1. They have customized size and band, while not the shape. I for one love round shape and hate the square shape, and I believe I'm not the only one with this preference.
2. They emphasized too much on the interaction with watch. IMO, watch is supposed to notify you new things, have you glance over it and do some quick responding. That's it. User should not use watch in the same way they use phone.
In Apple watch's demo, they have too much interaction showing there and the information on one screen is sometimes crowded. That's not a good sign.
I do like the new interaction pattern they introduced there though. Quite innovative IMO.
> User should not use watch in the same way they use phone.
Nonsense. Would you have said the same thing about people using phones only to talk when the iPhone came out? Not an Apple enthusiast, but I'm impressed with their efforts in constantly trying to redefine how we use "established" products.
Not impressed by what is shown of the Apple Watch, by the way.
I entirely disagree. I would hate to use a tiny watch the same way I use a phone. Input is dramatically more constrained and expecting to use it the same way seems silly to me.
>> "IMO, watch is supposed to notify you new things, have you glance over it and do some quick responding. That's it. User should not use watch in the same way they use phone."
Not enough people will pay several hundred dollars for that. I'm a geek and heavy smartphone user and I wouldn't pay $50 just to get notifications on my wrist. It needs to do more or there's only a small market.
yup. I keep my phone on vibrate in my pocket; the fundamental question they have to answer is why the hell do I need to pay $400 just to get notifications on my wrist? I presume the answer is look at all this cool stuff too! fitness / ui tracking, quick interactions, etc
It's going to remain a fundamental problem for the smart watch market: watches are primarily fashion items, and every single person has an often quite different preference from the next person. I have a very specific style of watch I like to wear, and there's zero chance Apple or Samsung is just going to happen to make that style.
That said, I'm sure they can sell millions of watches per year. It's just not going to move the needle on their $170 billion in sales.
I think even now, the smart watch market is very, very, very early. As in, these products are ten years too early, at least. The technology needs to get so small, the watch stays primarily what it will always be about: fashion, and the technology becomes so small, cheap, and hidden away you don't notice that first and it doesn't get in the way of the primary role of a watch.
>> "watches are primarily fashion items, and every single person has an often quite different preference from the next person. I have a very specific style of watch I like to wear, and there's zero chance Apple or Samsung is just going to happen to make that style."
I think it's important to remember than most people under around 30 years old do not wear a wrist watch. So they probably don't have a specific strap or face style they like. They want something cool something that makes it easier to take selfies or send stuff to Facebook.
I think that we will look back on this like the first iPhone. Very cool but missing lots of obvious features. If they can sell enough of them they can afford to push the research to make them smaller, faster, and better and in a few years we'll have the equivalent of the iPhone 4 which is when I think the iPhone finally nailed it. But to get there you have to start somewhere. I think this is the right place to start. It's good enough, it's better than what's out there, and lots of people will buy it.
I think the Moto 360 looks great in pictures but IRL the screen is too large, the black bar at the bottom is irritating and the UI isn't custom for the round watch face (the square interface is just cut out).
Wow, that's probably one of the most unusable, non-responsive product pages I've ever seen on the web.
After clicking the link, I stared at a black screen containing nothing but the "Moto 360" logo and a throbber for about 10 seconds before the actual page content started to display.
Scrolling is just completely broken: moving the mouse wheel in any direction will scroll the page down. But there's no at-a-glance summary of product features, so you must scroll through the whole mess just to find out about the product. Animations and videos begin playing as soon as their section of the page is scrolled to, without being triggered by deliberate user action. One of the sections uses some sort of bloom effect on the text that doesn't work properly and makes the text unreadable.
So after wading through all of that, I started reading some of the copy on the page, and while I was doing so, I was spontaneously sent back to the 'loading screen' with the logo and throbber while more content downloaded for another 5-10 seconds.
I'm on a 10 MB/s DSL connection at the moment. The page took a whopping 228.85 seconds (that's three minutes and forty-nine seconds) to load over 13 MB of content.
