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The Apple Watch

daringfireball.net

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Re: The Apple Watch

#281

Post by bane »

clarky07 wrote: post #273
bane wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, from reading his review you came away with the impression that he thinks it's terrible. He mentioned lots of bad things about it. Yet you hate him for only praising it. That doesn't really follow. Perhaps you should rethink your position.

I hate him because he spends approximately 5,500 words of this 6,000 word review framing how awesome Apple and all their wonderful products are and how terrible the rest of the world is for not being Apple before giving a tiny set of heavily qualified problems.

With Gruber the answer to the question "did Gruber like this Apple product?" is one of two answers

1) Yes, with a 2-5 sentence blog post

2) Yes, with a multi-thousand line blog post he buries issues inside of

And to "did Gruber like this non-Apple product?" the answer is

1) No, it obviously sucks

2) No, because Apple does whatever it is better

These days he at least provides some useful information in his long form posts, so I don't autoflag them like I used to. But he's often virtually information free.

Re: The Apple Watch

#282

Post by bane »

simonh wrote: post #250
bane wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, somebody who buries those 2 negative points in 6,000 words of rhetorical framing devices is. Have you ever even seen the content of Daringfireball?

Re: The Apple Watch

#283

Post by bane »

coldtea wrote: post #233
bane wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's definitely a shill. Imagine a couple years ago, when Gruber couldn't even bring himself to pretend to provide critical analysis of Apple products. I used to just flag daringfireball posts as soon as I saw them. These days there's at least information content in his posts so I usually leave them alone. But Gruber also spends an extraordinary amount of time these days using framing devices to either draw false com…

> He's definitely a shill. Imagine a couple years ago, when Gruber couldn't even bring himself to pretend to provide critical analysis of Apple products. [citation neeeded]

https://daringfireball.net/

Re: The Apple Watch

#284

Post by bane »

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.

I agree with this. I've heard him give talks on a few occasions and found them far superior in content and delivery than his writing. Which is hard to believe because Gruber honestly is a very good writer.

Re: The Apple Watch

#285

Post by bergie »

fancyketchup wrote: post #242
DigitalSea wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most Android Wear watches also have an optical heart rate monitor, and they all do turn-by-turn.

Fair point on the payments, though. I think only the Sony watch has NFC, and I haven't heard when/if that will be actually supported by the OS for payments.

Re: The Apple Watch

#286

Post by Calcite »

Cookingboy wrote: post #220
jonhester wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanical watches, think Rolexes, have smooth second hand movements but they are acutally still ticking, just about 6 times a second. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, has a second hand with 60 ticks per second so that the second hand is about 10 times smoother.

I don't know many mechanical watches (especially Rolex) that ticks at 6 times per second. That requires the balance wheel to be beating at 12Hz. Old Rolex tick 3 times per second on 6 beats/second balance wheel movements, and modern Rolex do 4 ticks per second on 8 beats per second movement.

That's incorrect. The seconds hand moves 6 times in one second on my 7S26 movement (21,600 bph). On a modern Rolex, it would move 8 times in one second. You can check this with a high speed camera (such as the one in the iPhone 6). Nonetheless, there are vastly superior mechanical drives out there that are continuous (Seiko Spring Drive for example).

Re: The Apple Watch

#287

Post by kstenerud »

rimantas wrote: post #232
kstenerud wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it even need to be a dial? Why not a touch-strip along the side that you slide your finger along for scrolling? The whole idea of a dial seems backwards. I've always hated dials on watches. They catch on everything.

With the touch strip you'd be limited by the length of it and 1:1 mapping for scrolling.

Why does it have to map 1:1?

Re: The Apple Watch

#288

Post by mschuster91 »

noinsight wrote: post #270
mschuster91 wrote: post #159

A bit of sidelined, but still... > You simply hold the connector near the back of the watch, where magnets cause it to snap into place automatically. I would instantly buy a phone without a traditional connector port for headphone and USB - just metal pads flush with the surface (maybe laid in rubber to be watertight) and kept aligned by magnets. Seriously, the amount of devices failed due to either bent (e.g. during…

Or you can buy a device that supports wireless charging and charge wirelessly. I have one (Nexus 4) and I'm never going back.

Useless when you want to hold your phone in the hand for a round of Real Racing or any other hq game, though.

Re: The Apple Watch

#289

Post by sanoli »

Cookingboy wrote: post #216
sanoli wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: Rolexes tick 8 times a second (or 28.800 beats per hour, as is used by watch people). 6 are the vintage ones.

You are wrong. The movement moves at 8 Hz per second, but it actually takes two cycles to actually tick once, so it's actually 4 ticks per second. The old watches tick at 3 times per second on 6 Hz movements.

No, I'm not. It's 8 ticks per second. I have one and I have checked. Look at this video of the hand up close (it's a 28800 bph movement):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxgahvNH3q0

Re: The Apple Watch

#290

Post by sanoli »

Cookingboy wrote: post #218
sanoli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spring Drives are pretty rare outside of Japan. Most mechanical watches today tick 8 times a second. On a small watch it's pretty smooth to me.

The balance wheel oscillates at 8 beats per second, but it requires 2 beats to complete a full second "tick", so most modern mechanical watches actually tick at 4 times per second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_wheel#Period_of_oscilla...

It is 8 ticks per second. Look at this video of the hand up close (it's a 28800 bph movement):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxgahvNH3q0

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