I don't understand this obsession with big sizes watches maybe it's because I actually don't wear a watch but I've ordered the 38mm model (and I'm a man). My reasonning is that the last thing I want is something big on my wrist.
If I have a watch for telling time, I want it to be as small and thin as reasonable.
If I have a watch as a fashion accessory/jewelry, being small is no longer a design parameter, and in fact being larger might be seen as positive- like a large diamond ring.
Don't know how you came up with that interpretation. I'll go ahead and break this down for you, since it seems like you've never actually proposed to somebody. Typically you talk to your friends about rings, shop around, etc. You've likely already been talking about getting engaged, and asked for your girlfriend's opinions on rings as well. Throughout this process you'll get a good estimation of people's opinions on what is aesthetically pleasing -- from my experience this tended to be low set, solitaire or princess, moderately sized diamond rings.
Well, you feel that way, but not everyone does. The point is watches are largely jewelry/fashion accessories now, and in the land of fashion, throw out everything you knew about practicality and functionality.
I am a 5'11" man but rather slim around the wrist. I stopped wearing watches because all watches for my age group were humongous. I assumed that the 42mm watch would be too big but now I can't wait to go try one.
See also the complaints about it not looking expensive enough. It doesn't matter if it works, if its durable, or even if it actually is expensive, the only selection criteria was appearing expensive to others. That way, people you don't know or care about will be impressed by you. That guy I don't know who I passed in the hallway would be extremely intimidated if my watch band looked handmade, and thats very important to a certain caliber of people.
I find the fact that the author professes himself to be "built like a linebacker" and then makes observations about size that should somehow be relevant to everyday users.
I mean, it's a totally valid perspective, but holy edge-case
I tried both on in one of the dev labs a few weeks ago. I expected the 38 would be the one I'd go for since I have slight wrists, but it just didn't look or feel right. A little too feminine. (I have a fairly androgynous fashion sense, and have no problem buying something in a women's size if it looks right -- but this just didn't for me.) Obviously your mileage may vary.
Trends in the industry say otherwise. Walk into any store, from a Target to a luxury jewelry store, and you'll see that most watches trend towards big because that's what's popular right now.
That's not to say Apple can't reverse that trend - they hold considerable sway in matters of fashion and design, but right now this is the dominant form for men's watches.
A consistent thread through reviews of the aWatch is that the sport band is surprisingly awesome-feeling.
Which is a sign for hope from Apple. The truth of the aWatch is that only the success of the $350-$400 models matters. If those sell well and summon up customer enthusiasm, then the watch has at least a fighting chance to be successful. If people don't like the $350-$400 models, then all the enthusiasm in the world for the $1,000-$17,000 models will not create an ecosystem, and the aWatch will be, at best, a tiny niche product.
If Apple has recognized that and not bought into their own marketing hype about premium whatever, and focused all their attention on making the basic model as good as possible, then they're making the smart play.
Something finally clicked for me. The OP disses the watch, but buys one anyway so he can write apps for it.
Apple always hypes their products, but they usually lowball expectations. For the Watch, they've really ramped up expectations, really setting themselves up for a let-down. It's been obvious for a while that the Watch was going to be more like iPhone v1 than iPad v1: showing lots of promise, but needing a couple of iterations to nail it and really become a mass market product. So I expect good numbers, but not huge numbers.
So why would Apple risk the Watch being branded a failure by missing expectations? Apps. If devs expect a huge success, they'll jump in heavy. So when gen 2 or 3 rolls around the news stories will be about this watch being the one that rectifies the failure of gen 1, but it will be also be about the killer apps that you can get.
Much more like the iPod than iPhone, IMHO. An accessory, a fashion object, very cool but totally optional and not life-changing in the way the smartphone has been.
Where Apple succeeds is in creating products that people covet. White earbuds were a status symbol for some time until the knockoffs came. They signaled that you had enough disposable income for an expensive MP3 player.
Now they've made something you wear -- so there's no missing the signal.
And yes, I totally fall for it every time -- but as a developer I have a convenient alibi :)
This could well end up in quite the opposite direction.
Whether its Apple, Google, or both, we have a device that acts as a payment tool, light switch, id card, all at once seamlessly. Right now that device is the phone. We are still in the novelty phase. It is as seamless as reaching in to your pocket and navigating to the needed app. It is still optional. You can still get printed boarding passes, and most people do.