And, after all of that, I still don't have a clear idea of why I'd be interested in the product. This is just absolutely hellish web design.
I know, but he linked to the web page in order to provide background info on the product he was discussing, and I wanted to point out the extreme difficulty I had in actually obtaining that information from that site. Apologies if my comment was a bit of a rathole (but perhaps it's less of a rathole than actually attempting to visit that site would be).
When they announced the feature of sharing your heartbeat with your partner via vibrate, both my girlfriend and I went 'eeeeew'. Some things shouldn't be done through technology, just like that Japanese remote kissing device :)
Well, I don't see the eww factor in sharing a number. But then I also don't see the point, because the sensor will (just as the Motorola one) not reliably work when exercising and theres no tracking mechanism anyway.
(There are optical heart rate sensors that are made for exercise, and they have much brighter LEDs and specially designed case for shutting out exterior light)
How about listening to your newborn's heartbeat while you are away? It's just a selling point :) I don't mind listening to my own heartbeat once in a while.
I'm skeptical about a few things - mostly regarding the dial. They are trying to replace pinch-to-zoom, but how does it know where to zoom? Also, the main UI screen with all of the apps looks ridiculous. They don't want you touching the watch, unless it's to click on a tiny app icon?
You could put the bands on reversed, and the software could invert the screen but the knob would be on the bottom, vs. the top. It would work though not ideal.
Overly not impressed by the crown control... people who wear watches that need to be wound rarely do it while it's on their wrist. I would need to feel this "dial" control to be convinced this is a good idea.
Seems like a complete reversal. You have the watch-like Motorola running Android and looking like an actual watch, and here is Apples watch that looks like a refined Pebble and has quirky stuff like quick exchange bands that were previously more of the Android domain.
This is an Apple watch so they'll make billions of dollars out of it, no doubt. It looks like a good product too. But it doesn't have anything special compared to android based smartwatches, not even a round shaped one, plus I prefer google now for smart alerts. Still, of course it'll sell well and you'll still be able to install google now on it I guess.
It's still a little geeky looking - but much, much less geeky looking than the competitors. I would personally prefer a round face but I can understand how that make it harder to do such a useful/interactive UI. Round face is fine for notifications but not as good if you're interacting.
I am liking the idea of using the crown to help navigate around the interface. Glad they thought about it a lot more vs just compressing the phone down into a smaller UI (similar to the small iPod was).
Also, how smoothly did those icons on the home screen move around? For some reason I found that really impressive, now to find out what the battery life is like (nice use of MagSafe as well for charging, IMO)
Not a fan of those animated emoji at all. Not sure why they included those tbh.
I'm not seeing the crown being that effective. People who needed to use the crown to wind/set a watch almost always took it off to use it effectively. I don't see it being easy to use while it's on your wrist but I would have to put my hands on it I guess to really feel it. I am a collector of antique watches though, and none of them I would wind while wearing it.
I don't know If I'm an idiot, but I'm not seeing the huge deal here. Is the space from the pocket to the wrist such a chasm that it merits making a device like this?
I think a watch would be extremely handy to have while running, cycling, kayaking, etc. Something to track activity, change songs, or show a map when you are unable to use your phone.
Unfortunately, the $350 price point is way too high for something like that.
Are you saying that the phone in the water tight bag is not much use a a watch? Because yeah that makes sense. Or are you saying that the watch on your wrist with a Bluetooth connection to the phone is not much use as a watch? I don't understand that point.
It wasn't mentioned, but I fully assume the watch will be waterproof (at least water resistant). They incidentally come in contact with water too often (rain, hand washing, etc) to not be.
The Moto360 is water resistant and the Pebble is water proof, so if the Apple Watch isn't, it's seriously in trouble.
No doubt the reason they didn't say yet, is because it hasn't been finished yet. But yes, it will be at least water resistant, since if it's not, it would be useless. Apple wants to sell these things, so it won't make them useless.
