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I wanted it to work. I wanted to fall in love, like so many of my friends. “It takes a while,” they said. “Don’t expect a coup de foudre. Let it build over time.”
我希望这次能成功。我希望自己能像很多朋友那样爱上它。“这需要花点时间，”他们说。“别指望一见钟情，感情是需要时间慢慢培养的。”
So I did. I knew other people looked at what I had with envy. But a month and a half after we first got together, I have decided it is time to — well, call time.
于是我就这么做了，我知道其他人用嫉妒的眼光看着我所拥有的东西。但当初次邂逅过去一个半月之后，我觉得——好吧，这么长的时间已经够了。
I am breaking up with my Apple Watch. The relationship was, despite all expectations, not what I needed. All the focus on San Francisco and Apple’s next big innovation this week (streaming!) made me realize it was not playing my tune.
我就这样抛弃了我的苹果手表。尽管我对这段关系期待颇高，但它毕竟不是我需要的。这个星期，人们都把目光投向旧金山，密切关注着苹果公司下一个重大创新（流媒体！），于是我也明白，它放的不是我喜欢的调调。
Still, I will never regret the weeks we spent together. They taught me some valuable truths about myself.
不过，我不会为我们共度的几个星期感到后悔。这段时间让我认识到了关于自身的重大真相。
Like, for example, that I do not want to be defined by a talking point on my wrist.
比方说，我确实不想用手腕上显眼的玩意儿彰显身份。
There is a reason that I carry the same (no logo) handbag everywhere I go, a reason my (pre-Apple) watch had no bells or tourbillon whistles; a reason I gravitate toward clothes that are not identifiable by season or designer and do not appear in any advertisements I have ever seen.
所以我走到哪儿都只是带着一个没有标识的手袋，在用这个苹果手表之前，我的手表没有闹铃，也没有陀飞轮的声响；我只喜欢那些没有标明当季时新或是著名设计师的衣服，那些我没在广告里见过的衣服。
I spend a lot of time in a world where products are shorthand for people, and I know too well the risks of having such semiology attached to myself (though I fully acknowledge my willingness to attach it to others).
在这个我生活多年的世界上，商品被简化，卖给人们，我深深知道把这样一种符号意义同自己联系起来会有什么样的危险（尽管我知道自己也会把这样的符号和别人联系起来）。
But when I started wearing the Apple Watch (the 38-millimeter case with a Milanese Loop band, which is the smaller size with a flexible stainless steel bracelet), it became a subject of conversation no matter where I was: in meetings at work, at the bagel store, at my son’s track meet. It has been so everywhere, marketed to so many people, there was just no mistaking it.
但是一旦我戴上苹果手表（38毫米表壳米兰尼斯表带，是比较小的型号，有可弯的不锈钢手镯表带），它就成了话题的焦点，不管我走到什么地方：工作会议、面包店、儿子的家长会。它早已无处不在，做过无数推广，人们绝不可能认错。
First everyone wanted to know about it. Then they wanted to try it. Then they made certain assumptions about me.
一开始，所有人都想了解它，后来他们就想试试看，再接下来他们就开始对我产生特定的猜测。
Which, frankly, I would have made about any woman like myself walking around with a big black box on her arm.
坦白地说，如果看到一个像我这样的女人胳膊上挎着一个大黑箱子到处走来走去，我也免不了对她产生同样的想法。
Because no matter how attractive the Apple Watch is in the context of other smartwatches or smartbands, no matter how much of an aesthetic advance its rounded corners and rectangular display, it still looks like a gadget. Especially on someone, like me, with relatively small wrists.
因为，不管苹果手表在智能手表和智能手环界有多么诱人，不管它的圆角和矩形显示器是多大的美学进步，它看上去仍然只是个小玩意儿。特别是对于我这种手腕很细的人来说。
Not only does its face effectively span the width of my forearm, but the cool little screen saver that so many reviewers have lauded — the Mickey or the butterfly or the galaxy (which is the one I have) or the pseudo-watch hands (the one that, notably, is always on in every picture of the watch, and actually makes it look like a watch) — is also functionally sleeping most of the time.
