That's a big part of it. Also, there is at least one other parallel to the phone space: customizing your desktop wallpaper and ringtones. The original iPhone

That's a big part of it. Also, there is at least one other parallel to the phone space: customizing your desktop wallpaper and ringtones. The original iPhone didn't have many options in this regard whereas many others did. Later, they added more options to customize these things more thoroughly (though never to the extent of homescreen widgets). On the watch side, I don't have an Apple Watch but I picked up a Moto 360 for around $150 last year. Not gonna get into the eternal Apple vs. The Rest debate but one things I've noticed (aside from agreeing with your thoughts on the adequacy of using it as a simple phone extension) is that my other most common activity is changing the face of the watch. It seems like such a simple thing but honestly, if someone offered me a $150-250 watch that simply told me the time and mirrored notifications from my phone, I might not be too enthusiastic. But if the proposition was just $150-250 for a watch where you could change the face to look any way you want, I think I'd still be tempted even without much in the way of other "smart" features. There's a huge range of watch faces I can download and there are simple tools that allow me to make my own. I can easily swap from something minimalist to something that looks like a luxury watch to something that looks like a Fallout Pipboy to something that looks like a neon sign with a couple of taps on my phone or watch. It's something I didn't expect to care much about but the sheer flexibility of a programmable and customizable watch face has made it one of those head-slappingly obvious features I should've seen a mile away. I wonder when/if the Apple Watch will give more options in this regard. Because no matter how cool the apps are, a watch is still a personal piece of jewelry as well. When that piece of jewelry is also a computer with a display, there's a lot of room for customization and personalization, even if they want to keep the core interface the same for consistency. A user-defined or even user-created default face for when your watch is just sitting on your arm would be great to have, even if tapping or interacting brought up the standard Apple Watch interface.