There will be a transition point where this digital "key" (I think this is the best term) becomes mandatory. Retail stores could eliminate shoplifting along with the checkout line. Airports, employers, government facilities, could exercise more precise control of who is on the premises. May be there are already places like this. Certainly you aren't calling an Uber anonymously.
My take on this product is that the biggest difference from anything in the past is that it's designed to be a pure status symbol with a corresponding scaling price range. I also think it's targeted at Chinese people more than westerners.
> When Apple first showed off the Apple Watch, I was stunned. It looked glorious and larger than life. Shiny and precision-machined. Like an object from the future that time-traveled back to the present just to blow everyone away.
I too was stunned, but for the exact opposite reason. I thought, and still think, the Apple Watch looks hideous. And no, I'm not exaggerating. I _really_ don't like it. This is coming from a non-apple user who thinks Apple makes beautiful hardware.
I'm with you - I also think it looks terrible, design-wise, and I was somewhat disappointed when it was announced. But like so many I'll be eager to see what comes of the re-design needed for V2.0 .. so I'm in a holding pattern about purchasing one.
Writing apps for it on the other hand, I'm quite eager to do ..
It's fun. I've already got one on the App Store (I think Apple has been rushing the review process on apps for the Watch). WatchKit is limited, but it's fun to push those limits. And I'm betting at WWDC we'll see a more fleshed out framework for interacting with the watch.
The rounded rectangle design is nauseatingly ugly. There's a reason we cant find many examples of rounded rectangles throughout history - they re not beautiful. It looked OK on iphones which are useful items, but for a luxury item like this its almost a dealbreaker.
Rounded corners are a defining element of virtually every product made by Apple since they set their design trajectory with the Cube.
As as aside, for a product commonly chalked up as a misfire, the Cube has got to be the single most successful, influential "failure" in living memory. Indeed, it marks the point where Jobs and Ive truly clicked. Since then, Apple spun the world's most valuable company out of their combined vision, which has proliferated wildly since making its public debut in that unprecedented machine.
It was kind of like a concept car, but one that Apple actually shipped.
Summary: Steve inspires Bill by pointing out something about the real world
Bill Atkinson worked mostly at home, but whenever he made significant progress he rushed in to Apple to show it off to anyone who would appreciate it. This time, he visited the Macintosh offices at Texaco Towers to show off his brand new oval routines, which were implemented using a really clever algorithm.
Bill had added new code to QuickDraw (which was still called LisaGraf at this point) to draw circles and ovals very quickly. That was a bit hard to do on the Macintosh, since the math for circles usually involved taking square roots, and the 68000 processor in the Lisa and Macintosh didn't support floating point operations. But Bill had come up with a clever way to do the circle calculation that only used addition and subtraction, not even multiplication or division, which the 68000 could do, but was kind of slow at.
Bill's technique used the fact the sum of a sequence of odd numbers is always the next perfect square (For example, 1 + 3 = 4, 1 + 3 + 5 = 9, 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, etc). So he could figure out when to bump the dependent coordinate value by iterating in a loop until a threshold was exceeded. This allowed QuickDraw to draw ovals very quickly.
Bill fired up his demo and it quickly filled the Lisa screen with randomly-sized ovals, faster than you thought was possible. But something was bothering Steve Jobs. "Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?"
"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.
Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.
When Steve and Bill passed a no-parking sign with rounded corners, it did the trick. "OK, I give up", Bill pleaded. "I'll see if it's as hard as I thought." He went back home to work on it.
Bill returned to Texaco Towers the following afternoon, with a big smile on his face. His demo was now drawing rectangles with beautifully rounded corners blisteringly fast, almost at the speed of plain rectangles. When he added the code to LisaGraf, he named the new primitive "RoundRects". Over the next few months, roundrects worked their way into various parts of the user interface, and soon became indispensable.
>> The Apple watch is clearly the ugly duck of the bunch.
So why is the photo terrible?
When I looked at that photo in context to the copy, I thought the intent was to compare size, not beauty. In that regard, it appears to be an effective photo.
Maybe I misspoke. I meant that the image is terrible for the Apple watch, not that it's a terrible image per se. It makes the Apple watch look awful compared to the others (IMHO).
I still don't know what you mean. Also that sport edition is the most accessible version of the watch and is the one I bet you're going to see most in the wild.
I mean, it looks a little better, but I still feel that the watch face is unnecessarily large. It doesn't look proportional. And while the rectangular face of the Apple Watch is evocative of Casio watches, it looks proportional to the band and the wearer's wrist.