Lots of quick-release iPhone mounts for bikes out there. At the same time, constantly squinting at a watch is distracting. I wouldn't be inclined to use it for cycling, it's definitely not useful for water sports, and many runners will also object to the need to carry a large(r) iPhone somewhere on their person.
So if it's a sports/fitness accessory, it's primarily for use in the gym.
Really, this feels more like the Newton of smart watches, rather than the iPhone 1 of smart watches. A good start that will become indispensable to a very small number of people.
I'd estimate at least 50% of all the times I look at my smartphone throughout the day are non-interactive uses--I'm checking on a notification, the time, or just the weather. I've been seriously looking into smartwatches lately as a way to eliminate this friction. It's not just an inconvenience -- it's awkward to pull out your phone repeatedly during dinner, for instance, just to see if it vibrated due to a critical work email or a BS Snapchat message that you don't care about.
It's the same reason the wristwatch itself was invented. It was preceded by detached timepieces that were stored in coat pockets. The pocket-to-wrist chasm was enough to merit creating wristwatches, and I think it's enough to merit smartwatches.
There is no mass smartwatch market at the moment. There are some smartwatches that sells in very small amount to niche audience but there is no mass market and I doubt one will exist until the end of the year. It's like 2005 for smartphones - there were some smartphones in the market but they were pretty bad and definitely not for everyone.
You might be right, but do bear in mind that almost exactly the same thing was said about the iPhone.
I have to imagine that if third-party apps make good use of the features and interface, it'll be quite a useful device to have. The fact that you can make NFC payments with it is cool.
>> You might be right, but do bear in mind that almost exactly the same thing was said about the iPhone.
But the difference is that the original iPhone was vastly better than everything else on the market in 2007/2008. It took a few years before we saw real parity from its competitors.
This Apple Watch appears to be a little bit better than its current crop of competitors, not vastly better.
It's definitely not too late, because there is not a single smartwatch on the market right now that has reached deep adoption. The Moto 360 has serious battery concerns and the Pebble Steel (the best smartwatch available right now IMHO) runs a fairly limited OS (which, on the plus side, gives it fantastic battery life).
There is no smartwatch market at the moment. Nothing out there save for the kickstarter release of the pebble has gained any positive buzz. If that continues then the 2015 release date won't matter. The price is another matter and may def. keep the watch from gaining any traction. Or it could play like the first ipod and iphone, with most everyone complaining about the price but sells well enough until price drops allow for ubiquity.
That was easily the most important part of the announcement for me as well. Hopefully it's open and other platforms can take part as well. We all knew that we needed a push from someone like Apple to make it happen and take it mainstream.
There was a prominent PayWave logo on the terminal in the demo video - it's definitely using the current NFC standard already supported by Android phones.
I can see it as being slightly useful to monitor heart rate and piloting the mp3 player, occasionally. But certainly not worth the cost and the burden (one more device to recharge and carry around). Also, a watch is a personal item. I wouldn't like to have the same watch as everybody else.
Apple Watch has NFC - now that is something none of the Android watches have. Don't pull your phone or wallet out, pay with your wrist. But by early 2015, Android Wear will catch up.
That's the single feature that the Apple Watch has that I'm interested in. Over the past year, I've been integrating NFC into a huge part of my daily life (from implants to door locks to smart tags all over my house) and having it in a watch is killer. Just not enough to jump back to the iPhone. Can't wait to see the Moto 360 r2 with NFC.
I'm curious about authentication. How do you make sure only authorized transactions go through without pulling out the phone (which would make having NFC on the watch irrelevant anyhow)?
Too bad about it requiring a phone. I was hoping to be able to ditch my phone and talk with a watch paired to a blue tooth headset. I'll keep dreaming.
Ehh, I have a nice mechanical watch. It and a notepad in my pocket mean I have no use for a smartphone, and I can use it in places where a smartphone would be inappropriate (rowing, exercising, during a concert, etc.) I doubt I'll ever buy a smartwatch but I love my dumbwatch.
