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The Apple Watch

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Re: The Apple Watch

#71
post #22

It actually kind of saddens me to read his summary of how touch will be "awesome". A teenager is afraid to talk to a girl he likes so he sends her what amounts to a text on his watch? It feels like humans keep building more and more barriers to ACTUAL communication. I can't help but think at some point it will have serious negative effects on the human race. Part of growing up and maturing is learning to deal with di…

That's the thought that popped into my head too. The same kid at a job after college. He screws up so he sequesters himself in the bathroom and has to be coaxed out with the right combination of soothing texts and vibrations. On the other hand, there have always been non-verbal ways to communicate. Note-passing was common when I was in school. Presumably the boy with the crush on the girl who is sending the texts on…

The person in your first example likely has autism. Your average person, no matter how much of an introvert, would never need to be coaxed out of the bathroom with the right combination of texts and vibrations. Normal speech works just fine on even the most introverted people. Introverts of that nature aren't afraid of people talking to them nicely or trying to calm them down, they're afraid of interaction. Being talked to with no expectation of a response is not interaction.

Why does everyone keep saying that every single new technology is going to kill face to face communication? Have you ever had a face to face conversation? That's not going anywhere. SMS didn't do it, MSN/AOL didn't do it, iMessage didn't do it, Facebook didn't do it. Hell we're even going in the opposite direction: Tinder exists solely to facilitate face to face (more or less) interactions.

Communication technologies do not make people unable to have normal conversations. It's just not happening. AIM was released 18 years ago, Usenet existed long before that, and written notes were quite common for hundreds of years.

Vaccines don't give you autism and neither does written communication.

Re: The Apple Watch

#72
post #61

Designing a 2015 smartwatch to fit the expectations of dumb-watches feels more and more to me like designing a 2007 smartphone to fit the expectations of the blackberry crowd (physical keyboard, removable battery). The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong . And doing so on a device tha…

> The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong.

That's not the point of the digital crown. It's to free your "swipe to scroll" gesture which blocks a screen of that size, to a physical input. Apple has been very clear on it's existence, and it's taking a classic component of a watch and propelling it into the modern era.

Might want to rethink that first.

Re: The Apple Watch

#73
post #61

Designing a 2015 smartwatch to fit the expectations of dumb-watches feels more and more to me like designing a 2007 smartphone to fit the expectations of the blackberry crowd (physical keyboard, removable battery). The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong . And doing so on a device tha…

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of the display being wider. The traditional shape of a watch was that way because of the mechanism inside. Wearables, like the Apple Watch, should do away with the traditional watches form factor constraint.

I would like to see these devices progress to more of a band form factor with a wider and curved display to fit the contour of our wrist.

Re: The Apple Watch

#74
post #7

> It truly is a good and clever idea, and, presuming it is patent-protected strongly enough, the lack of a digital crown is going to put competitors at a disadvantage. I rather scroll using the edge of the screen, I hate reading on my phone and interrupting with my finger to scroll, that's why I swipe at the very edge of the screen, almost scrolling with the metal. When watches get thinner, and they will, the crown w…

It's kind of gross that basic UI controls can be patented like that.

Re: The Apple Watch

#75
post #72
post #61

Designing a 2015 smartwatch to fit the expectations of dumb-watches feels more and more to me like designing a 2007 smartphone to fit the expectations of the blackberry crowd (physical keyboard, removable battery). The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong . And doing so on a device tha…

> The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong. That's not the point of the digital crown. It's to free your "swipe to scroll" gesture which blocks a screen of that size, to a physical input. Apple has been very clear on it's existence, and it's taking a classic component of a watch and pr…

> it's taking a classic component of a watch and propelling it into the modern era.

That's a spectacularly marketing-y phrase. It's a scroll wheel. There's nothing wrong with that, but we don't need to dress it up as anything else.

Re: The Apple Watch

#76
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.

By his own admission his podcast, The Talk Show, makes more money than his blog at this point. Just another reason the "paid blogger" dismissive misses the mark.

Ehh? How so? It's possible for both his blog and podcast to make heaps of money, with the podcast simply making more.

Re: The Apple Watch

#77
post #22

It actually kind of saddens me to read his summary of how touch will be "awesome". A teenager is afraid to talk to a girl he likes so he sends her what amounts to a text on his watch? It feels like humans keep building more and more barriers to ACTUAL communication. I can't help but think at some point it will have serious negative effects on the human race. Part of growing up and maturing is learning to deal with di…

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.

Re: The Apple Watch

#78
post #61

Designing a 2015 smartwatch to fit the expectations of dumb-watches feels more and more to me like designing a 2007 smartphone to fit the expectations of the blackberry crowd (physical keyboard, removable battery). The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong . And doing so on a device tha…

Have you had a chance to use the watch yet? This level of fine-grained criticism, which is about the phenomenology of using the watch, feels baseless unless you're one of the people who've been giving a review unit and have been using it for days. It's interesting to speculate, maybe, but confidence in any of these assertions, even formulating them as statements rather than questions, seems strange to me.

Re: The Apple Watch

#79
post #72
post #61

Designing a 2015 smartwatch to fit the expectations of dumb-watches feels more and more to me like designing a 2007 smartphone to fit the expectations of the blackberry crowd (physical keyboard, removable battery). The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong . And doing so on a device tha…

> The digital crown looks like one such mistake. Swipe-to-scroll is so natural, particularly at this point, that moving back to an indirect method of scrolling seems just wrong. That's not the point of the digital crown. It's to free your "swipe to scroll" gesture which blocks a screen of that size, to a physical input. Apple has been very clear on it's existence, and it's taking a classic component of a watch and pr…

> It would have been better to simply detect swipe-to-scroll along the right edge of the bezel (if not along the right side of the frame itself) to effect "scrolling without obscuring".

Re: The Apple Watch

#80
post #64

I am quite excited about upgrading my watch experience and the next generation of connected devices, however, the biggest surprise for me is that Apple doesn't offer more gesture recognition. I always imagined the primary interface for shortcuts would be gestures such as waving away your arm to dismiss a message or flicking the wrist multiple times (if you try it right now, you can easily flick your wrist 3-4 times p…

Hey Siri... No hands :)
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