它的表盘宽度和我的手腕差不多宽，还有它那个酷酷的屏幕保护，很多人看了都啧啧赞叹——有米老鼠、蝴蝶和星空（我的就是星空），还有两个假表针（所有苹果手表的图片上都有这个假表针，搞的它好像真的是块表一样）——大多数时间，这个屏保就睡在表盘上。
Every time I see it, I want to shriek, “Beam me up, Scotty.”
每次看见它我都想大叫一声，“传送我上去，斯科蒂。”（语出《星际迷航》——译注）
Not that it would do much good. Typing doesn’t awaken the picture. Even when I rock my arm back and forth energetically, it often takes a few tries before up the earth pops. The default position is blank.
倒不是说它没用。键入不能激活屏保，就算我用力来回晃胳膊，也得花上好几次，那个地球才能跳出来。默认位置是空白的。
Just as my default position when trying to read an email or the text of a headline on the small screen involves raising my wrist to near eye level — or, if a phone call is involved and my actual phone is not reachable, talking into thin air. If your children or acquaintances come upon you, it’s pretty much an invitation to ridicule.
在这个小屏幕上，想读email、短信、新闻标题，我习惯的姿势一般是把手腕举到视平线处，如果有电话打来，手机又不好拿，得用它来打电话的时候，感觉就像是对着空气说话。如果你的孩子或者熟人这时走到你身边，很可能会笑话你。
“Why is that more embarrassing than endlessly looking at a phone?” my friends said when I complained.
“为什么这比频繁看手机更让人尴尬呢？”我抱怨的时候，朋友们都这么问我。
It’s a valid question, but after some contemplation I think the answer is simple: A phone is hand-held, and we are used to seeing people read things held in their hands. Like, say, books. But seeing somebody staring at her wrist (or merely sneaking a surreptitious glance at it) telegraphs something else entirely: (1) rudeness or (2) geekiness.
这是个好问题，但是经过思考，我觉得我的回答很简单：手机是拿在手里的，而我们已经习惯了看到人们阅读拿在手里的东西，比方说读书。但是看着某人盯着手腕（或者是鬼鬼祟祟地偷瞄自己的手腕），还用它来发讯息，这就让人觉得又不礼貌，又像是科技狂。
This doesn’t seem to have bothered the tech writers, most of whom wrote persuasively positive reviews of the gadget, primarily based on what it could do for you. And it is certainly more subtle than Google Glass, though I am not sure that is saying much.
对于科技写手们来说，这算不上什么大事，他们大多数人都为苹果手表写了令人信服的乐观评论，内容主要是基于它的功能。而且它显然比谷歌眼镜精致，不过我觉得这也说明不了太多问题。
Granted, all of this would likely pale in importance if the watch were truly transforming my life, as my iPhone has. But I have never had a problem turning away from my emails when I need to concentrate on something else — I’ve effectively trained myself to compartmentalize — so I need specific alerts as to what is important.
退一步说，如果这块表真的能像iPhone手机那样改变我的生活，那么一切也就都没什么大不了的了。我一向训练自己把手头的事划分得很清楚，需要专心做事的时候，我从来不会分心去查email，所以我需要有个提醒，告诉我什么邮件是重要的。
And the small screen is simply too small to really read on, so I’ve been more annoyed than happy when it alerted me to texts from my loved ones; and when I saw a headline, all I wanted to do was find the rest of the story.
小屏幕实在是太小了，根本没法用它好好读东西，所以每当它提示我，重要的亲朋好友给我发信息了，我的感觉不是高兴，而是烦躁；而且我又是那种一看标题就忍不住想读内容的人。
Besides, the busywork the watch’s apps can replace — handing over airline boarding passes, opening hotel room doors — seems less like an advance than a loss of control. Call me a Luddite, but honestly, I don’t mind unlocking things with my actual hands. The new watch OS announced this week may change the situation, but I am not sure I have the patience to wait.