I just don't think the watch market is really there. I feel like its shrinking steadily among younger people as the need for a time teller is replaced by the modern cell phone. I believe people have convinced themselves into convincing companies that they actually want a high tech wrist watch when, in reality, the market isn't that big and it is shrinking. I believe this whole craze started with the pebble. People see and think "cool", but then realize after a week of wearing it that they have no additional need being filled by it. There are of course exceptions (joggers for example might be a specific use case), but overall I think demand is lower than the current market saturation.
That's because all a watch did up to now was tell time, was wasn't enough to justify hanging one off your wrist unless you wished to signal your fashion sense/wealth. This watch does an awful lot more and appears to do it very very well. They'll sell by the truckload.
I think the watch as a phone accessory is a waste of time. Developed countries are still selling dumbphones like crack, the number of people who want a smartphone with a 2nd, expensive interface to it is probably pretty boring.
But these are going somewhere interesting - they could end up replacing phones, 4g sticks / hotspots, usb sticks etc.
Developed countries are still selling dumbphones like crack
But those people don't have any money, or at least don't spend any money, and are consequently of no interest to the larger ecosystem that can be built around smart devices. A cynical view, perhaps, but a realistic one.
Most activity in a gym benefits from a watch. I weight train and I already know the app I want for this.
ps -- I don't bring my phone because (1) the gym is gross, (2) I sweat like a pig, (3) I don't want to kill it; I bruise myself enough that between bars, plates, dumbbells, kettlebells, etc, there is 0% chance I wouldn't smash it. My wrist just doesn't get smacked as much as my pocket / upper thighs.
What's the advantage of this over an arm sleeve that your phone sits in for your specific use case though? Also, will you still have to have your iPhone on you or in your bag to use it at the gym? What tech is being used to communicate between the two devices and is it strong enough that you can wear the watch and have your iPhone at home? Sorry if they have answered these questions.
I've tried to use iPhone with arm sleeves in gym and when jogging. It's really inconvenient and I usually resort to using just earbud controls. We will see if Apple Watch is any better, but based on the announcement demos, it looks promising on that front.
Still doesn't solve the problem of needing the iPhone on you for the watch to connect, if that is indeed the case. Is there any info on the tech used to connect the devices besides a single mention of wifi on the site?
The benefit for something like a rest timer is you have to interact with it all the time so it's a giant pain to get your phone in and out of a sleeve repeatedly. Plus, again, I sweat like a pig when I lift heavy or run and the phones don't seem particularly waterproof. Plus my hands sweat too and I will drop it.
Think about the tens (hundreds?) of millions of teenagers that already have an iPhone - now they'll be able to "chat" back-and-forward at school, home, etc. etc. extremely easily and fast.
I honestly don't think too many people will be using it to tell time, they'll be using it to chat back and forward in a fast, convenient way and to interact with apps they love - twitter, Facebook, etc.
When you go to a restaurant or bar, how many people put their phone on the table and glace at it constantly? All of those people would use an Apple Watch.
that explains why they came up with that ability to send finger drawings back and forth so easily. You can use Siri to text. And since it dynamically extracts multiple choice buttons from questions with "or", replies are a simple touch.
Remember, it's "chat" in the loosest sense of the word - it's more or less time wasting banter back and forward. It's not supposed to be productive or achieve anything, other than back and forth games.
>> there's a reason the wrist watch replaced the pocket watch.
The funny thing is that I stopped wearing wrist watches when phones started fitting in my pocket. So my phone, while having extra features, isn't very different from a pocket watch.
And if there are a lot of people like me, you can make the argument that the pocket (or purse) watch subsequently replaced the wrist watch.
It's a cyclic evolution. Pocket watch to wrist watch to pocket phone to wrist phone. With technological breakthroughs practicality has to take one step back before catching up again.
Well, but screen size is an issue with "wrist phone". People like being able to watch videos, and reading stuff on their :
"pocket phones". If anything, phone screens have been getting bigger.
