Is John Gruber ever non-biased in his pieces about Apple? Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal. Every article on every Apple product announcement starts out feeling well-intentioned and non-objective, but then always seems to segue into a subtle praise piece. I am not hating on him, he still makes some great points and he puts considerable amounts of effort into analysis pieces. I just feel like with Gruber we would never see an article honestly telling us something Apple have released is bad.
> Also, though it sounds trivial, I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match.
Based on a culmination of reviews and early preview articles I have read, videos and basically everything I have read about the Apple Watch this statement seems kind of ironic. The second hand might be smooth, but the very real performance issues people have encountered with the watch mean the rest of the Apple Watch experience is anything but smooth. What's the point of a smooth second hand if the rest of the experience is somewhat crippled and unusable?
I like the look of the Apple Watch and the very idea of it, but to an extent. It feels as though articles like Gruber's here are talking with reckless abandon, from the perspective that existing solutions aren't out there. From a user interface perspective the Pebble watch and Moto 360 especially are beautiful, well-crafted and smooth interfaces. Apple are not entering new territory nor are they introducing any ideas or improvements into the space (besides the physical appearance).
Lets not pretend that there aren't as equally good, if not, better smart watches out there. They might not have had the same amount of design and research put into them, but I think there is such a thing as over-engineering something. I am pretty happy with my Pebble watch, the battery life is great and so too, is the battery life.
I am by no means an expert, but I like nice watches and to me the Apple Watch will never match the build quality, feel and longevity of a nice traditional mechanical watch even if it is only from a battery life perspective.
He's definitely a shill. Imagine a couple years ago, when Gruber couldn't even bring himself to pretend to provide critical analysis of Apple products. I used to just flag daringfireball posts as soon as I saw them. These days there's at least information content in his posts so I usually leave them alone.
But Gruber also spends an extraordinary amount of time these days using framing devices to either draw false comparisons that put Apple on top, or minimize the cases where Apple clearly screwed up. You could easily cut this review down by 2/3rds just by getting rid of the superfluous framing he uses throughout and not lose any information at all. The amount of hemming and hawing in this makes me think that he's not really buying it this time. It's not a crap device, but it's not clear what it's good for and it's not strictly better than just a normal watch. He didn't really effuse about Apple's stated use-cases for the device. His hope throughout is that maybe it'll appeal to non-watch wearers?
You'll also notice that he carefully doesn't compare it to all the other smart watches in the growing segment. He pretends like it only is comparable to regular watches, like the Apple watch was introduced into a market vacuum, cut from whole cloth (Apple's magical genius cloth), and completely uninformed by the three decades of smartwatch development.
lucky for gruber, Apple has released an awful lot of good products recently. iPhones have stupid customer satisfaction numbers. They aren't the most valuable company in the world by a mile because everything they release is crap.
Obviously Gruber is a big fan of Apple, but your criticism of him is a bit harsh. I assume he didn't spend a lot of time comparing it to Android wear because he hasn't spent a ton of time using Android wear.
I'm a little afraid of the first gen bugs, and some of the reviews I read today weren't completely sold, but pretty much every single one that I read said it was far and away the best smartwatch they've used, even if they still weren't completely sold and gave it meh reviews overall.
Gruber is terrible. I'm completely unapologetic about my opinion about him. He's everything that's wrong in tech news today. He's been able to carve a niche for himself preaching to a choir of folks with large disposable incomes by providing unashamed regurgitation of Apple's marketing bullet points so that people can reinforce their beliefs by having another bullet point that they made the right technology purchase. If his recent posts continued his tradition of information free praise, I'd still be flagging them off the front-page. I can think of very few tech writers as well known as him who offer less useful information than he does on any topic.
You are right, Apple didn't get where they are by producing crap, but they also didn't get where they are without getting it wrong sometimes, and it's really hard to find cases where Gruber recognizes that without bookending and drowning issues in a thousand words of qualification. Sure, he gets to point to the sentence among dozens where he mentions something that might, just maybe, be wrong, but the context he places issues in minimize and excuse these issues away.