此外，苹果手表上的应用可以替代一些工作，但看上去不像是进步，倒像是失控——提交登机牌、打开酒店房间等等。你可以说我是个厌恶技术的人，但老实说，我不介意用自己的双手打开门锁。新的苹果手表操作系统宣布这个星期可以在这方面进行改进，但我不确定我还有没有耐心等下去。
Likewise (and I know this will be heresy to anyone really excited about the coming Fitbit initial public offering), the fitness-app aspect — the tracking of my steps, the measuring of my heart rate, the telling me to stand up when I am in the middle of an article — seems more like a burden than freedom.
同样（我知道对于那些兴奋期待Fitbit健康手环首次公开募股的人们来说有点像异端邪说），那些健康应用更像是给人带来负担而不是自由——就是那些帮你计步、测量你的心跳、提醒你文章写到一半站起来活动的应用。
I have worked hard to wean myself from a reliance on exercise machines telling me how hard I had worked — how many calories I had burned, how many stairs I had climbed — in part because I knew I was cheating pretty much all the time anyway and thus could not trust the results, and in part because it became an excuse to modify, or not, my ensuing behavior.
我费了很大力气让自己不再依赖锻炼器械，不让它来告诉我我锻炼得有多么辛苦——我燃烧了多少卡路里、我爬了多少级台阶——部分是因为我知道自己经常作弊，机器给的结果靠不住，部分也是因为它成了一种借口，来掩饰或不掩饰我随之而来的行为。
But the truth is, I know when I am in shape; I can see the difference in my body and feel it when I ride my bike in the park. The watch threatened to drag me back into a numbers-driven neurosis, and that’s a temptation I would rather not have. (Also, I have too many friends who look at their fitness tracker in the middle of conversation, then immediately spring up and start walking around energetically, to feel it is really additive to my life.)
但事实是，我知道自己很健康；如果我去公园里骑自行车，我能感觉到自己的身体和心情发生了变化。这块表威胁着我，要把我拖回到由数字驱动的神经兮兮中去，我宁愿不要这种诱惑（我有不少朋友都是说着一半话就开始看他们的健康追踪器，然后马上跳起来，精神头十足地绕圈走路，我觉得这对于我来说完全多余）。
I did like the fact that I could turn my phone ringer off, and the watch would vibrate when, say, my children were on the line and I needed to take the call. But in the end that wasn’t enough.
我确实喜欢把手机关成静音，孩子们打来电话时手表会震动，我再拿起电话。但到头来这点好处还不够。
When I told a colleague about the breakup, he observed that perhaps I wasn’t the target for the Apple Watch. That I should be sure to tell the Siri on my wrist, “It’s not you, it’s me.” He may be right.
我告诉一个同事我抛弃了苹果手表，他指出，或许我不是它的目标用户。我一定得告诉手腕上的Siri，“不是你的问题，是我的。”他也许是对的。
Except I don’t think so, and not just because often, opposites do attract. But because I actually think I am the intended: a nontech person who wouldn’t otherwise have too many gadgets (a phone, an iPad, a laptop), but who could be seduced into buying another because of its desirability.
但我并不这么认为，这不仅仅是因为不是冤家不聚头。而是因为我觉得我的确是它的目标用户：一个非技术型的人，本来不愿意拥有太多科技产品（手机、iPad、笔记本电脑就够了），但却可能被诱惑着多买下一件，只因为它太诱人了。
That’s the way Apple increases market share and owns a category, after all: by sucking in those who are not Apple addicts. It’s why the company worked so hard to get close to the fashion flock.
所以苹果的市场份额才日益增加，并且独树一帜：靠的就是吸引那些不迷恋苹果产品的人。所以苹果公司才那么努力，去贴近时尚人群。
But here’s the thing: The watch isn’t actually a fashion accessory for the tech-happy. It’s a tech accessory pretending to be a fashion accessory. I just couldn’t fall for it.
但问题就是这样：苹果手表其实并不是为喜欢技术的人设计的时尚配饰。它是假装成时尚配饰的技术配饰。我就是不喜欢罢了。