Well yeah, the smart pocket watch obviously trumps the dumb wrist watch. The point here is that now the wrist watch is smart again, it is likely to take over again for the same reasons it beat the pocket watch the first time.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not saying they'll completely replace smartphones, just that enough features can be moved to the wrist to make it worth wearing.
>> just that enough features can be moved to the wrist to make it worth wearing.
I'm afraid it's not quite so simple as that. It also has to be more than simply worth wearing.
* It has to be worth adding to the pile of devices that you're managing (remembering to charge, remembering to wear, connecting to your phone, security settings, etc).
* It has to be worth taking up another USB port in your charger (since it's not using a lightning or micro USB port)
* It has to be worth taking up more space on your nightstand for charging.
While I see a lot of benefits for sporty/health types and FOMO-afflicted notification addicts, I'm not so sure it's going to eat up the market the same way the iPhone and iPad did.
Of course, if they had, then they wouldn't have worn watches at all, just like most folks today do not wear watches for anything other than fashion. This doesn't in any way contest his point.
Sure it does. The fact that clocks weren't as ubiquitous provided an incentive to move the "personal clock" to the wrist, where it would be easier to check. Pocket watches wouldn't have been replaced by wristwatches in the modern world; they would simply have vanished.
If anything, your argument advocates for smartwatches. When I get a notification and I'm not physically at a desktop computer, there is no way for me to check that notification other than my phone. It's the exact same problem that you just wrote about pocket watches, except it's not about the time -- it's about all the other information that we now want instant access to and can only get by removing a physical device from our pockets.
Fitbit and Fuel Band prove there's a market, but these aren't mass market devices. Maybe the idea is to fit that functionality into a traditional mass market device and see if they can make it work.
How many emails do get a day? How much are you talking face to face with people? Wrist notifications are incredibly useful. Server down? Or just someone wanting to go to Chipolte? These devices enable us to filter out a lot of 'noise'.
And are incredibly dependent on picking which notifications to push to the wrist, implicitly raising their importance. Unfortunately, ml has not been a strong spot for apple historically, though after the maps debacle they may not underestimate it anymore.
There's value even in unfiltered notifications - at worst I've wasted a glance, as opposed to rooting around my pockets for my phone.
I've had a Pebble for the last year, and even its unfiltered notifications has been tremendously preferable over digging out my phone to see what's up.
I am also a pebble owner that feels the same way. If I don't check my phone or email fast enough I end up with a deluge of communication that I have to slog through and prioritize. The pebble keeps me 'honest' and I know exactly who is sending me stuff when.
Only annoying when you run into the people who insist on sending 10 2-word SMSes instead of a single 20-word SMS.
I find phone notifications much more annoying. Your phone buzzes in your pocket, you have no idea if it's important or if it's someone liking your Facebook status (or equally inane thing).
On the Pebble I take one look and dismiss it, which is still time wasted, but a lot less time wasted than pulling my phone out, and less risky than simply ignoring your phone when it buzzes.
> "I just don't think the watch market is really there. I feel like its shrinking steadily among younger people as the need for a time teller is replaced by the modern cell phone."
The market for a smartwatch isn't the same as the market for watches, in the same way that the market for smartphones isn't the same as the market of people who make phone calls.
Telling time is practically a formality on these devices, their selling point is basically everything else they do.
Whether or not Apple Watch is a competent entry into this category remains to be seen...
I don't doubt that the watch market is there. I just can't imagine myself wearing a watch. Having constant heart rate records is the only tangible benefit I can think of, but I'd rather have that on a much more subtle ankle or wrist bracelet.
Good thing Apple didn't create just another watch. I own a Pebble and outside of persistent connection issues, when it would work, I became very used to it and it integrated well with my life. It appears the Apple Watch is a better executed version of Pebble, and as such, I'm an instant customer.
Please forgive the repost but I replied just yesterday on a similar comment, different thread and don't want to type it all out again. I think the answer is more applicable here though.
