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Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

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Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#81

Post by glenra »

dilap wrote: post #63

Here's a fun sport for Apple watchers, aficionados and detractors alike: has Apple jumped the shark yet in the post-Steve era? (The game's a bit Candyland-esque; we always arrive at "yes": if Apple's strategy is inflexible post-Steve, they're doomed, if they make any changes, they are also doomed.) Let's play anyway. The big, flashing, worrying sign of changed-for-the-worse Apple isn't any hullaboloo about Warhol and…

Secret-unveilings are worth many millions of dollars in free publicity. Apple gets front-page stories for all their product announcements because they're news. Without that, they'd have a much harder time. If that was at all at risk here, it was probably worth announcing early.

Also, Gruber correctly points out that the Osborne Effect might help them here - if the product seems promising enough, some people will postpone buying something else to wait for the Apple product. We should still expect subsequent versions return to the "you can buy this next week!" model.

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#82

Post by swang »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #54
swang wrote: post #38

"The iPad/iPhone is soooo egalitarian!" "Is Apple losing the egalitarianism it never had? No, it had Macs, it was never egalitarian!" Why was this in the article at all then? Using an analogy that in the end the author itself destroys is bad writing, or at worst extra reading for the reader for no gain. In his own article he never considers Apple egalitarian, yet he is asking a hypothetical question as though Apple w…

I'm not sure I understand your criticism. He seems quite clear to me. He thinks that iThings are egalitarian products, but demonstrates that Apple as a whole is not, given the existence of Macs, and now the watch. This is a worthwhile point to make, since people will compare the watch to iThings, not Macs.

How can an article question if Apple's abandoned it's "egalitarianism" if it never was egalitarian in the first place? This is not my opinion either as the author literally says they are not, while initially using the iPhone/iPad to portray that Apple had an "egalitarian", "for the masses" feel.

Ignoring the fallacy of comparing an iPhone that cost hundreds of dollars when alternatives cost At the very least it is just not a very good analogy where he props one part of the company as something, when the rest of the company is definitely not that something.

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#83

Post by fpgeek »

notatoad wrote: post #32
DannyBee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He thinks Apple is holding some details close to the vest and he has a plausible reason for why. Say what you will about Gruber's Apple partisanship, but he's always been great at reading between the lines of Apple's publicity events." And he also thinks that no android wear device manufacturer is doing the same, for no plausible reason. He's basically saying "apple has secret plans, they are awesome" and "Nobody el…

Other people might have secret plans (like Tag Heuer's rumoured smartwatch maybe), but i think it's fair to assume that the android wear manufacturers have shown their cards. Android Wear is a released product at this point. Samsung has released four (or more?) iterations of their smartwatch. LG has released two. Motorola took some extra time to release theirs - if they had a secret awesome plan and were rushing a pl…

> i think it's fair to assume that the android wear manufacturers have shown their cards.

Um, the Android Wear manufacturers may not have any secret plans of their own, but... The Android Wear OS developer is practically jumping up and down in the corner saying "I have secret plans! I have secret plans!" See, for instance:

http://www.cnet.com/news/google-says-android-wear-about-to-g...

This shouldn't be surprising. The existing Android Wear hardware is unusually powerful (a 2010 smartphone or better?) for what it is currently doing. Given the importance of battery life, that's a strange choice - unless more is coming.

I'd also note that the GP commenter works for the previously mentioned OS developer, and the comment seems entirely consistent with someone who knows more is coming, but can't do much beyond hinting at that.

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#84

Post by bane »

jnevill wrote: post #67
bane wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gruber deserves a prize of some sort of most concentrated example of cognitive dissonance ever put into writing for this post. It's really one of the worst of the worst I've seen.

I am no Gruber fan and I am no Apple fanboi, but I think his points are dead on in this post. He is hedging his bets, repeatedly, but given that we know so little about the Apple Watch, that seems reasonable. At any rate, the main point of the article being that the iWatch is not a play into the Wearables market, but rather a move into the much more lucrative luxury watch market. Given how bloated that market is and…

I respectfully disagree with your generous assessment of this post.

I think if he had basically said something more like "IMHO, Apple Watch looks better to me than any of the Android devices out there" I'd be fine. But all this weird egalitarian bullshit, and backpedaling on his previous claims of disappointment was impossibly tiring.

But I do agree that If there's a real point to made in his conjecture of where Apple is going with their prices, it's not only pushing upscale, but in a more Apple-y way, pulling upscale down. Meaning, bringing luxury items and buying habits into the mass market.

Loads of people can afford a $500 watch, they just don't buy them because

a) They don't need watches anymore

b) If they do, there's a $20 watch at Ross/Marshalls that looks good enough and will get the job done.

