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The Apple Watch

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Re: The Apple Watch

#291

Post by sanoli »

noinsight wrote: post #269
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.

And Bulova has the Precisionist line that moves much more smoothly: > In 2010, Bulova introduced the Precisionist, a new type of quartz watch with ultra-high frequency (262.144 kHz) which is claimed to be accurate to +/- 10 seconds a year and has a smooth sweeping second hand rather than one that jumps each second.

Huh. Cool. I always wondered why they didn't make quartz second hands jump in smaller amounts. Something difficult or not efficient to achieve, I guess.

By the way, Seiko has had a movement for some time that is rated to +/- 5 seconds a year. I think it was on a special edition of the Grand Seiko line (already rated to around 10 seconds a year, so you'd get 5 seconds off less. Yay!)

Re: The Apple Watch

#292

Post by [deleted] »

Calcite wrote: post #286
Cookingboy wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

[deleted]

Re: The Apple Watch

#293

Post by npunt »

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…

Late to the party based on what timeframe? 2, 3, 5 years from now it won't look that way.

There were mp3 players before the iPod (I had one! it sucked) and smartphones before the iPhone (I had one! it sucked as well).

Early-adopter products exist in a niche where their shortcomings are accepted and embraced because people like their concept. But we can't mistake that for meeting the high standards of the broader consumer marketplace.

Remember when the iPhone was released? There were other smartphones like the Treo and BlackBerry, but none worked the way the iPhone did. That's what defining a market is about - entering where there may be 'competition' but as soon as you release, nothing competes.

Re: The Apple Watch

#294

Post by prawn »

eridius wrote: post #223
prawn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From The Verge review, that feature actually sounds a bit painful to use.

I haven't read what you're referring to, but one Apple employee I know uses Digital Touch pretty often (he says he uses it to silently attract the attention of other people at meetings, and I've seen him use it to send doodles to his friends). Why do you think it sounds painful to use?

Verge review calls it "remarkably small-time" and "a weird thing to hype as much as it's been hyped" -

"But here’s the thing — it doesn’t happen in real time. I had assumed that sending a heartbeat meant that my recipient would just start feeling my heart on their wrist like some sort of cosmic love connection, but that’s not how it works. Instead, you get a regular notification which sends you into the Digital Touch canvas, where the message plays back: the taps come through, the drawings draw themselves, the heartbeats beat."

Re: The Apple Watch

#295

Post by drinchev »

pluma wrote: post #274
drinchev wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this guy is the inventor of Markdown, so he's not only a paid blogger. I always find people like him as inspiration for me.

He wrote the original Markdown. Barely anyone uses the original Markdown. They just use semi-compatible formats (e.g. Github-Flavored Markdown) using software that calls them "Markdown". There is no spec for Markdown other than his buggy Perl implementation. He also didn't exactly appreciate the fact that other people tried to standardize "his" language. I'm not even sure Markdown in general can rightfully be called…

Sometimes the idea is worth everything.

Although you are right that people are getting more and more distant from the original markdown syntax. Google still suggest this as the first result on that specific keyword [1].

Something more. Categorising markdown as an invention may be a bit wrong, but it is a huge push to what now is becoming a standard ( at least in dev's world ) for many companies that have a user input feature.

I can't just say everything he did is good ( I also miss standartization ), but for sure I can't neglect what he did. I still remember how markdown-featured textarea inputs redirected to [1] when I clicked on the help button.

This alone makes his attribution great and that's why I prefer calling him "inventor of markdown", rather than paid blogger.

1. http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

Re: The Apple Watch

#296

Post by pareidolia »

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…

Unfortunately Mr. Gruber isn't aware of the Seiko Spring Drive movement which exhibits perfectly smooth movements of hands and gears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwK51jnBtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUxjF7QrIc But then again, he probably isn't a watch enthusiast.

Re: The Apple Watch

#297

Post by gurkendoktor »

ghshephard wrote: post #245
gurkendoktor wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Yep. I don't think he has been writing essays as these before his infamous blog post[1]. He has, however, been criticising Apple for a while (forever?) on podcasts. On a recent episode of ATP.fm, he even mentioned that the blog post did not come out of nowhere, but was simply a write-up of things that have been discussed on the podcast for a long time.

[1] http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-g...

Re: The Apple Watch

#298

Post by gurkendoktor »

bane wrote: post #264
timcederman wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally baffled by your mindset. Why is Gruber terrible and everything wrong with tech news today? Compared to Engadget et al he seems reasonably fair and balanced. Please point me towards something he's written that's objectively biased or bad.

Everything he writes is objectively biased. Have you ever read anything he's ever written? Tech news is already so full of bought promotions pretending to be articles, fan boyism and subjective "analysis" it really doesn't need more. It's already enough of a burden on the reader to try to figure out if a review of some new product is being truthful or was paid for by an ad on page 23, or if the editor has some platfo…

> - JOANNA STERN’S GALAXY S6 REVIEW > If your information source was Gruber's take on the review, you'd think the S6 was a cheap unusable knock-off

The software is the only point he cares to comment on. But his introduction to the quote is:

>> A rave review for everything but...

I had no trouble parsing this.

And for more context, this item preceded the link to Joanna Stern's review by a few posts:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/04/03/bohn-galaxy-s6

Re: The Apple Watch

#299

Post by kbutler »

pareidolia wrote: post #296
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…

Unfortunately Mr. Gruber isn't aware of the Seiko Spring Drive movement which exhibits perfectly smooth movements of hands and gears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwK51jnBtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uUxjF7QrIc But then again, he probably isn't a watch enthusiast.

He tries to position himself as a "serious watch person", but even I knew of the smooth movement, and I'm anything but a serious watch person...

Re: The Apple Watch

#300

Post by gregpilling »

VLM wrote: post #131
gregpilling wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had several employees in their early 20s that would only communicate with suppliers over email - I had to force them to use the phone. It was bizarre.

Phones are unprofessional and slow and impolite, and even if its legal, recording is just socially not done other than call center script readers. On the other hand, supplier writes in an email that he's shipping the microcontroller PCBs tomorrow, no kidding this time, you have a written record you can call him out on maybe the day after tomorrow, and unlike verbal phone calls no one freaks out if you stockpile email…

"you are trying to set them up to fail.." - a bit of a stretch don't you think?

I am referring to picking up the phone to call a supplier or similar. Basic commerce, not some elaborate plot to annoy, offend or cause apathy. More like "Bob, do you have blue widgets in stock?"

Phones are not unprofessional, they are a tool. A communication tool. Phones are not slow, in fact they are a lot faster than waiting for an email that never comes.

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