The Moto looks like it's trying to be beautiful and classy, but the size and the fact that the screen isn't actually circular kind of kills it in my opinion.
His claims may or may not have merit. However the formula of
1) establish your apple cred by naming how many devices you own since the history of ever
2) tell people how excited you are about this product
3) trash it
is tired. For the record, Im not interested in a watch from anyone, I don't like things on my wrist hands or face that didn't come with me from birth. I think it was inevitable that Apple entered this market, and Im sure that for some people it will exceed their expectations, and for some, disappoint.
At least the game gear had crisp pixels, which I remember appreciating about it. Contemporary pc screens had blurry blotches instead of pixels, unless you were lucky enough to own a trinitron.
Look at the rest of the photo. It's not like the author's arm is in glorious, crisp, clear lines either. I think the photo is a misrepresentation of the screen quality. I think we are just seeing artefacts of the camera used to take the picture.
I think this product is an interesting one. When the iPhone, iPod, or iPad came out you didn't have reviewers establishing their credibility as a "MP3 Player" or "Tablet" enthusiast in order to give their perspective merit.
With the Apple Watch you have watch enthusiasts though who come out and discuss why it is a poor comparison to industry standards established for the market. Ultimately I think a lot of "watch enthusiasts" will see through the marketing and be displeased while tech enthusiasts will judge the product on different standards.
I'm very curious to see how the Apple Watch holds up in daily wear, especially the Sport version. I am having a hard time imagining an aluminum and glass watch looking nice after a couple months of daily wear on a wrist. Same goes for the leather bands: if they're like the leather iPhone cases in any color other than black, they look pretty shabby after a short time (and I love broken in leather!).
Pretty devastating review. I don't know about the sizing but if the screen really looks that bad this is a bait and switch. Where are all the "screen images simulated" disclaimers? I bet only a tiny fraction of buyers see the watch in person before they buy it. Seems like there might be a lot of disappointed owners.
Good news! It doesn't look like the picture. Something is very wrong with that picture; either he intentionally took it badly or his camera has issues.
I'm sure he took it with an iPhone 6 cause that's the phone he has but it also looks like higher than usual ISO probably due to bad lighting.
The bigger issue is think about how close you would have to hold the watch up to your face to make it that big in real life. If you did that you'd be able to see the pixels but you wouldn't hold it that close.
Ever since reading that article about how dangerous it is to criticize Apple, and how authors always start out by flying their Apple cred... man I notice it all the time in any article that has to say something critical.
That article claiming it's dangerous to criticize Apple was complete bullshit, but it did serve to highlight how anyone writing anti-Apple posts loves to try and trot out their credentials as an Apple user as if that lends authority to whatever they're about to write.
> as if that lends authority to whatever they're about to write
I think it does. Apple has a lot of True Believers and there are also a lot of people who have never used Apple products but take every opportunity to bash them. When I see a critical post written by someone who uses and likes Apple products, I consider the points made more carefully than a positive post by a brainwashee or a negative post by someone with an axe to grind.
It's really hard to take anyone seriously when they accuse Apple users of being "believers" or being "brainwash[ed]". Do you honestly believe that there's a large chunk of Apple customers out there (some even imply a majority of them) that only use Apple products out of some religious fervor or slavish devotion to the memory of Steve Jobs or whatever other justification you want to use? If anything, all of the Apple users that I know (and I know a lot) are more prone to be critical of Apple products than anyone I know is of any other company's products.
(edit: That's actually a serious question. I genuinely don't understand why people try to make this argument)
Can you point out where I suggested that all users of Apple products are brainwashed?
One look at the Macrumors forum shows you that these people exist in some number (just like one look at a guitar forum shows you that Gibson has some believers). I work with one person who is absolutely insufferable with Apple evangelization.
I didn't make the argument you thought I did, and while your weaving skills are admirable, I don't really need any strawmen.
> Can you point out where I suggested that all users of Apple products are brainwashed?
I never accused you of saying all users of Apple products are brainwashed. Misrepresenting my comment isn't a very effective strategy when my comment is right there for everyone to read. And you very specifically used the term "brainwashee" in the context of Apple users, so yes you did in fact accuse some users of Apple products of being brainwashed.
