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Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

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Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#151

Post by lscotte »

burnte wrote: post #95
least wrote: post #17

I'm pretty skeptical that Apple has a decade-long lead on any of the other big players in the market. Any innovations that one company can make can be more quickly adopted than new innovations occur and there's nothing as far as software goes that Apple is uniquely positioned to create. The other factors mentioned such as silicon tech being years ahead of the competition is one that is hardly a factor for the smart w…

The whole article is viewing things through some heavily tinted glasses. 1. Apple was early - Nope, Apple came late to the party, years after first movers were there. 2. Voice computing distraction - Again, nope. Amazon Echo devices and Google Home devices are HUGE. Headphones and earbugs come with Alexa and google Assistant integration. Apple tries with Siri but it's consistently far behind Amazon and Google there.…

It's unfortunate that the Apple cult has enough power on YC to downvoted anything that's not positive towards it. Sad that only pro-Apple opinions are allowed here.

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#152

Post by yurishimo »

vbezhenar wrote: post #128
nickbauman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on all counts. It's very hard to put time horizons on anything. But I started wearing a Series 3 watch (3 generations old now) when I started a project my client in 2019 insisted I wear it as I was writing code that utilized HealthKit data from the Apple Watch. Check my past posts I'm NOT an Apple fan boi at all. But compared to the competition, there's nothing coming close to the integration and the UX out the…

Apple Watch might be the best smartwatches but for me the concept or smartwatch is still novel and I'm not sure if I want to switch. I wear ordinary watches and they're good enough for me. The only killer feature that I need is waking me up in a smart way (monitoring sleep phases and boozing on my hand between 08:00 - 09:00, for example) but Apple Watch does not have that feature. Other features are just not interest…

While I agree that the wake-up feature you described is not available from Apple directly, I bet there's a 3rd party app out there that does what you're asking.

I use the Apple alarm now and when if I go to sleep with my watch on, it will gently buzz on my wrist and get more forceful until I turn it off. The sensors to track sleep are all on the device, but Apple doesn't seem to have any interest in building a "sleep cycle" tracker at this time for whatever reason.

A cursory search turns up the "Sleep Cycle" app[0] with a ton of reviews and even an "Editors Choice" award. Maybe Apple is holding their horses until they 100% nail the implementation, but if you can live with 90% in the meantime, it would probably be worth it to you if this is a thing you're really wanting in your morning routine.

[0] - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-sleep-tracker/id32...

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#153

Post by blinkingled »

snowwrestler wrote: post #134
gnu8 wrote: post #124

The article seems to be saying that Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables over a list of companies that don't even make wearables. That is a clever trick for giving the article a bold title, but the result is a fairly uninteresting and uninformative Apple jerk-off piece. It is akin to saying "Quaker Oats has a 150-year lead in edibles" where Apple doesn't even make food.

So who are the most capable competitors to Apple in wearables? Among my friends and colleagues, those who don’t buy Apple Watch often buy Garmin watches instead. In the area of fitness tracking watches, Garmin seems to be serious competition. It’s missing the full app ecosystem of Apple Watch but I think you can send messages and email to some Garmin watches over 4G, for example.

I have been using the Samsung Gear Active 2 for few months and it is pretty good. Battery lasts couple days. it does everything I need and the UI is pretty good and simple.

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#155

Post by pjmlp »

shados wrote: post #148

I know it's not quite the same and is a lot more complicated, but... What was Microsoft (PocketPC) and Palm's lead in hand held computing back in the days, right before Apple shit over everything they did in one announcement? Wearable as currently imagined kind of suck. Making them better while keeping the same concept is just gonna make something that sucks faster/lighter. Someone needs to come in and take the world…

In what concerns Microsoft, if they had doubled down on WP7 model (Silverlight + XNA) and just opened the C and C++ toolchain to app developers (NDK style), instead of rebooting the ecosystem multiple times, their stuff would probably still be around.

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#156

Post by makecheck »

Apple’s lead seems to be more in tangential things that are very hard to replicate: Apple Pay, supporting the highly popular iMessage, etc. These can never work with any other device.

There are definite flaws in the device. I find buttons unnecessarily hard to tap for instance (they should offer more vertical space), and the face is so sensitive that it routinely triggers unwanted actions. It is really annoying to start something I want (like a timer) and notice some time later that I somehow accidentally stopped the timer by hitting my watch on something.

As far as 3rd parties, I have seen a general trend of apps gradually withdrawing their support for watchOS. There just aren’t that many useful things to do on a small surface. For apps suited to this (timers, reminders, etc.) it is fine.

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#157

Post by dijit »

hinkley wrote: post #135
dijit wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your disagreement. Though I also disagree with the article itself, but for one particular reason: I don't think it'll be nearly 10 years to catch up. I was skittish on the idea of a watch I have to charge (nearly) every day, but it really has improved my life, in fact it's _nearly_ to the point where I don't need a phone.. since I can pay, take calls, respond to messages, play music (though, not brows…

Most days I can put it on the charger when I get in the shower, and put it back on when I grab my keys and wallet. It’s not like you have to charge it over night. Half hour will last you quite a while.

Depends a lot on the model and usage; I did that too (after recommendations from my friend) but ended up with low power warnings fairly often.

And now of course the battery has significantly lower capacity than new, or the OS is much heavier. The watch was charged while I took a shower after the gym this afternoon. Was fully charged this morning. It’s currently on 37% at 19:51.

(for context, my watch is a 44mm (or, large) series 4)

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#158

Post by smoldesu »

makecheck wrote: post #156

Apple’s lead seems to be more in tangential things that are very hard to replicate: Apple Pay, supporting the highly popular iMessage, etc. These can never work with any other device. There are definite flaws in the device. I find buttons unnecessarily hard to tap for instance (they should offer more vertical space), and the face is so sensitive that it routinely triggers unwanted actions. It is really annoying to st…

Yep. Apple's game has always been marking up marginal utility, and that's ultimately what you pay for here.

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#159

Post by smoldesu »

snowwrestler wrote: post #134
gnu8 wrote: post #124

The article seems to be saying that Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables over a list of companies that don't even make wearables. That is a clever trick for giving the article a bold title, but the result is a fairly uninteresting and uninformative Apple jerk-off piece. It is akin to saying "Quaker Oats has a 150-year lead in edibles" where Apple doesn't even make food.

So who are the most capable competitors to Apple in wearables? Among my friends and colleagues, those who don’t buy Apple Watch often buy Garmin watches instead. In the area of fitness tracking watches, Garmin seems to be serious competition. It’s missing the full app ecosystem of Apple Watch but I think you can send messages and email to some Garmin watches over 4G, for example.

Fossil is a pretty significant player in the industry, I own their Carlyle 5 model.

Re: Apple has a decade-long lead in wearables

#160

Post by smoldesu »

sQL_inject wrote: post #100
least wrote: post #17

I'm pretty skeptical that Apple has a decade-long lead on any of the other big players in the market. Any innovations that one company can make can be more quickly adopted than new innovations occur and there's nothing as far as software goes that Apple is uniquely positioned to create. The other factors mentioned such as silicon tech being years ahead of the competition is one that is hardly a factor for the smart w…

I'm have to sort of disagree, not a decade but easily half a decade lead. Source: I worked in this space years ago with what was, at the time, the leader in the space, and remember how many of my coworkers laughed at the Apple Watch unveil. Now Apple is the one laughing with a girthy, multibillion dollar schadenfreude. Apple has leads in silicon and cross-platform integration which is inarguably led to a better user…

> Apple has leads in silicon and cross-platform integration

I stopped reading after this part.

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