Just like the iPhone wasn't a smarter phone but a smaller computer, I guess Apple Watch isn't a smarter watch but a smaller iPhone.
The Apple Watch
111–120 of 300 posts
Re: The Apple Watch
#112I can barely stand reading Gruber because it feels like reading Apple marketing materials. But he is required reading because he is one of the few ways that Apple releases important industry information. It would be great to have a daringfireball tl;dr service emphasizing his forecasts and "predictions" (which are usually actually Apple leaks).
Did you read this review? Gruber's blind love for anything apple generally turns me off. In this article though i thought his fanboy-ism stayed pretty restricted to apple the company, and it seems like quite a fair critical review of the watch itself.
I didn't. I read the first few paragraphs and then couldn't take it and left the comment here.
Re: The Apple Watch
#113This is a very interesting article, and I like how it's written in the perspective of a functional watch user instead of being about fashion or watch collecting. I couldn't help but laugh at this part: > Also, though it sounds trivial, I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match. Isn't a mechanical watch hand ∞ FPS by definition? Real life has…
I'm going to take your ∞ FPS comment on go on a wild tangent because physics is fun :-D: Nothing can be infinity FPS because it would be limited by the frequency of the light that we use to see the watch hand. In the case of the visual spectrum, it caps out around 668 THz with blue light (red light is lowest at 400 THz). This would make it "only" ~4.7E12 times better than 144 Hz ;-).
Really you're probably limited by the speed of sound in the watch hand
Re: The Apple Watch
#114Gruber's scenario with the two high school kids sending each other love taps, scribbles, and heartbeats was poignant. While the Apple Watch isn't for me, I can't begrudge those who decide to buy one. I think back to the late 90s and how I wouldn't have met my wife if not for IMing a screenname a mutual friend of ours passed along to me. The internet, a crappy eMachines desktop, and AIM made this possible. Technically…
That love taps scenario also required you to have your crush in your contacts. I think that part was kind of glossed over.
Re: The Apple Watch
#115> Apple Watch’s screen remains off until you tap the screen (...) or it detects (...) that you’ve moved your wrist into a “tell the time” position. That's really the one of the biggest problems I can imagine. Pity that the "show the time at least somehow" wasn't engineered as a special feature, something like "e-ink for somehow time" and the OLED (if that's what they're using) for the full color. I know that nobody m…
They did [1]. The color version is not yet available (first unit should be shipped in May), but the black and white ones were here since 2012. They actually got a wave of preorders right after Apple Watch was shown in March. Based on the back and white version, it indeed is not as nice looking, but I like that it comes as a watch that has smart functionality rather the other way around. And it lasts for 7 days. Can't…
That's not a hybrid display, only e-ink.
Re: The Apple Watch
#116If I had to choose between a dumb watch that never needs recharging (like my Citizen Eco-Drive) and a "smart" watch that doesn't even last a full day, I'd choose the dumb watch. Who the hell think that a watch that can't even function a day is an acceptable product? This just blows my mind. And yet, I'm pretty sure they are going to sell millions of them. I wouldn't want one if it was free.
The guy that runs asymco said something that got me thinking about this. He said, the Apple Watch is as much a "watch" as the iPhone is a "phone". I think the idea is that we are thinking about it all wrong. The "phone" functionality of an iPhone is just an app and is in fact one of the least used apps on the device. The same line of thinking will probably start to explain the Apple Watch. It's actually a wearable co…
While there's certainly truth to this, it's also a little bit of apologia/marketing speak.
The iPhone is fundamentally a phone. While it does a lot more than just make calls, and is likely purchased for more than the ability to make calls, it is fundamentally a phone first (it's in the name and the hardware), most people buy them in conjunction with a phone carrier or phone plan, and on and on.
The Watch (again, right in the name) is fundamentally a watch. It also will do a litany of other cool things above and beyond a typical watch's feature set, but this doesn't change the fact that it is fundamentally a watch. At best, it strikes me as a secondary display, or peripheral device to the phone.
I think of how Jony Ive talks about the products... what their essence is, how they strive to make them the "inevitable" ideal object or iteration of a given thing. So, to my mind, if we're calling this a wearable computer that simply also tells time, it isn't more than the sum of the parts anymore, it's an amalgam of features, already done in other form factors, that still won't last on full day's charge.
None of which is to say people won't buy it and love it. They will.
Re: The Apple Watch
#117If I had to choose between a dumb watch that never needs recharging (like my Citizen Eco-Drive) and a "smart" watch that doesn't even last a full day, I'd choose the dumb watch. Who the hell think that a watch that can't even function a day is an acceptable product? This just blows my mind. And yet, I'm pretty sure they are going to sell millions of them. I wouldn't want one if it was free.
In fairness, the time function for the Apple Watch will continue for 3 days. Comparing it's ability to do a whole lot of power-intensive activity (phone, video, etc) that the dumb watch can't do at all is disingenuous. We heard the same arguments about cell phones. Who would want a smartphone that would discharge in less than a day, when you could get a dumb phone that would hang on for days? or a wired phone that di…
Compare those 3 days to 2 years with my cheap watch.
Re: The Apple Watch
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person in your first example likely has autism. Your average person, no matter how much of an introvert, would never need to be coaxed out of the bathroom with the right combination of texts and vibrations. Normal speech works just fine on even the most introverted people. Introverts of that nature aren't afraid of people talking to them nicely or trying to calm them down, they're afraid of interaction. Being tal…
I was joking about the bathroom example.
I figured as much, but the fear I see in this thread overall is pretty crazy to me.
Re: The Apple Watch
#119If I had to choose between a dumb watch that never needs recharging (like my Citizen Eco-Drive) and a "smart" watch that doesn't even last a full day, I'd choose the dumb watch. Who the hell think that a watch that can't even function a day is an acceptable product? This just blows my mind. And yet, I'm pretty sure they are going to sell millions of them. I wouldn't want one if it was free.
Why is charging electronics such a problem? Do people wear watches while sleeping? Why is setting it on the charger on my nightstand actually a problem? This seems like an absurd nitpicky thing to complain about.
I wear my Pebble every night when sleeping. It's fantastic backup alarm, I never have to worry about forgetting to set my phone's alarm, not hearing my phone, my phone dying, etc.
At this point I wouldn't go back to using a watch with less than a few days battery life, it takes out a huge part of the value for me.
Re: The Apple Watch
#120Just like the iPhone wasn't a smarter phone but a smaller computer, I guess Apple Watch isn't a smarter watch but a smaller iPhone.
The iPhone was a computing device in a form factor that the market was able to relate to as a phone. The Apple Watch is a computing device in a form factor that the market will be able to relate to as a watch.
'Phone' and 'watch' are just entry points. The form factor, UI, and controls will dictate what it actually is. I'm fairly certain, NOT a smaller iPhone.