I think Apple is going to build a market for smart watches in a way that Google and Android can't because of their superior marketing and built in buying market. In 5 years, the thought of not owning a smartwatch will seem odd, but now the entire market will be in the $500 on up space instead of fighting it out at the lower price points.

After all, Apple has built entire markets on things that we got along just fine without, mp3 players, smartphones, tablets, why not watches?

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#85

Post by lazylizard »

freshyill wrote: post #22
51Cards wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I don't see any decent percentage of even the high end market investing that much in a watch that will be largely obsolete in 2 years tops. You buy a Rolex to have it for years and pass it down. A $5000 watch that no one will want in 2 years is not a wise investment.

Even if the electronics are obsolete, you've still got a chunk of gold hanging off your wrist. Gruber mentions this, and raises the possibility of trade-ins. They do it with phones, and it makes sense for watches made of solid gold.

i've never owned a gold watch(but have bought a couple of gold coins before) so i'm curious. do they come with assay certs and some sort of cert that say how much gold is present(like, in ounces)?

and also, isn't it a little bit impractical in reality as well? gold being a soft metal will wear out if you wear it? then there could be less gold than what it says on the cert?

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#86

Post by bane »

rtpg wrote: post #72
peteretep wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple fan-boy here. I agree with the grandparent that Gruber didn't really make this point well. But: > If you look at the features of the Apple watch, they are > basically the same as every other smartwatch released by > Samsung and motorola This is basically true of almost every Apple product ever, except perhaps the iPhone at launch. I'll go a step further, and agree that Apple generally lags on features compariso…

I also own some Apple products,and one thing that is substantially different has been build quality and ease of use. iPods were fun to use, iPhones had enough UI differentiation with things like blackberries to be "different". the Apple Watch doesn't seem to have that. As a cousin post commented, Android Wear's UI almost seems more Apple than Apple's own UI. Maybe the Zoom-UI and the crown are it. maybe this will tac…

> But there seems to be little differentiation.

The thing that's really interesting to me is that there's a million different ways Apple could have gone with their watch, and instead they just arrived at an Apple version of what's been going on in Android land for a while now.

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#87

Post by EmmaGin »

Cookingboy wrote: post #7
blainsmith wrote: post #5

And yet it is still square and ugly because of it.

I mean, different people prefer different things, but there are plenty of high end watches that's square/rectangle, even though circular ones are more common. Even with the Apple Watch, some of them look beautiful imo: http://i.imgur.com/qGvqIqK.png http://www.iphoneheat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/apple-w... http://images.chinatopix.com/data/images/full/11317/apple-wa... When it comes to watch design, circle != a…

Those are all renders of AppleWatch (the initial Moto 360 renders were equally fantastical). Are there bystander photos of the working AppleWatch models that look as beautiful as the renders? I'm interested in the cheaper plastic model in particular as that's likely the one I'm getting — and the price makes it a fairer comparison to the Moto 360

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#88

Post by bane »

stefanu wrote: post #60
bane wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put a touch-sensitive pad along the whole side of the Apple Watch That's exactly what I thought when I first saw it explained. Coming from the iPod and all this touch sensitive stuff (and then the "hard tap" being introduced here) a physical thingamabob to fiddle with seems really odd.

What about a cold weather? You can still turn the crown in gloves when it is freezing.

My Note 3 works just fine with gloves on (there's a screen sensitivity mode intended just for that use-case)...and I'm not talking about using it with the pen.

Touchscreen tech has advanced quite a bit since the old days.

The demos of the watch show a mixed use-case. The crown for some things, the screen to complete the task. So unless they're supporting similar screen tech as what Samsung is featuring now, the glove use-case doesn't matter.

Re: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations

#89

Post by jkubicek »

DannyBee wrote: post #15
tlipeep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wishful thinking from Gruber so he can withhold judgement/criticism. Apple clearly demonstrated the fundamental functionality of their Watch and the hardware does determine the software — they have a hardware button dedicated to one particular feature ffs. Any additional functionality via WatchKit will at best be supplemental. It'd take a while for iOS developers to get to grips with the new paradigm. Furtherm…

" Android Wear devices are almost useless other than for telling time when out of Bluetooth range from your phone" Yeah. This is the part that gets me. Gruber is willing to withhold judgement and assume apple has not shown off everything. But android wear makers, you see, they've shown everything in their presentation . No android wear manufacturers are planning anything different than what was shown at I/O.

> But android wear makers, you see, they've shown everything in their presentation. No android wear manufacturers are planning anything different than what was shown at I/O.

Most tech companies over-promise and under-deliver. Apple has a tendency to do the opposite (if you ignore they hyperbole). I'm sure most Android Wear manufacturers are planning beyond what they've actually announced, but I would be amazed if we see anything new before the new year.

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