Repost:
I was gifted a Pebble over a year ago and I admit I thought it was a bit of a gimmick at the time. I did however start wear it out of consideration for the person that gave it to me and the novelty of a new toy. :) (note too that I am an old-timer who still wears a watch regularly)
What happened however surprised me. I found the simple change of having notifications pop up on my wrist was saving me from pulling the phone out of its holder over and over during a day every time it chimed with an email or message. I get a ton of communication during the day but 70% of it doesn't require a response from me immediately... the remaining 30% however does. I was now able to filter incoming messages with barely an interruption to what I was doing at the time.
From there I expanded Apps to bringing up my calendar overview, putting navigation directions on my wrist, using silent alarms (wrist vibration) to alert me during meetings, etc. It allows me to be more connected to my phone, without being more connected to my phone, if you know what I mean.
I have since moved to an LG watch and I do like it. No more week long battery life but it will go well over a day easily. Lots more gimmicky applications like remote camera control, etc. but also useful things, like ticking items off my Keep grocery list as I wander the store... without holding my phone.
Is it perfect for everyone? Nothing is. But I will stand corrected for my early mocking of the form factor. I "don't leave home without it" now.
Edit: One other point I missed. I also wander around the house without carrying my phone anymore. The watch stays connected and I can get alerts without needing to have it beside me.
You should not define a market by a product. THe value of this is so that you do not have to pull bigger and bigger phones out of your pocket. It is not a watch, it is an easily seen notification device and simple input device. I think that people who are always looking at their phone need something like this. People that do not spend much time looking at texts, and screening calls will not need this.
You should not define a market by a product. THe value of this is so that you do not have to pull bigger and bigger phones out of your pocket. It is not a watch, it is an easily seen notification device and simple input device. I think that people who are always looking at their phone need something like this. People that do not spend much time looking at texts, and screening calls will not need this.
No talk of water resistance or battery life is pretty disappointing. Those two things are key for something I would like to keep on my wrist for as long as possible.
Bummed about lack of battery talk but there was at least one picture of the watch with water in it and a mention of sealed internal components. Believe waterproofing is a must
They did say that the speaker was water resistant and all the internal electronics were sealed, but didnt explicitly say the device itself was water resistant.
I rather prefer the Garmin Fit. Battery life is almost a year. It does only 2 things: whether I am active enough and sleeping enough. Do we really need to have notifications on the watch. Not sure. May be i am too old.
You can now get the vivosmart instead of the vivofit if you want notifications. The tradeoff is your battery life drops to something like 7 days. That's still pretty good though.
(Full disclosure, I'm a current Garmin employee but I don't work in the fitness area)
173 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] thread1. They have customized size and band, while not the shape. I for one love round shape and hate the square shape, and I believe I'm not the only one with this preference.
2. They emphasized too much on the interaction with watch. IMO, watch is supposed to notify you new things, have you glance over it and do some quick responding. That's it. User should not use watch in the same way they use phone.
In Apple watch's demo, they have too much interaction showing there and the information on one screen is sometimes crowded. That's not a good sign.
I do like the new interaction pattern they introduced there though. Quite innovative IMO.
Nonsense. Would you have said the same thing about people using phones only to talk when the iPhone came out? Not an Apple enthusiast, but I'm impressed with their efforts in constantly trying to redefine how we use "established" products.
Not impressed by what is shown of the Apple Watch, by the way.
I entirely disagree. I would hate to use a tiny watch the same way I use a phone. Input is dramatically more constrained and expecting to use it the same way seems silly to me.
Not enough people will pay several hundred dollars for that. I'm a geek and heavy smartphone user and I wouldn't pay $50 just to get notifications on my wrist. It needs to do more or there's only a small market.
That said, I'm sure they can sell millions of watches per year. It's just not going to move the needle on their $170 billion in sales.
I think even now, the smart watch market is very, very, very early. As in, these products are ten years too early, at least. The technology needs to get so small, the watch stays primarily what it will always be about: fashion, and the technology becomes so small, cheap, and hidden away you don't notice that first and it doesn't get in the way of the primary role of a watch.