> I didn't make the argument you thought I did
You said the Apple customer base has "a lot of True Believers" and having people you think are "brainwash[ed]". That's not a description I'd expect to see anyone use for any company other than Apple (even if you personally think there are customers of other companies that exhibit the same traits, you almost certainly wouldn't think to apply those specific labels). Which is why I asked my question. Why do you think those labels are appropriate, and what portion of Apple's customer base do you think they apply to? If you think that this description is only appropriate for a very small number of people, why even bring it up? If you think it applies to a large number of people, what justification do you have for describing Apple's user base as if it were a cult and do you really think that this does anything other than make anyone reading your comment dismiss it out of hand (which is the same general reaction to a comment including the word "fanboy").
> I don't really need any straw men.
Do you actually know what a straw man argument is, or are you just using the term to try and shut down conversation?
>I never accused you of saying all users of Apple products
> when they accuse Apple users of
I did not accuse Apple users in general, just a set of them.
> even if you personally think there are customers of other companies that exhibit the same traits, you almost certainly wouldn't think to apply those specific labels
Yes, I would, and I do.
> Why do you think those labels are appropriate
Because they accurately describe the groups I apply them to.
> what portion of Apple's customer base do you think they apply to?
A significant portion of their vocal user base.
> If you think that this description is only appropriate for a very small number of people, why even bring it up?
Because they are the loudest ones and they lower the signal-to-noise ratio considerably. Why do you care that I bring it up?
> Do you actually know what a straw man argument is
Yes, you are deliberately misrepresenting my argument so you can appear to have successfully attacked it. And now you are trying to belittle my intelligence by accusing me of not knowing what a strawman is and that I'm attempting to "shut down conversation" (which is laughable, here in a public comments thread, where I have no ability to shut down anything). Given your defensiveness, intellectual dishonesty, and inability to read a dissenting opinion without exploding, I have to imagine that you are one of the True Believers.
edit: just so we're clear, that last line was sarcastic, so please don't have a conniption
I thought we were having a debate in good faith. It's clear that you're not interested in doing so, and instead are attempting to "win" on technicalities (such as your continued insistence that I claimed you thought all Apple users were brainwashed), and have now resorted to personal insults and gross misrepresentation of my words. I don't understand why you're behaving this way. I thought my question was fairly straightforward, but you seem to be doing your best to avoid having to answer it. If you don't want to answer, then just don't reply.
He's trying to claim that the watch interface isn't sharp. I don't know if that's true or not (I have never seen an Apple Watch) but it's downright mendacious to illustrate this claim with a grotesquely high-ISO, grainy image which makes the watch display look as bad as possible.
I agree that that's a very unflattering image, but it's purpose is to highlight the start difference between the marketing pics (which clearly show vector interfaces) and the reality of a pixelated display. Also, I think more of the unflattering-ness of the picture is due to the actually poor interface than the quality of the picture.
The digital crown looks about as pixelated and processed as the actual display pixels. I'd like to see a much better picture before I trusted anything in this image at all.
Why not show an Apple Watch screenshot at its native resolution, or even scaled up 2x? That would be a more honest way to demonstrate the resolution of the Apple Watch (which in my opinion is the least of its issues).
> He's trying to claim that the watch interface isn't sharp. I don't know if that's true or not
It's almost certainly not. According to https://www.apple.com/watch/technology/ it has a Retina display, and I don't think I've heard anyone complaining about a Retina iPhone's grainy, unpleasant screen.
Having actually been to the lab and used some watches for an entire day, I can confidently say the picture he posted doesn't do the display justice. It looks really good and vibrant and the resolution is very high - higher than the original iPhone packed into a much smaller space.
I just viewed them in the apple store and thought the interface was incredibly fluid, screen was very crisp and bright, and the touch screen was impossibly accurate.
I still don't want to buy one as the battery life is too short and I would rather wait for the apps to catch up so it can be more useful, but I don't think it's the failure this guy is setting it up to be.
To put it more precisely: it functions as a watch, but the design is not meant to status-signal through the traditional means by which watches status-signal. Apple don't care about "big for the sake of big" (more like "remove until you can't remove any more"); Apple don't care about leather that looks like artisanal leather with stitching et al, just that the material has the physical properties (e.g. sweat absorption) of leather while still having all the features they promised.
Effectively, Apple is trying to replace traditional watch status-signalling with more smartphone-esque status-signalling, where a product looks more expensive the more like a mysterious featureless glowing glass bead it manages to seem.
