Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Apple Watch

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 863 posts

Re: The Apple Watch

#491

Post by antidamage »

I've taken a hard look at every single smartwatch that's come out to date and found them wanting. I couldn't at any point bring myself to wear a device that needs to be charged every night and isn't "always on" yet doesn't have all the features I wanted. Little by little they got closer, but nobody had nailed it until Apple did.

I think it'll initially be seen as a superficial luxury, much like a smartphone. Then without much effort and without anyone noticing it'll become a device that's at first convenient to have and then inconvenient not to have.

I'm definitely getting an Apple watch and it'll take some amazing competition to steer me in another direction. I guess this means I'll have to get a Mac some time too.

Re: The Apple Watch

#492

Post by arihant »

Here are my first thoughts (I kind of won't be doing device specific nitpicking as this is the first iteration. We are sure the concept will evolve with time):

Good things:

1.) The Tap-talk feature is an absolute genius for me. This, exactly this, is the perfect non-intrusive yet hyper connected way to intimately stay in touch with someone. Just tap on their wrist, so simple. Make a little scribble to show emotion, so beautiful.

2.) The digital crown seems very interesting. I know the concerns on this thread, but if you see the demo again, the nob is bigger and is fluid enough to rotate by rolling just one finger on it. We hate crowns on our watches not because we have to rotate them, but because they are hard to rotate. This one might be different.

3.) The built. It starts at $349, while Android Wear is at $250-300 range. But then this is sapphire glass with at least steel body. And their is mention of actually how a watch is accurate with time, something 3 other companies didn't do.

4.) Multiple sizes is a good thing. Small people, petite ladies don't like to wear big sizes. I like how adaptive this watch is with the sizes, materials, straps.

Now on to the awkward parts:

1.) They gave developers at least 4-5 months time to implement the tap-talk on Android Wear. By the time this watch actually comes to stores, it would be beaten down concept.

2.) They gave Android Wear manufacturers all the time to step up their game.

3.) The killer app, even in on-stage demos, seems to be the maps app. The Apple maps, unfortunately. That makes it profoundly useless wrist weight for anybody living outside of handful countries it actually works in. That gives Android Wear a terrible advantage.

4.) No GPS on watch. So basically I have to carry my phone in pocket during runs. There is already GPS apps which do that. So that makes this watch essentially a display.

5.) No word on battery.

6.) Apple launched a watch today. A week earlier Moto launched a better looking watch. This is a sentence I never thought I'd say.

Would I have bought it today if Apple launched it? Yes.

Will I now that Apple has given me months to think it over? No.

Re: The Apple Watch

#493

Post by tspiteri »

eli wrote: post #305
zimpenfish wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got 18 months of Moves data logged against corresponding tracks from my 910XT and the difference in consistency, accuracy, etc., is telling - the iPhone is frequently off by 10s (if not 100s) of metres and especially coming round the Millennium Dome is a joke - it has me jumping from the south to the north of the Thames every few hundred metres. Moves iPhone 5S - http://imgur.com/kjYf8Tj Garmin 910XT - http://im…

How long does the Garmin take to find you at the start of a run? I admittedly had an old model, but it was basically a dealbreaker with the forerunner. I was wandering around for 5-10 mins with my wrist in the air waiting to start.

I used to have to wait for a fix as well. What works for me is that when I'm preparing for the run, I put the watch in a window for enough time to get a fix, which sometimes take a long time. Then when I go out to run later, it gets a fix pretty quickly.

Re: The Apple Watch

#494

Post by rictic »

nickonline wrote: post #486
2xlbuds wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, having watched this year's Google I/O panel on smartwatch interaction design, it is very obvious that Google has put an enormous amount of thought into their watch platform. They came to a fundamentally different conclusion for what a smartwatch should do, and I really enjoy the experience. The contextual information from Google Now is incredibly useful and it feels like my watch tells me not only…

Which watch are you using? I've been using a pebble and while it's good it doesn't have the level of interaction you're discussing.

Those are all Android Wear features, so any of a number of devices.

