Is it possible that the best possible UX solution for winding a mechanical watch and controlling a digital OS is exactly the same? Perhaps. But that seems improbable to me. It's hard to know until the thing is out in the wild, but I would expect a lot of people fiddling awkwardly with the top half of that tiny little dial as the bottom of the dial digs into their wrist. Doesn't seem terribly fun.
Or to look at it differently, both of Apple's other consumer hits (iPod, iPhone) introduced a navigation interface that was completely novel and way better than anything else on the market (iPhone => finger navigated multi-touch screen, iPod => rotary dial). A crown on a watch is definitely not novel, and I'm thoroughly skeptical it will be way better than its competition.
That being said, it's unlikely that this thing bombs. But as a test of innovation post-Steve, I'm just not seeing it. And over time, the luster of Apple will fade if there's no innovation.