As Daringfireball's review of the Apple watch said, there are two kinds of people: those who currently wear watches, and people who don't.
The first ones have to be convinced to switch to the Apple watch because, as a watch, it's a better watch than the one currently on their wrist.
The others just have to believe the Apple watch will answer a need that isn't met by any other device.
I think the second proposition has a fighting chance (maybe) but the first is an uphill battle. The Apple watch is ugly and, simply, not a real watch. Watch people will probably never switch.
That may not matter much, since they're a small minority anyway; but it would simplify Apple's marketing if it didn't try to talk to them at all.
Kind of person 2.5: those who don't wear a watch because the iPhone "pocket watch" is an incredibly useful compact information device, and until 4/24/15 a watch just tells time ... and who would jump at the chance to move the iPhone's "at a glance" functionality to their wrist. (Ex.: me)
Not a real watch? Why, the same reason e-books aren't "real books" because they don't smell like old paper? (not trying to be snide, it's a complaint I hear often) It tells time, better than any mechanical watch (50ms accuracy, change the face to whatever you like), and includes all that functionality you keep flipping your iPhone out of your pocket for every few minutes.
The Apple Watch is not a real watch mainly because there's a lag between the time you glance at it and the time you see what's on it -- if you turn your wrist. If your wrist is already turned, or you can't turn it (for example, because you're typing) then you have to touch the face to turn it on.
It's not waterproof. I'm not sure it's readable in very bright sunlight.
It's very accurate, yes... contrary to the most expensive watches, which are the less accurate of all watches. Believe it or not, extreme accuracy is not a required feature of "real" watches.
I did read it. Like many other major steps in technology, it's a litany of trivial imperfections. Golly, it might take a moment or trivial effort to turn on! ok, that's not as instant as a normal watch, but the vast capabilities (over mere time) more than compensate. Golly, it's not completely waterproof! though washing your hands or showering with it (which few people do with their watches) is actively encouraged. Golly, it's not perfectly readable in bright sunlight! most people aren't in bright sunlight, and a little shade resolves the problem suitably. Golly, it's very accurate! always irritated me that hand-set watches are typically off by minutes (reality check: starting right now, wait 3 minutes before reading the rest of this post, then tell me how that didn't annoy you), and though just twice a year DST adjustments are a PITA.
You've got accurate time, weather, stocks, email, texting, photos, games, health, etc info all on your wrist...and Gruber's complaining it takes a moment to turn on and you can't go diving with it? c'mon, that's practically proof it's awesome.
I don't know what he's talking about re size. I tried on both and the 42 felt plenty large to me. I wouldn't want it any larger.
The screen also isn't nearly as bad as his photo. I have no idea what's going on there. Yes it isn't as sharp as my iPhone 6 but it's not blurry at all.
The only thing that I agree with is that apples bands all look like crap. Their buckles on the leather look very feminine, and everything has a cheap feel. The one that doesn't is the Milanese loop. It looked gorgeous. Too bad it grabbed my arm hair and the sales guys said that was very common. Oops.
I got the cheapest band and will wait for the 3rd party market to do something decent.
Yes, it's narrower than watches which have to be round by the nature of their engineering. Someone made the design decision that a rectangle looks nicer on your wrist than a perfect square, and I'm inclined to agree with them.
The article has a real-world picture of the watch face in use.[1] The display looks blurry and low-resolution. (It's not the photo; the knurls on the knob are sharp.) It's so different from the ads that Apple may be in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission for misleading advertising, for showing renders on their site that look much better than the actual product.
I'm no photo expert but if you look closely the rest of the photo has a lot of noise also. So it may in focus but close up you can see its not a super high resolution image.
Maybe the colors of the apple watch UI just bleed a bit with the noisy grain of the photo? Because in store, they did look better to my eyes.
> It's so different from the ads that Apple may be in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission for misleading advertising, for showing renders on their site that look much better than the actual product.
It's also so different from all of the other real-world photographs taken of the watch—for instance, see http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review, which has been passed around elsewhere in these comments. So I wouldn't take that photograph as representative of how the screen looks.
I just tried one on a few minutes ago. It's bright, sharp, large, responsive, ...just right. While the author is spending time complaining about the leather being so good it's in an uncanny valley of feeling wrong (akin to e-book naysayers complaining about missing the smell of old paper), I'm amazed at how far advanced the core functionality & responsiveness (what you're actually paying for) is beyond other smartwatches.