I think it's important to remember than most people under around 30 years old do not wear a wrist watch. So they probably don't have a specific strap or face style they like. They want something cool something that makes it easier to take selfies or send stuff to Facebook.
I think that we will look back on this like the first iPhone. Very cool but missing lots of obvious features. If they can sell enough of them they can afford to push the research to make them smaller, faster, and better and in a few years we'll have the equivalent of the iPhone 4 which is when I think the iPhone finally nailed it. But to get there you have to start somewhere. I think this is the right place to start. It's good enough, it's better than what's out there, and lots of people will buy it.
(I'm not Che or Maradona, so I'm not ditching my analogue watch for a smart watch any time soon, even if I can pay with it..)
[1] https://moto360.motorola.com/
After clicking the link, I stared at a black screen containing nothing but the "Moto 360" logo and a throbber for about 10 seconds before the actual page content started to display.
Scrolling is just completely broken: moving the mouse wheel in any direction will scroll the page down. But there's no at-a-glance summary of product features, so you must scroll through the whole mess just to find out about the product. Animations and videos begin playing as soon as their section of the page is scrolled to, without being triggered by deliberate user action. One of the sections uses some sort of bloom effect on the text that doesn't work properly and makes the text unreadable.
So after wading through all of that, I started reading some of the copy on the page, and while I was doing so, I was spontaneously sent back to the 'loading screen' with the logo and throbber while more content downloaded for another 5-10 seconds.
I'm on a 10 MB/s DSL connection at the moment. The page took a whopping 228.85 seconds (that's three minutes and forty-nine seconds) to load over 13 MB of content.
And, after all of that, I still don't have a clear idea of why I'd be interested in the product. This is just absolutely hellish web design.
(There are optical heart rate sensors that are made for exercise, and they have much brighter LEDs and specially designed case for shutting out exterior light)
Where did they announce the brightness of the heart rate LEDs?
> specially designed case for shutting out exterior light
Well, it's sitting right against your wrist, pressed against it. I think that'll block out enough light.
I need to see this in person.
Overly not impressed by the crown control... people who wear watches that need to be wound rarely do it while it's on their wrist. I would need to feel this "dial" control to be convinced this is a good idea.
If it's a single element/app, it will just transition to a more detailed mode.
If it's a 2D canvas, it will be the center of that canvas. Kind of like how the zoom widget on Google Maps works today.
Not a fan of those animated emoji at all. Not sure why they included those tbh.
Unfortunately, the $350 price point is way too high for something like that.
300 ft.
> in a waterproof sack
Probably the one that contains your wallet and keys as well.
The Moto360 is water resistant and the Pebble is water proof, so if the Apple Watch isn't, it's seriously in trouble.
So if it's a sports/fitness accessory, it's primarily for use in the gym.
Really, this feels more like the Newton of smart watches, rather than the iPhone 1 of smart watches. A good start that will become indispensable to a very small number of people.
It's the same reason the wristwatch itself was invented. It was preceded by detached timepieces that were stored in coat pockets. The pocket-to-wrist chasm was enough to merit creating wristwatches, and I think it's enough to merit smartwatches.
Dead in the water. That's insanely expensive and too late in the smartwatch market in my mind.
I have to imagine that if third-party apps make good use of the features and interface, it'll be quite a useful device to have. The fact that you can make NFC payments with it is cool.
But the difference is that the original iPhone was vastly better than everything else on the market in 2007/2008. It took a few years before we saw real parity from its competitors.
This Apple Watch appears to be a little bit better than its current crop of competitors, not vastly better.
Also, I'm guessing that the "Edition" watches are going to sell for 10x that. And there'll be a months-long wait to get one.
I wonder if they'll find a market for this.
Also it requires an iPhone.
But these are going somewhere interesting - they could end up replacing phones, 4g sticks / hotspots, usb sticks etc.
