One thing that I've always imagined but haven't heard much in these discussions is the real potential behind the Apple Watch being the near-magical NFC interactions that could be achieved with its position on the body. For example, paying for groceries, opening locked doors, starting cars, etc. I feel that someone would only need to see a Watch user wave their hand and magically do something once before wanting that same "power".
Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
21–30 of 125 posts
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#22It's pretty exciting to anticipate how developers might do innovative things with the Watch...but until then, I'm pretty bearish of the device as something of real utility. It's not just the particulars of Apple's execution and implementation, but just that the physical form factor of a watch inherently limits it...and the coolest things we've seen watches do in fiction, such as Dick Tracy's wrist-walkie-talkie, are…
Do you have an Apple Watch? Is this review based on your experiences using it for some time?
I think in practice some of your guesses about notifications and interruption are proving wrong for most people because of the phenomenology of the Taptic engine.
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#23>Can I build a watch face? No
Wow, really? I just built a watch face from a photo of my son on Android using some app. It took 2 minutes. I was expecting Apple to do this better; not block the functionality.
>Can I access the users Heart Rate? No.
This is bewildering. You'd think support for third party health apps would be a priority. This works on AW right now.
This product seems rushed. I guess Apple didn't want AW and Pebble to continue being the only smartwatch game in town. This seems to fall into the Apple conventional wisdom of, "New product? Wait until Rev A." AW isn't perfect but its kind of what I expect for a smartwatch platform. Its lightweight and somewhat of an accessory to your smartphone (not another app/ad platform), but still feature rich and developer friendly.
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#24You can do bi-directional notifications between host app and extension with MMWormhole, which uses CFNotificationCenter: https://github.com/mutualmobile/MMWormhole
I think overall Apple has done a fantastic job of v1 of this product line, it's pretty polished. As an App developer who has been working on a watch App, while there is a lot you can't do I understand why you can't do it, it will come in time (native Apps later this year), and what is there right now is pretty good. Shameless plug, the App is currently in review: http://napkin.io
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#25Interesting that they are using a separate process on the iPhone. Is that to prepare for a future where the whole extension will actually run on the watch itself?
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#26"Your Apple Watch app acts like a separate process running on a separate device, however behind the scenes the OS runs a ‘skeleton’ like version of your host application on the user's iPhone and the Apple Watch extension in tandem, both on the iPhone"
I totally missed this limitation until now. So the iWatch works only if you have an iPhone and the phone is in communication range with the watch?
What can the watch still do if the phone is offline or too far away?
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#27Interesting that apple seems to be following the same model as they did with their mobile devices in terms of developer functionality. Their view seems to be to start off really tightly locked down and then gradually open up additional features to developers. It makes sense in that its much easier to open stuff up after its been locked down then to lock down stuff once people have built stuff on it.
I think this goes well with their other line of thought:"It is so difficult to remove a feature once we've added it, so it is best to be careful adding new features and start with a few great features first." That's how they have developed iOS.
I recall a high-ranking individual (Jobs, Cook, or Forstall) from Apple saying this a couple of years ago, but I don't remember when, where, or context. Sorry.
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#28Apparently you can't do a lot of things with it if you have tattoos on your wrist: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/344b3o/anyone_with_ta...
You're tattooing it wrong.
But seriously, how could Apple not test this?
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#29Though the Apple Watch is still cool, I'm still seriously thinking of getting a Pebble Time: https://getpebble.com/pebble_time
However, development for the Time so far hasn't been as easy as I'd thought, e.g. some of the examples provided to develop watch-faces, etc. online didn't seem to be fully up-to-date to use with color/Time.
Re: Apple Watch – What can you do with it?
#30It's pretty exciting to anticipate how developers might do innovative things with the Watch...but until then, I'm pretty bearish of the device as something of real utility. It's not just the particulars of Apple's execution and implementation, but just that the physical form factor of a watch inherently limits it...and the coolest things we've seen watches do in fiction, such as Dick Tracy's wrist-walkie-talkie, are…
Do you have an Apple Watch? Is this review based on your experiences using it for some time? I think in practice some of your guesses about notifications and interruption are proving wrong for most people because of the phenomenology of the Taptic engine.
I haven't used it but I think there are some biases going in that would affect how I feel of it regardless. For example, for my iPhone, I limit notifications to calls and SMS. Except for the occasional marketer, phone calls are normally "important", and I'm not sure, Watch or not, how I could effectively whitelist calls in such a way that would not block the myriad of important calls from first-time numbers.
In terms of text messages: I guess it's hard to think of a situation in which the ability to glance at my wrist instead of investigating the vibration in my pocket is a huge advantage. Text messages can sometimes be important, but if I'm expecting a text message in a given time period, I'll put myself in a situation in which having the phone out is not a problem (i.e. not be in a movie theater).
I guess one situation in which having a watch is better than a phone: when you're moving around in such a way that you don't notice/hear the phone going off. I've missed calls that way. But I guess I'm not in that situation enough to justify a new device...I mean, that's helpful, but we're not yet that far removed from a time when we had to arrange our rendezvous and appointments with no expectation that we could contact people in mid-transit (i.e. before cell phones).
I don't consider myself a huge Luddite. I waited in line for the first iPad, but with that, I felt the value proposition was obvious: this is a computer you can walk around with in one hand and read/navigate/etc....even just reading from a tablet is obviously appealing, in the way that reading a physical book/magazine/newspaper is more appealing (despite limitations) than from a laptop or desktop. The value of iPods and iPhones was never hard to figure out either, even if you doubted whether or not they were worth the price over their competitors.