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The Apple Watch

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Re: The Apple Watch

#181

Post by aesthetics1 »

72deluxe wrote: post #176

He is wrong in this article: CDs did not suck. Compressed audio sucked, unless you had NIHL and love reduced dynamic range and poor attack transients. I am glad CDs are still around to stop this MP3 slime from washing away all the uncompressed audio!

Apple wasn't marketing them to the audiophile - they came with cheap white earbuds, not Sennheisers.

CDs did suck for the mainstream consumer. Consumers are still opting for streaming music over high-quality FLAC tracks saved to their phone/PC/etc.

I think you meant to say: He was wrong as far as my use case was concerned.

Re: The Apple Watch

#182

Post by 72deluxe »

I can't help wondering how dated such a device will look / feel next year, particularly as I saw Swiss watches in a shop the other day and they really are timeless bits of machinery.

Re: The Apple Watch

#183

Post by aesthetics1 »

green7ea wrote: post #52
reubenmorais wrote: post #8

This 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 ;-).

Huh. Now I remember why I read hackernews.

Re: The Apple Watch

#184

Post by clarky07 »

kbd wrote: post #163
clarky07 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see, and i have the opposite problem with my pebble. since it isn't part of my daily charging routine, it inevitably dies because i forget about charging it ever. I'd be better off including it my daily charging routine.

> it inevitably dies because i forget about charging it ever How is that possible? It gives you ample low battery alerts.

eh the alert happens in the middle of the day when i'm not near my charger. since i'm not in the habit of charging it at night, sometimes i just forget about it.

Re: The Apple Watch

#185

Post by xs »

72deluxe wrote: post #176

He is wrong in this article: CDs did not suck. Compressed audio sucked, unless you had NIHL and love reduced dynamic range and poor attack transients. I am glad CDs are still around to stop this MP3 slime from washing away all the uncompressed audio!

I thought CDs sucked. Scratched way too easy. Don't let some children borrow your CDs or else they won't play when you get them back. Cassettes were much more durable and even repairable. A CD warped by the sun is garbage, but a cassette warped by the sun can be salvaged if you put the tape in another cassette case. You could also tape two ends of the cassette tape back together if it gets torn or cut. Yes the song is garbled for a second but the entire album isn't ruined. A skipping CD is a more annoying sound than my alarm clock.

Re: The Apple Watch

#186

Post by username223 »

ickwabe wrote: post #144
jkestner wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of folks upgrade phones every year or every other year. I question whether this is the bubble that geeks live in. Plenty of people don't know there are new phones to get until their old one breaks. In the case that someone's upgrading when their contract gives them a new phone, I can see more of a strain, but they rarely think of themselves paying $600 for a phone. To an extent, Apple is producing the Watch to o…

Yes, true. Working in tech, I'm probably seeing the end of the spectrum that updates their devices more frequently. I have nothing against the apple watch per se other than price. Just a personal thing. But I can't see paying that much for a device with a) a rechargeable battery that may or may not be easily replaceable and b) has tech that will age out quickly (compared to for example just a digital watch of some so…

> I can't see paying that much for a device with a) a rechargeable battery that may or may not be easily replaceable and b) has tech that will age out quickly (compared to for example just a digital watch of some sort).

Nor can I, but I'm a Luddite with a cheap Timex and the smallest, dumbest off-contract phone I could find. Given that the $350 low-end model and the $17,000 high-end model have the same battery and guts, I expect/hope that Apple will offer some kind of trade-in or hardware update program. If I could pay $200 every couple of years to replace the non-jewelry bits of this thing, it would make a lot more sense.

Re: The Apple Watch

#187

Post by aetherson »

prawn wrote: post #169
51Cards wrote: post #136

Article aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that with this release so many people are discussing smart watches and their interfaces as something completely new with no established precedents. I've had my Pebble for almost 2 years now and my LG G watch for about 8 months. From my perspective this seems like a late-comer to a market that is already well under-way? I would expect more existing market comparison co…

I suspect Apple have somehow framed the product for reviewers so the alternatives in the market don't come to mind, even if the reviewers don't realise that they're ignoring them. As one example, they could've picked recipients who they know haven't previously worn a smart watch.

The Verge reviewer compared it to Android Wear.

Re: The Apple Watch

#188

Post by skeletonjelly »

7Z7 wrote: post #147
bla2 wrote: post #34

It's interesting that even gruber's review isn't all that positive.

>even gruber.. I don't think Gruber is particularly biased about Apple - they're just his area of speciality. He thinks very deeply about them, and has done for such a long time that he has an acute sense of them. But I think he calls them out fairly when he thinks they're wrong, whether that's policy decisions, devices, or software.

I don't know if it can be your area of speciality and not be biased. He's the definitive Apple fanboy

https://twitter.com/gruber/status/344163857234812928

Re: The Apple Watch

#189

Post by xal »

72deluxe wrote: post #176

He is wrong in this article: CDs did not suck. Compressed audio sucked, unless you had NIHL and love reduced dynamic range and poor attack transients. I am glad CDs are still around to stop this MP3 slime from washing away all the uncompressed audio!

You need to read this: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Re: The Apple Watch

#190

Post by jkestner »

ickwabe wrote: post #144
jkestner wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of folks upgrade phones every year or every other year. I question whether this is the bubble that geeks live in. Plenty of people don't know there are new phones to get until their old one breaks. In the case that someone's upgrading when their contract gives them a new phone, I can see more of a strain, but they rarely think of themselves paying $600 for a phone. To an extent, Apple is producing the Watch to o…

Yes, true. Working in tech, I'm probably seeing the end of the spectrum that updates their devices more frequently. I have nothing against the apple watch per se other than price. Just a personal thing. But I can't see paying that much for a device with a) a rechargeable battery that may or may not be easily replaceable and b) has tech that will age out quickly (compared to for example just a digital watch of some so…

No one in the general populace cares about replaceable/removable batteries, any more than they care about the increasing difficulty in fixing your own car. Samsung gave in with the Galaxy S6, and they're obviously following the numbers.

And every watch I've ever owned has a battery that's just as replaceable as the Watch's -- that is, you take it to the dealer.

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