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The Apple Watch

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Re: The Apple Watch

#791

Post by presumeaway »

wiremine wrote: post #683

I spent about 20 minutes reading through some of the now 650+ comments, and I'm a bit surprised how common the arguments are on both sides. It feels like the entire tech community has the same basic argument every time a new 1.0 apple product is released: Those who don't like the product: - it is feature incomplete - the hype doesn't match the actual product - it doesn't actually look that great - there are other, be…

You read 32.5 comments/minute?

That's a skill I'd like to have...

Re: The Apple Watch

#792

Post by boyaka »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #28

Miniaturization has come a long way, but there's no way this costs just $350 to make. Has Apple's strategy changed? They've always sold hardware at a healthy margin and made trivial amounts off software and music. There are some really nice features here, I would probably buy one if I didn't prefer android so much. But is it so nice that it will drive iPhone sales?

How about paying thousands of engineers/designers $100k+ salaries to work on it for the past year?

Re: The Apple Watch

#793

Post by yalogin »

personZ wrote: post #281
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #249

While someone else already made the reference to this quote, it's hard for me not to recall Commander Taco's (in)famous dismissal of the original iPod when I browse these comments. Personally I don't know that there's any watch that would really get me to start wearing watches at all again -- I never liked them that much to begin with. But this knocks down an awful lot of the criticisms I've had of existing smartwatc…

it's hard for me not to recall Commander Taco's (in)famous dismissal of the original iPod when I browse these comments You should also remember that he was hardly in the majority with those comments. Further he was technically correct, and the iPod succeeded because of a synergy with other parts of Apple's empire (notably iTunes). But what's really interesting to me is that Apple has clearly put a lot more thought in…

Hard to stomach? That's a curious choice of words. Do you think Google or Amazon would not do the same marketing and try to create the same kind of hype around their products if they can? You are saying you can see through the clutter but it looks more like you are biased against company that was successful in their execution.

Re: The Apple Watch

#794

Post by jiggy2011 »

n09n wrote: post #716
eitally wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue with you on this point. A smartwatch is absolutely not jewelry first. There is literally no compelling reason to wear a smart watch unless you intend to use it for the "smart" purposes (information, navigation, communication, reminders, appointments, music, health). Otherwise, pick a "dumb" watch. Even I, who haven't worn a watch regularly since college (about 15 years ago), have grown accustomed to my…

That's only because smartwatches up until now have not been fashionable. That's also why they are so unpopular.

I wonder if they will become fashionable in part because Apple has released a smart watch, thus proving that they are not a fad. I wonder if other non apple smart watches will now become more fashionable and see increased sales too.

Re: The Apple Watch

#795

Post by serve_yay »

tdicola wrote: post #251

I worry this will be a massive target for theft. If someone sees you wearing an Apple Watch they know you have at least a $350 watch and $400+ phone on your person.

Fancy watches are theft targets, true. (At this point anyone with a fancy watch, digital or analog, has an expensive smartphone in their pocket.)

Re: The Apple Watch

#796

Post by aetherson »

tcc2161 wrote: post #773
jawr wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This. I was actually quite disturbed with the Apple unveiling of the watch, I know it has been expected and what not. But a device that is literally monitoring my heart rate constantly all day, guiding me down a street with "gentle taps like a person" to tell me which direction to go. I feel like a small part of humanity is being optimised away. It's an incredibly scary thought.

The taps guiding someone down the street struck me as being useful to blind people. Imagine if white canes became museum pieces in our lifetime because the blind become equipped with GPS enabled wearables.

Well, white canes are more about locating curbs and fire hydrants and other people than they are about finding where you are on a map. But we can and should imagine a future in which blind people have prosthetic aids that give at least limited senses of sight to the blind, enough to avoid tripping and obstacles (and the white cane). That seems eminently within reach in the next couple of decades, if not the next five years.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis

Re: The Apple Watch

#797

Post by aetherson »

angryasian wrote: post #585
n09n wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality distortion field and the ability to spin those negatives as positives are features, though. A watch is primarily a piece of jewelry. How well it tells the time or does other things is much less important than how fashionable it is. Branding is one of Apple's strong suits, and you can't take that away by adding features as if consumer purchasing decisions are based on some kind of checklist-like RFPs like…

>A watch is primarily a piece of jewelry. or saying a watch is for time keeping is not very forward thinking IMO. Its like saying 10 years ago, a smart phone is just a phone. Less and less people actually use it to make calls and use it more for many of other functionality it provides.

I wish that Apple would make their phone better as a phone. Calling my wife on her iPhone is a goddamn catastrophe, because she has never once in her life heard it ring, because its ring volume is roughly the volume of a very polite British salesperson saying, "Excuse me, ma'am," and its vibration is apparently made with the first concern being that it could be placed on delicate spun-sugar constructions without worrying that the harsh vibrational waves would cause a dessert collapse.

And I know, I know, it's so second-millennium of me to actually want to call my wife, but she doesn't hear the text notifications either, and sometimes I need to figure out whether we already have cinnamon[1] before I buy yet another container of it.

[1] We do. We now have about six hundred containers of cinnamon, a spice that we use roughly once a year. This appears to be a failure mode of my brain.

Re: The Apple Watch

#799

Post by 2xlbuds »

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.

The LG G Watch.

Re: The Apple Watch

#800

Post by fixedd »

yincrash wrote: post #737
wikyd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I was trying to figure out why the Watch looks thick from the side, but seemed not too thick in photos on peoples' wrists. That explains it.

For non-Mac users, the parent typed "(apple-logo)Watch". The Apple logo is only visible to mac (and iOS?) users because it's in the private use area on fonts on macs.

And Linux users, apparently.
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