The question he needs to be answering is not if the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch on the market, I don't doubt that it is. But it's, "are smartwatches a good idea?". He's not capable of answering that question honestly because to Gruber, anything Apple does is a good idea, Apple is doing a smartwatch, therefore it must be a good idea. He waits till Apple tells him how to think, then he write a post recycling and expanding on their marketing direction -- and he does this completely unironically.
If you read his review with a critical eye it boils down to this:
- It's a terrible watch (there's about 1,000 words trying to weazel around what a shitty watch it is)
- The industrial design is nice
- He hasn't found much value in the expressed use-cases it shipped with
- If you don't wear watches, you'll probably be more interested in it than people who already wear watches
There, almost 6,000 words boiled down to the 4 main bullet points, and only the hardware received any real praise. I think it's interesting that these 4 bullet points are echoed in most of the early reviews I've seen. The problems he mentions, then tries to bury, are expanded on in more honest reviews.
They aren't really problems with Apple's version of the Smart Watch per se, but with the idea of Smart Watches as a class of product. It's really hard to come up with a Smart Watch that makes any kind of sense, and it's pretty clear that Apple hasn't been able to justify it (and if Apple can't crack that nut who can?)
Will Apple sell millions of them? Yeah probably. I wonder how many will be to people who made their purchase decision after reading daringfireball?
Totally baffled by your mindset. Why is Gruber terrible and everything wrong with tech news today? Compared to Engadget et al he seems reasonably fair and balanced. Please point me towards something he's written that's objectively biased or bad.
Everything he writes is objectively biased. Have you ever read anything he's ever written?
Tech news is already so full of bought promotions pretending to be articles, fan boyism and subjective "analysis" it really doesn't need more. It's already enough of a burden on the reader to try to figure out if a review of some new product is being truthful or was paid for by an ad on page 23, or if the editor has some platform to push or if the writer wants to keep using the sources he's developed with some cool company.
Technology media is honestly pretty terrible in general, and very few of the faults of the arena don't apply to Gruber. Except he's also a really great writer. He's smart. So it's not quite out in the open like it might be on a lesser site like a CNET review. But he has lots and lots of tools that he employs to push his agenda.
Here's some literary devices that Gruber employs in almost everything he writes:
- Minimizing or Maximizing Framing devices (when Apple is right, he makes them smarter than Gods, when they're dead wrong he makes it seem like a reasonable alternative that's still better than anybody else)
- False comparisons (Apple's apple's to everybody else's inferior oranges)
- Jumbling of facts (often used to lead into a Min/Max Framing segment)
- Information-like sentences (lots of facts and figures, but no actual information)
- Omissions (easy to excuse)
- Emotionally driven excuses (Apple did it this way to pull at your heart strings)
- Setting then ignoring a thesis ("Here's why Apple's is amazing", then uses the above devices to ignore that thesis when Apple doesn't live up to it)
He also likes to drop little bomb posts questioning the veracity and fairness of the rest of the media, which subtly informs the reader that he's not like those journalists.
Here's his recent tech-news post history (I won't comment on his non-tech posts):
- ‘FINALLY’ OF THE WEEK - where he criticizes the tech media for using the word finally in the following sentence "Cheap USB-C Cables for Your MacBook Are Finally Here"
- TRIPADVISOR, BOOKING.COM REVIEWS START APPEARING IN APPLE MAPS - where he points out that Apple is a better company than Google because its Business Development team secured data sharing partnerships for Apple Maps
- HIGHBALL 1.0 - where he pumps up a cocktail recipe app. He drops the not-so-subtle-jab at Google line "They might have actually found a good use for QR codes."
- MORE ON APPLE’S CONSTRUCTION HIRING - where he brings doubt into Apple's probably illegal hiring policy for construction on their new campus w/r to convicted felons. Of course the doubt he sews is framed that everybody else must be doing it so Apple discriminating against them is okay.
- ROLLING STONE UVA RAPE STORY RETRACTION: A CASE STUDY IN FAILED JOURNALISM - again a piece that subtly brings up the failings of everybody else who's not him in providing trusted and Fox News style fair & balanced coverage of things
- REPORT CLAIMS SAMSUNG PAID HUNDREDS OF ‘FANS’ TO ATTEND GALAXY S6 LAUNCH IN CHINA - an uncritical regurgitation of a quote from the WantChinaTimes, with an update of a quote from Samsung denying it. No insight or discussion from Gruber, no sources checked.
