Screenless wearables. Nothing to check, it just does one physical thing.

Been circling a category that doesn't seem to have a name yet.

My phone, my watch, every fitness thing I've ever bought all end the same way. Something happened to you, here's a screen, go interpret it yourself.

Then there's a whole other shelf. Heated wraps, pulse devices, red light panels, those compression sleeves runners wear at airports. You switch it on, it does one physical thing to you, you switch it off. Nothing to review afterwards.

The bit that interests me is the abandonment rate.

Everyone I know has a tracker in a drawer somewhere. I genuinely do not know a single person who quit using a heating pad.

My theory is that the screen is where the work lives, and work is the thing people drop. A device that asks nothing of you after you turn it off is a device you'll still own in March.

Where this falls apart is that I might just be describing appliances. A kettle asks nothing of me either. There's a real line somewhere between an appliance and a wearable and I can't find where it is.