the Apple Watch is a winner.