Perfect? maybe not. But way better than anything else out there.
104 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadIf I have a watch as a fashion accessory/jewelry, being small is no longer a design parameter, and in fact being larger might be seen as positive- like a large diamond ring.
Watches are not always worn just to tell time.
See also the complaints about it not looking expensive enough. It doesn't matter if it works, if its durable, or even if it actually is expensive, the only selection criteria was appearing expensive to others. That way, people you don't know or care about will be impressed by you. That guy I don't know who I passed in the hallway would be extremely intimidated if my watch band looked handmade, and thats very important to a certain caliber of people.
I mean, it's a totally valid perspective, but holy edge-case
That's not to say Apple can't reverse that trend - they hold considerable sway in matters of fashion and design, but right now this is the dominant form for men's watches.
Which is a sign for hope from Apple. The truth of the aWatch is that only the success of the $350-$400 models matters. If those sell well and summon up customer enthusiasm, then the watch has at least a fighting chance to be successful. If people don't like the $350-$400 models, then all the enthusiasm in the world for the $1,000-$17,000 models will not create an ecosystem, and the aWatch will be, at best, a tiny niche product.
If Apple has recognized that and not bought into their own marketing hype about premium whatever, and focused all their attention on making the basic model as good as possible, then they're making the smart play.
Apple always hypes their products, but they usually lowball expectations. For the Watch, they've really ramped up expectations, really setting themselves up for a let-down. It's been obvious for a while that the Watch was going to be more like iPhone v1 than iPad v1: showing lots of promise, but needing a couple of iterations to nail it and really become a mass market product. So I expect good numbers, but not huge numbers.
So why would Apple risk the Watch being branded a failure by missing expectations? Apps. If devs expect a huge success, they'll jump in heavy. So when gen 2 or 3 rolls around the news stories will be about this watch being the one that rectifies the failure of gen 1, but it will be also be about the killer apps that you can get.
Where Apple succeeds is in creating products that people covet. White earbuds were a status symbol for some time until the knockoffs came. They signaled that you had enough disposable income for an expensive MP3 player.
Now they've made something you wear -- so there's no missing the signal.
And yes, I totally fall for it every time -- but as a developer I have a convenient alibi :)
Whether its Apple, Google, or both, we have a device that acts as a payment tool, light switch, id card, all at once seamlessly. Right now that device is the phone. We are still in the novelty phase. It is as seamless as reaching in to your pocket and navigating to the needed app. It is still optional. You can still get printed boarding passes, and most people do.
There will be a transition point where this digital "key" (I think this is the best term) becomes mandatory. Retail stores could eliminate shoplifting along with the checkout line. Airports, employers, government facilities, could exercise more precise control of who is on the premises. May be there are already places like this. Certainly you aren't calling an Uber anonymously.
I too was stunned, but for the exact opposite reason. I thought, and still think, the Apple Watch looks hideous. And no, I'm not exaggerating. I _really_ don't like it. This is coming from a non-apple user who thinks Apple makes beautiful hardware.
Writing apps for it on the other hand, I'm quite eager to do ..
Feel free to say "I don't like rounded rectangles". But categorically calling rounded rectangles "not beautiful" or "nauseating" is laughable.
As as aside, for a product commonly chalked up as a misfire, the Cube has got to be the single most successful, influential "failure" in living memory. Indeed, it marks the point where Jobs and Ive truly clicked. Since then, Apple spun the world's most valuable company out of their combined vision, which has proliferated wildly since making its public debut in that unprecedented machine.
It was kind of like a concept car, but one that Apple actually shipped.
Round Rects Are Everywhere!
Author: Andy Hertzfeld
Date: May 1981
Characters: Steve Jobs, Bill Atkinson
Topics: Software Design, Inspiration, QuickDraw
Summary: Steve inspires Bill by pointing out something about the real world
Bill Atkinson worked mostly at home, but whenever he made significant progress he rushed in to Apple to show it off to anyone who would appreciate it. This time, he visited the Macintosh offices at Texaco Towers to show off his brand new oval routines, which were implemented using a really clever algorithm.
Bill had added new code to QuickDraw (which was still called LisaGraf at this point) to draw circles and ovals very quickly. That was a bit hard to do on the Macintosh, since the math for circles usually involved taking square roots, and the 68000 processor in the Lisa and Macintosh didn't support floating point operations. But Bill had come up with a clever way to do the circle calculation that only used addition and subtraction, not even multiplication or division, which the 68000 could do, but was kind of slow at.
