It's funny that of all things Apple's watches are square and Android watches are round. It feels like it should be the other way around.

Not really - watches are historically round because of roundrel clock faces. A square is a better form factor for literally everything else that an Apple Watch does. So it is the Apple move to shape the watch to perform best at 95% of its tasks, and a Google move to shape the watch to perform best with a subset of available watch faces.

This isn't even new. Casio etc have designed digital square watches for decades because they don't need to be round without clock arms.

I own (and prefer) a Garmin smartwatch but I actually think Apple got it right with the square screen.

A round display suits analogue watch faces but square is better for utility.

E.g. map reading or lots of data fields during exercise. Where you want more display given size of wrist real estate.

Ironically Garmin used to make a square screen Epix but switched to round.

Historically, men's wristwatches were round and ladies' watches were square. I'm not sure why other than that humans will gender-code anything.

Women’s watches were smaller and were more likely to be integrated with the watch band. That tended to square off the case. The actual watch face was still based on hands moving in a circle.

Men’s watches when they are integrated with the bands also tend to be squarish.

Do not get me started on the gender coding of children’s clothes and accessories. Judging by pictures of me and my little brother in the 80s, and comparing that to the clothes for sale now, manufacturers spent the past 40 years learning how to avoid making anything that would be purchased for a girl being suitable to be handed down to her little brother.

Given the geometry of a wrist, you can comfortably fit a bigger usable display on a square watch face than a round one.

I still prefer the look of the galaxy watch classic