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The Apple Watch

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Re: The Apple Watch

#241

Post by gurkendoktor »

DigitalSea wrote: post #201

Is John Gruber ever non-biased in his pieces about Apple? Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. Every article on every Apple product announcement starts out feeling well-intentioned and non-objective, but then always seems to segue into a subtle praise piece. I am not hating on him, he still makes some great points and he puts considerable amounts of effort into…

> Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal.

You should try listening to his podcast(s). Just like pre-Functional-High-Ground-Marco, I find Gruber to be a lot more realistic and balanced when he is talking, not writing.

Re: The Apple Watch

#242

Post by fancyketchup »

DigitalSea wrote: post #205
threeseed wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is ridiculous to say that Apple hasn't introduced any new ideas or improvements to the smartwatch space.

What new ideas and improvements would those be? Honest and non-argumentative question. I mean of course besides the beautiful engineering (I like the appearance of the Apple Watch) and digital crown.

Well, the heart-rate monitor for starters (and I suspect, based on the optical design of it, that it was built with an eye toward measuring blood oxygen content in future incarnations). Extant activity trackers on the market don't really do it for me from a value standpoint--but I do own a Garmin cycling GPS. The Apple Watch also has enough computational oompf that they should be able to implement Suunto's Firstbeat HR algorithm for better calorie burn estimation (this is all speculative, of course).

Strava is a killer app for those who already have an iPhone: Watch Sport costs about what I would pay to upgrade to the latest Garmin Edge, plus it tracks non-exercise activity (which is something I like but am not willing to pay for by itself). On top of all that, Apple Watch comes with maps (and turn-by-turn directions) for free (something you pay for out the nose with Garmin).

Then there's the mobile payments piece. Taking out your phone is fairly low-friction, but double-tapping a button on your watch and holding it up to a terminal is even less so, plus the idea that I could go out with just my phone and watch is pretty appealing.

Re: The Apple Watch

#243

Post by ghshephard »

DigitalSea wrote: post #201

Is John Gruber ever non-biased in his pieces about Apple? Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. Every article on every Apple product announcement starts out feeling well-intentioned and non-objective, but then always seems to segue into a subtle praise piece. I am not hating on him, he still makes some great points and he puts considerable amounts of effort into…

Ironically, Gruber's review is perhaps one of the more critical one that I've read so far of the Apple watch. My takeaway was that he didn't think, as a life-time watch wearer, that it wasn't as good a time piece as any of his watches, that the battery life didn't meet almost any watch in existence, that the delay in looking at the watch was annoying. Gruber care's about design, quality, and fit/finish, and from that perspective, the Apple watch is significantly more advanced than watches like the Pebble, and so he spent a bit of time talking about it.

Here's the thing - John Gruber is a partisan (to quote Siracusa), but so is his audience - so it's entirely reasonable that he would offer a partisan's analysis of the Apple Watch.

Even so - I thought he was more critical of the watch than most other Apple products - and perhaps it's because he does wear a watch, and was trying to decide whether he was interested in wearing an Apple watch instead.

His conclusion seemed to be that it wasn't clear he would.

Put another way, of the four reviews that I've read so far (NYT, Recode, The Verge) - Gruber's was the first one that made me think that buying a version 1 Apple Watch wasn't such a great idea - simply because it was a partisans review that was clearly calling out disclaimers.

Re: The Apple Watch

#244

Post by gurkendoktor »

jkestner wrote: post #107
ickwabe wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern on this (connected watches generally) is the upgrade treadmill this might create. So a person would buy a ~$600 iphone + a $400 watch. How often would they upgrade the watch? Lots of folks upgrade phones every year or every other year. Will they do this with a watch? Will they need to? I have a Casio watch that I still wear that's 15 years old. And an old wind up that's 30 years old. I can't imagine that b…

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…

> I question whether this is the bubble that geeks live in.

I have enough anecdotal evidence of people still using old iPhones all the way back to the terrible 3G :)

What we do know is that about 80% of iOS users are on iOS 8 (=iPhone 4S or newer), as per Apple's statistics or this website:

https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_8/

And models older than the iPhone 4 seem to very rare:

https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/iphone_models

So I guess most people update their phones at least once every four years.