Bill's technique used the fact the sum of a sequence of odd numbers is always the next perfect square (For example, 1 + 3 = 4, 1 + 3 + 5 = 9, 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, etc). So he could figure out when to bump the dependent coordinate value by iterating in a loop until a threshold was exceeded. This allowed QuickDraw to draw ovals very quickly.
Bill fired up his demo and it quickly filled the Lisa screen with randomly-sized ovals, faster than you thought was possible. But something was bothering Steve Jobs. "Well, circles and ovals are good, but how about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that now, too?"
"No, there's no way to do that. In fact it would be really hard to do, and I don't think we really need it". I think Bill was a little miffed that Steve wasn't raving over the fast ovals and still wanted more.
Steve suddenly got more intense. "Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.
When Steve and Bill passed a no-parking sign with rounded corners, it did the trick. "OK, I give up", Bill pleaded. "I'll see if it's as hard as I thought." He went back home to work on it.
Bill returned to Texaco Towers the following afternoon, with a big smile on his face. His demo was now drawing rectangles with beautifully rounded corners blisteringly fast, almost at the speed of plain rectangles. When he added the code to LisaGraf, he named the new primitive "RoundRects". Over the next few months, roundrects worked their way into various parts of the user interface, and soon became indispensable.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_E...
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1400/1*hTina7sOR2a...
The Apple watch is clearly the ugly duck of the bunch.
So why is the photo terrible?
When I looked at that photo in context to the copy, I thought the intent was to compare size, not beauty. In that regard, it appears to be an effective photo.
http://i.imgur.com/V9YZ5Kz.png
http://i.imgur.com/MAmL4a4.jpg
is tired. For the record, Im not interested in a watch from anyone, I don't like things on my wrist hands or face that didn't come with me from birth. I think it was inevitable that Apple entered this market, and Im sure that for some people it will exceed their expectations, and for some, disappoint.
Game Gear 160x144 pixel resolution 3.2 inche screen 67.27 ppi
With the Apple Watch you have watch enthusiasts though who come out and discuss why it is a poor comparison to industry standards established for the market. Ultimately I think a lot of "watch enthusiasts" will see through the marketing and be displeased while tech enthusiasts will judge the product on different standards.
The bigger issue is think about how close you would have to hold the watch up to your face to make it that big in real life. If you did that you'd be able to see the pixels but you wouldn't hold it that close.
http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review has much better real life shots that mirror what I saw at the Apple store.
Apple Apologist's guide to avoiding buyers remorse when purchasing your Apple Watch.
I think it does. Apple has a lot of True Believers and there are also a lot of people who have never used Apple products but take every opportunity to bash them. When I see a critical post written by someone who uses and likes Apple products, I consider the points made more carefully than a positive post by a brainwashee or a negative post by someone with an axe to grind.
(edit: That's actually a serious question. I genuinely don't understand why people try to make this argument)
One look at the Macrumors forum shows you that these people exist in some number (just like one look at a guitar forum shows you that Gibson has some believers). I work with one person who is absolutely insufferable with Apple evangelization.
I didn't make the argument you thought I did, and while your weaving skills are admirable, I don't really need any strawmen.
I never accused you of saying all users of Apple products are brainwashed. Misrepresenting my comment isn't a very effective strategy when my comment is right there for everyone to read. And you very specifically used the term "brainwashee" in the context of Apple users, so yes you did in fact accuse some users of Apple products of being brainwashed.
> I didn't make the argument you thought I did
You said the Apple customer base has "a lot of True Believers" and having people you think are "brainwash[ed]". That's not a description I'd expect to see anyone use for any company other than Apple (even if you personally think there are customers of other companies that exhibit the same traits, you almost certainly wouldn't think to apply those specific labels). Which is why I asked my question. Why do you think those labels are appropriate, and what portion of Apple's customer base do you think they apply to? If you think that this description is only appropriate for a very small number of people, why even bring it up? If you think it applies to a large number of people, what justification do you have for describing Apple's user base as if it were a cult and do you really think that this does anything other than make anyone reading your comment dismiss it out of hand (which is the same general reaction to a comment including the word "fanboy").
> I don't really need any straw men.
Do you actually know what a straw man argument is, or are you just using the term to try and shut down conversation?
> when they accuse Apple users of
I did not accuse Apple users in general, just a set of them.