Re: The Apple Watch

#495

Post by leoc »

MrScruff wrote: post #234
fidotron wrote: post #207

This is an intriguing situation because while the "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." comment will always haunt those that criticise Apple product launches this is the first one in years where the product looks more like it's actually the Nomad being mentioned, and the iPod has yet to arrive. I'm going so far as to say that smartwatches and VR represent the desperate flailing of a tech industry that's run o…

In my opinion you're utterly wrong about VR, it's going to be a transformative technology and will precipitate a massive push for high end real-time graphics. People want new experiences without leaving their sofa and VR will bring that in spades. As far as the watch goes, I think it will make money but less than the iPad. It's clearly pitched as a fashion accessory and will find a market. Just not a big enough one t…

Hee hee. Wait until people twig properly to VR's usefulness as a way of displaying simple virtual 2D screens or application windows. (Nearly) any number of windows of any size, at any position, and at infinite focal length, anywhere you are able to sit down and put on VR goggles, without a particularly high GPU/CPU burden. That makes the VR HMD a disruptive entrant into the small phone/big phone/small tablet/big tablet scrap. It's probably going to take further improvements in resolution, off-centre visual distortion and HMD bulk before it can really take off in that role, but like any disruptive technology it doesn't have to beat the competition on every axis before it can succeed.

Re: The Apple Watch

#496

Post by cdnsteve »

My perspective is that the majority of the market already owns a smartphone. Companies are trying to get new gadgets out there in peoples hands to increase sales and keep the corporate machine rolling. The problem is, people are happy with just their phones. I think wearables will have a very very slow uptake, especially since they require you to have a smartphone in your pocket.

Someone call me when they get holograms to mass market, then I'll be interested.

Re: The Apple Watch

#497

Post by kayone »

nevi-me wrote: post #252
kayone wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preemptively responding to the Apple Watch That's really interesting way to phrase it. if tables were turned would you say the same thing or would it be Google responding to apple or worst, Google copying apple?

Assuming that Google hasn't spent "years" working on the Android Wear platform compared to Apple's "years", does it mean that based on what we've seen tonight vs. Wear, that Google has done better? I'm certainly of that opinion. There were a lot of speculators who should be humbled by putting the "iWatch" on a pedestal before it was even released. I personally don't like the way it looks, though Apple considered some…

I totally agree with you and think that google's wear is a better offering.

My original reply was referring to the fact that even though Google came to market with its wear device first (years ago with glass and months ago with on the watch) it's still being called a response to apple's non existent (at the time) product.

however if tables were turned and google were to release its first wear product months from now, after apple, NO ONE would call apple's watch a preemptive response to Google's wear. It would either be reported as Google copying apple or best case scenario Google's response to apple's innovation.

eg. No one called the original iPhone a preemptive strike on Android.

Re: The Apple Watch

#499

Post by zak_mc_kracken »

MCRed wrote: post #334
dkulchenko wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's really interesting to me is that Apple has clearly put a lot more thought into how interactions on a device like this should work than anybody else. I strongly disagree. I think that Apple actually took the easy way out here - they seemed to have approached the problem as "how can we make iOS usable on a smaller screen" and came up with interfaces like the crown and the (albeit pretty) circle-based homescr…

I am old enough to remember when the first Mac came out. There was a response to it very much like you see here (only it happened on BBSes because there wasn't much of an "internet") then. It's been the same way for every major product- iMac was chastised for lacking a floppy drive, the iPod, iPhone and iPad were all poo-poohed. In every case someone has said "X is better!" And in every case so far that X has turned…

So even when competitors come up with products that Apple hasn't created yet, these competitors are still copying Apple's ideas by guessing what Apple will be doing?

You really need to step out of that distortion field for a little while.

Re: The Apple Watch

#500

Post by chipotle_coyote »

simplexion wrote: post #427
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there kind of is a distortion field, but I'd argue it's with notions like "Apple has never announced a major product months before availability" and "nobody has ever made a large square watch." Both of these are trivially demonstrated false. And I'm sure Google has put thought and effort into Android Wear, but what you dismiss as a "trite speech from Tim Cook" looks to me like a stake in the ground. Google says…

"The Apple Watch's relationship to the Moto 360 looks to me less like the iPhone 6's relationship to the Moto X than like the original iPhone's relationship to other high-end smartphones of 2007: obviously a lot of shared DNA, but trying to address the same problem space in a measurably different way." If you ignore the LG Prada.

The LG Prada was an impressive piece of hardware and certainly pointed in the same direction, sure, but it was essentially a feature phone -- a smaller, lower-resolution, grayscale display with no Internet capability to speak of. You had to use a virtual phone keyboard for text messaging, even. There was certainly nothing like Safari, for instance, or any of Apple's messaging applications.

Actually, I'd say that the best iPhone-before-iPhone was the Danger Hiptop (a/k/a T-Mobile Sidekick). Much more data capability than almost anything else, a reasonably good browser, and even an app store. It'd be interesting to see where that evolutionary line would have been in 2014 if it hadn't been killed by iOS and Android. (And by Microsoft buying Danger and mangling it to hell, of course.)

Post reply on HN