Re: The Apple Watch

#245

Post by ghshephard »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #241
DigitalSea wrote: post #201

Is John Gruber ever non-biased in his pieces about Apple? Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. Every article on every Apple product announcement starts out feeling well-intentioned and non-objective, but then always seems to segue into a subtle praise piece. I am not hating on him, he still makes some great points and he puts considerable amounts of effort into…

> Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. You should try listening to his podcast(s). Just like pre-Functional-High-Ground-Marco, I find Gruber to be a lot more realistic and balanced when he is talking, not writing.

This is the same Marco Arment who just came out and wrote an essay basically saying the iPhone 6/6+ is poorly designed, and he's hoping Apple will stop with the "thinner, thinner, thinner but sucky experience for the user" design process?

Re: The Apple Watch

#246

Post by nnain »

bane wrote: post #231
clarky07 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lucky for gruber, Apple has released an awful lot of good products recently. iPhones have stupid customer satisfaction numbers. They aren't the most valuable company in the world by a mile because everything they release is crap. Obviously Gruber is a big fan of Apple, but your criticism of him is a bit harsh. I assume he didn't spend a lot of time comparing it to Android wear because he hasn't spent a ton of time us…

Gruber is terrible. I'm completely unapologetic about my opinion about him. He's everything that's wrong in tech news today. He's been able to carve a niche for himself preaching to a choir of folks with large disposable incomes by providing unashamed regurgitation of Apple's marketing bullet points so that people can reinforce their beliefs by having another bullet point that they made the right technology purchase.…

I totally agree to this. Gruber just praises everything that Apple does and knocks out other ideas. I see bias in his analysis of other ideas and products. Works for him because so many people want to hear exactly that.

Re: The Apple Watch

#247

Post by ghshephard »

tptacek wrote: post #166
bitsoda wrote: post #21

Gruber'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…

Gruber's scenario with the two high school kids was probably the worst thing he's ever written. There needs to be an annual 500-word short story writing competition, for best story turning on the sentence "But you both wore an Apple Watch". I say this as someone who generally admires John Gruber's ability to sell me on 1000-2000 word blog posts on Apple minutia purely on the strength and clarity of his writing. This…

It certainly pulled my heartstring. It also was the first piece I've seen written that was forward looking about the purpose about a touch interface, and it's implication for the advancement of HCI. Not sure what it was that you disliked, but I guarantee you that an impartial observer would not say it was "probably the worst thing he's ever written." - perhaps it's fair to say it's "the piece he's written that you've most disliked?"

Re: The Apple Watch

#248

Post by ghshephard »

jakejake wrote: post #222
bitsoda wrote: post #21

Gruber'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…

I had actually thought of visually or audio impaired people being able to chat. Maybe that was in the keynote?

What's cool, is that it would allow visually and audio impaired people being able to chat.

I can already see how this might be useful in meetings with people who know morse code. :-)

Re: The Apple Watch

#249

Post by ghshephard »

schrodinger wrote: post #69
untog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many high school kids have iPhones? Isn't it millions? Yes, but cellphones are different - family plans, paid for by parents, will often get a free iPhone 5C or whatever.

You're still paying for the phone when it's "free".

Sort of true - if you are on a plan, and you are going to have to pay the same amount regardless of whether you get a free phone, then the phone effectively is "no extra charge."

I agree with you - people should differentiate between "free" (as in air, I don't have to pay anything and I can have as much as I want) versus "no extra charge" (as in, I have to pay a bunch of money for something, but then can get (usually 1) of something without paying any more.

Re: The Apple Watch

#250

Post by simonh »

bane wrote: post #231
clarky07 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lucky for gruber, Apple has released an awful lot of good products recently. iPhones have stupid customer satisfaction numbers. They aren't the most valuable company in the world by a mile because everything they release is crap. Obviously Gruber is a big fan of Apple, but your criticism of him is a bit harsh. I assume he didn't spend a lot of time comparing it to Android wear because he hasn't spent a ton of time us…

Gruber is terrible. I'm completely unapologetic about my opinion about him. He's everything that's wrong in tech news today. He's been able to carve a niche for himself preaching to a choir of folks with large disposable incomes by providing unashamed regurgitation of Apple's marketing bullet points so that people can reinforce their beliefs by having another bullet point that they made the right technology purchase.…

So someone who makes four main points in his review - two negative ones and one that's at least highly ambivalent - is preaching to the chore and just regurgitating Apple marketing bullet points. Got it.
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