71–80 of 156 posts
Still waiting for a version of smartwatch built for females.
400x400 for a circle? Looks like they're clipping the corners, so not actually 400x400 resolution.
Not using square pixels. I mean, it would be insane, but...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android Wear is specifically designed to avoid this problem. You get a series of glance-able cards that you can swipe through for more information or actions. In maybe one or two places (the Settings app) do you actually get a list view, and they are all one-line entries that fit easily on a round screen. Apple's philosophy toward the smartwatch experience is just different. Android Wear is all about contextual notif…
Still, the actual "usable" area on a circular watch is the square within.
It feels like they modified Android purely for the sake of modifying it. Hopefully with the watch they'll be a bit more careful. Huawei's the only major company (?) making large-screen long-life devices. I don't have to charge my Huawei phone (Mate 2) every day. That's a relief, unlike every other major phone. (And, just $300.)
And this picture which is actually on huawei site as the part of the promo (!) illustrates the best why Jony Ive said (1) that "a circle doesn't make any sense" for a smartwatch: http://consumer.huawei.com/minisite/worldwide/huawei-watch/a... ---- 1) http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-co...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android Wear is specifically designed to avoid this problem. You get a series of glance-able cards that you can swipe through for more information or actions. In maybe one or two places (the Settings app) do you actually get a list view, and they are all one-line entries that fit easily on a round screen. Apple's philosophy toward the smartwatch experience is just different. Android Wear is all about contextual notif…
Still, the actual "usable" area on a circular watch is the square within.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ive also blasted the Moto X for offering so many customization choices and shipped a watch predicated on massive customization. Let's get one thing straight. Apple lambasts everyone else's designs until they adopt them. Recall that: 1) Mini-tablets are too small to be usable, you'd have to "file down your fingers to use them" 2) Large screen phones are a) things people don't want and b) don't fit your hand properly.…
To be fair, basically every major corporation and most people do this. I can think of a half dozen Google examples just from my time there, and more than a few Facebook ones too.
1. How vehement their condemnation is (especially since, in retrospect, they're already busy working on exactly what they're condeming),
2. How quickly and comprehensively they flip the story when their version is ready and
3. How predictable this pattern is for them. Given past experience, I almost expect Apple to be working on actual toaster-fridges in a skunkworks project somewhere (in addition to the metaphorical ones I'm positive they're working on).
I'm really hoping they pull this off. Their hardware is alright, perhaps a bit cheap feeling. But the software, yikes. Huawei understands memory so poorly, that they have a button that appears every time you try to switch app. Said button force kills every app that's running. Then gleefully proclaims that it "freed" up memory. It's beyond idiotic. It feels like they modified Android purely for the sake of modifying i…
From the recent New Yorker profile of Jonny Ive: > The shape of the body, meanwhile, barely changed: a rectangle with rounded corners. “When a huge part of the function is lists ”—of names, or appointments—“a circle doesn’t make any sense,” Ive said. Its final form resembles one of Newson’s watches, and the Cartier Santos, from 1904. I think circular watches, in principle, look a lot nicer (certainly in ads), but tha…
I'm a big believer that the best smart watches will be round. A circle is more aesthetically pleasing than a rectangle. More importantly it has better ergonomics and you could do things like rotate the watch face according to hand position.
Lots of content looks really well when encapsulated by a circle since it looks more "organic". Photos, faces, maps, time. It's a little bit worse for chunks of text however but most snippets displayed like a SMS should be pretty short.
There's also a huge opportunity to use a rotatable bezel as tactile complement to a touch screen, making zooming, and scrolling easier. Being excellent for things like "dial selectors" and preventing smudges and being all around easier to find, grip and manipulate than the screen or a crown. Having invented the scroll wheel for the iPod for nearly the exact same reasons one would think Apple would be wise to this fact.
So what about the claim that it should be rectangle because "a huge function is lists". I think this simple is lack of imagination on the UX part. You have to think of the main purposes for a watch, as a complement but not replacement for a phone.
I actually don't see many scenarios where you'd want to browse through large lists or wall of texts on your watch. In most cases you want to view small nuggets of information and do some basic manipulation. In many cases I think "scrolling" could be replaced by for instance simply switching the whole circle content and having some indicator in the perimeter.
I suspect however the reason that both Android and Apple is going primary the rectangular route is that it does however require more imagination and radically different UI's than a phone, and time weren't on their side to do that quite yet.
I wouldn't be surprised if most if not all smartwatches in the future are circular