John Gruber, “Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations“:
The most intriguing and notable thing about Apple Watch’s design, to me, is the dedicated communication button below the digital crown. […] Apple is notorious for minimizing the number of hardware buttons on its devices… The only explanation is that Apple believes that the communication features triggered by that button are vitally important to how we’ll use the device.
I had that same thought when viewing the Apple Watch unveiling and noticing the unusual dedicated button: Apple must consider those communication features vitally important.
It took me a little while to get used to the idea, but it now seems quite natural to virtually tap loved ones on the wrist and send them little drawings and heartbeats. Perhaps in five years we’ll be wondering how we ever got by without that capability.