But those people don't have any money, or at least don't spend any money, and are consequently of no interest to the larger ecosystem that can be built around smart devices. A cynical view, perhaps, but a realistic one.
ps -- I don't bring my phone because (1) the gym is gross, (2) I sweat like a pig, (3) I don't want to kill it; I bruise myself enough that between bars, plates, dumbbells, kettlebells, etc, there is 0% chance I wouldn't smash it. My wrist just doesn't get smacked as much as my pocket / upper thighs.
I honestly don't think too many people will be using it to tell time, they'll be using it to chat back and forward in a fast, convenient way and to interact with apps they love - twitter, Facebook, etc.
When you go to a restaurant or bar, how many people put their phone on the table and glace at it constantly? All of those people would use an Apple Watch.
EDIT: Just found this which says the same: http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/09/apple-watch-digital-touch/
Remember, it's "chat" in the loosest sense of the word - it's more or less time wasting banter back and forward. It's not supposed to be productive or achieve anything, other than back and forth games.
The funny thing is that I stopped wearing wrist watches when phones started fitting in my pocket. So my phone, while having extra features, isn't very different from a pocket watch.
And if there are a lot of people like me, you can make the argument that the pocket (or purse) watch subsequently replaced the wrist watch.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not saying they'll completely replace smartphones, just that enough features can be moved to the wrist to make it worth wearing.
I'm afraid it's not quite so simple as that. It also has to be more than simply worth wearing.
* It has to be worth adding to the pile of devices that you're managing (remembering to charge, remembering to wear, connecting to your phone, security settings, etc).
* It has to be worth taking up another USB port in your charger (since it's not using a lightning or micro USB port)
* It has to be worth taking up more space on your nightstand for charging.
While I see a lot of benefits for sporty/health types and FOMO-afflicted notification addicts, I'm not so sure it's going to eat up the market the same way the iPhone and iPad did.
I've had a Pebble for the last year, and even its unfiltered notifications has been tremendously preferable over digging out my phone to see what's up.
I find phone notifications much more annoying. Your phone buzzes in your pocket, you have no idea if it's important or if it's someone liking your Facebook status (or equally inane thing).
On the Pebble I take one look and dismiss it, which is still time wasted, but a lot less time wasted than pulling my phone out, and less risky than simply ignoring your phone when it buzzes.
I would argue that these devices create even more noise, given how they are even more accessible than a phone in a pocket or sitting on a desk.
The market for a smartwatch isn't the same as the market for watches, in the same way that the market for smartphones isn't the same as the market of people who make phone calls.
Telling time is practically a formality on these devices, their selling point is basically everything else they do.
Whether or not Apple Watch is a competent entry into this category remains to be seen...
Repost: I was gifted a Pebble over a year ago and I admit I thought it was a bit of a gimmick at the time. I did however start wear it out of consideration for the person that gave it to me and the novelty of a new toy. :) (note too that I am an old-timer who still wears a watch regularly)
What happened however surprised me. I found the simple change of having notifications pop up on my wrist was saving me from pulling the phone out of its holder over and over during a day every time it chimed with an email or message. I get a ton of communication during the day but 70% of it doesn't require a response from me immediately... the remaining 30% however does. I was now able to filter incoming messages with barely an interruption to what I was doing at the time.
From there I expanded Apps to bringing up my calendar overview, putting navigation directions on my wrist, using silent alarms (wrist vibration) to alert me during meetings, etc. It allows me to be more connected to my phone, without being more connected to my phone, if you know what I mean.
I have since moved to an LG watch and I do like it. No more week long battery life but it will go well over a day easily. Lots more gimmicky applications like remote camera control, etc. but also useful things, like ticking items off my Keep grocery list as I wander the store... without holding my phone.
Is it perfect for everyone? Nothing is. But I will stand corrected for my early mocking of the form factor. I "don't leave home without it" now.
Edit: One other point I missed. I also wander around the house without carrying my phone anymore. The watch stays connected and I can get alerts without needing to have it beside me.
I can imagine Roger Moore and Christopher Walken wearing one in "A View To A Kill".
(Full disclosure, I'm a current Garmin employee but I don't work in the fitness area)