> even if you personally think there are customers of other companies that exhibit the same traits, you almost certainly wouldn't think to apply those specific labels
Yes, I would, and I do.
> Why do you think those labels are appropriate
Because they accurately describe the groups I apply them to.
> what portion of Apple's customer base do you think they apply to?
A significant portion of their vocal user base.
> If you think that this description is only appropriate for a very small number of people, why even bring it up?
Because they are the loudest ones and they lower the signal-to-noise ratio considerably. Why do you care that I bring it up?
> Do you actually know what a straw man argument is
Yes, you are deliberately misrepresenting my argument so you can appear to have successfully attacked it. And now you are trying to belittle my intelligence by accusing me of not knowing what a strawman is and that I'm attempting to "shut down conversation" (which is laughable, here in a public comments thread, where I have no ability to shut down anything). Given your defensiveness, intellectual dishonesty, and inability to read a dissenting opinion without exploding, I have to imagine that you are one of the True Believers.
edit: just so we're clear, that last line was sarcastic, so please don't have a conniption
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/2000/1*cTTsFgbXbah...
He's trying to claim that the watch interface isn't sharp. I don't know if that's true or not (I have never seen an Apple Watch) but it's downright mendacious to illustrate this claim with a grotesquely high-ISO, grainy image which makes the watch display look as bad as possible.
http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review
It's almost certainly not. According to https://www.apple.com/watch/technology/ it has a Retina display, and I don't think I've heard anyone complaining about a Retina iPhone's grainy, unpleasant screen.
I still don't want to buy one as the battery life is too short and I would rather wait for the apps to catch up so it can be more useful, but I don't think it's the failure this guy is setting it up to be.
Don't compare apples and oranges. Just because you can wear this device on the wrist doesn't make it a watch.
Effectively, Apple is trying to replace traditional watch status-signalling with more smartphone-esque status-signalling, where a product looks more expensive the more like a mysterious featureless glowing glass bead it manages to seem.
The first ones have to be convinced to switch to the Apple watch because, as a watch, it's a better watch than the one currently on their wrist.
The others just have to believe the Apple watch will answer a need that isn't met by any other device.
I think the second proposition has a fighting chance (maybe) but the first is an uphill battle. The Apple watch is ugly and, simply, not a real watch. Watch people will probably never switch.
That may not matter much, since they're a small minority anyway; but it would simplify Apple's marketing if it didn't try to talk to them at all.
Not a real watch? Why, the same reason e-books aren't "real books" because they don't smell like old paper? (not trying to be snide, it's a complaint I hear often) It tells time, better than any mechanical watch (50ms accuracy, change the face to whatever you like), and includes all that functionality you keep flipping your iPhone out of your pocket for every few minutes.
The Apple Watch is not a real watch mainly because there's a lag between the time you glance at it and the time you see what's on it -- if you turn your wrist. If your wrist is already turned, or you can't turn it (for example, because you're typing) then you have to touch the face to turn it on.
It's not waterproof. I'm not sure it's readable in very bright sunlight.
It's very accurate, yes... contrary to the most expensive watches, which are the less accurate of all watches. Believe it or not, extreme accuracy is not a required feature of "real" watches.
You've got accurate time, weather, stocks, email, texting, photos, games, health, etc info all on your wrist...and Gruber's complaining it takes a moment to turn on and you can't go diving with it? c'mon, that's practically proof it's awesome.
Like being a smartwatch that is designed to interface with the iPhone? I'd love to get a Pebble, but I've heard they can be buggy with iPhones.
The screen also isn't nearly as bad as his photo. I have no idea what's going on there. Yes it isn't as sharp as my iPhone 6 but it's not blurry at all.
The only thing that I agree with is that apples bands all look like crap. Their buckles on the leather look very feminine, and everything has a cheap feel. The one that doesn't is the Milanese loop. It looked gorgeous. Too bad it grabbed my arm hair and the sales guys said that was very common. Oops.
I got the cheapest band and will wait for the 3rd party market to do something decent.
[1] https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1330/1*cTTsFgbXbah...
Maybe the colors of the apple watch UI just bleed a bit with the noisy grain of the photo? Because in store, they did look better to my eyes.
It's also so different from all of the other real-world photographs taken of the watch—for instance, see http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review, which has been passed around elsewhere in these comments. So I wouldn't take that photograph as representative of how the screen looks.
Perfect? maybe not. But way better than anything else out there.