- ‘APPARENTLY NONE OF YOU GUYS REALIZE HOW BAD OF AN IDEA A TOUCHSCREEN IS ON A PHONE’ - where he quotes somebody else quoting somebody from 2007 comparing a Samsung flip phone to an iPhone
- FELONS BARRED FROM CONSTRUCTING APPLE’S CAMPUS - another post from him on this subject, this time excusing Apple because background checks on employees of the richest most profitable company in history must be "expensive"
- Reach for the Sky, Pando - where he criticizes the SF Chronicle for breaking the story on Apple's discriminatory hiring process. He also takes time to defend Steve Job's notoriously abrasive personality and the illegal hiring practices Apple has taken part in previously w/r to tech workers.
- JOANNA STERN’S GALAXY S6 REVIEW - where his only point is are that the S6 is an iPhone lookalike and Samsung's software sucks, and they aren't up to competing against Apple's products. Of course he completely omits that the article claims the S6, in balance, is a match to the iPhone 6. If your information source was Gruber's take on the review, you'd think the S6 was a cheap unusable knock-off. But the review doesn't claim that at all. He carefully omits in his quotes where the review praises the S6 for a better camera set, better battery life, faster recharging, bigger storage, cheaper price and a better screen.
'He drops the not-so-subtle-jab at Google line "They might have actually found a good use for QR codes."' - Huh? What do QR codes have to do with Google? It did go through a brief period of being somewhat keen on them before quietly forgetting about them, but it's not like they invented it or anything.
So, from reading his review you came away with the impression that he thinks it's terrible. He mentioned lots of bad things about it. Yet you hate him for only praising it. That doesn't really follow. Perhaps you should rethink your position.
I hate him because he spends approximately 5,500 words of this 6,000 word review framing how awesome Apple and all their wonderful products are and how terrible the rest of the world is for not being Apple before giving a tiny set of heavily qualified problems.
With Gruber the answer to the question "did Gruber like this Apple product?" is one of two answers
1) Yes, with a 2-5 sentence blog post
2) Yes, with a multi-thousand line blog post he buries issues inside of
And to "did Gruber like this non-Apple product?" the answer is
1) No, it obviously sucks
2) No, because Apple does whatever it is better
These days he at least provides some useful information in his long form posts, so I don't autoflag them like I used to. But he's often virtually information free.
So someone who makes four main points in his review - two negative ones and one that's at least highly ambivalent - is preaching to the chore and just regurgitating Apple marketing bullet points. Got it.
No, somebody who buries those 2 negative points in 6,000 words of rhetorical framing devices is. Have you ever even seen the content of Daringfireball?
I totally agree to this. Gruber just praises everything that Apple does and knocks out other ideas. I see bias in his analysis of other ideas and products. Works for him because so many people want to hear exactly that.
Do you have evidence of Apple secretly paying Gruber for apparent opinions? Because that's what that word means; it's a form of marketing fraud.
> You'll also notice that he carefully doesn't compare it to all the other smart watches in the growing segment.
The market right now can be divided into two sections; things like the Pebble, and watches-with-apps (Apple Watch, Android Wear). For the latter category, which way you go entirely depends on what sort of phone you have, so a comparison arguably isn't particularly worthwhile.
Shill means "an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others"
Being unable to accept or say negative things about your accomplice and only provide those things about your accomplice's competitors are all the marks of a shill. Gruber exists only to entice and encourage others to want, desire and do all things Apple. His post history is demonstration of this.
It doesn't mean he's paid directly by Apple, but benefits from Apple's success. He's not a "tech blogger" he's an "Apple blogger". If he was being paid directly he'd be an astroturfer. I'm using "shill" very precisely here.
> The market right now can be divided into two sections; things like the Pebble, and watches-with-apps (Apple Watch, Android Wear). For the latter category, which way you go entirely depends on what sort of phone you have,
But he does compare it. This article is not an analysis-in-a-isolation. He explicitly compares the Apple Watch to regular timepieces, and in such a way that it generally compares favorably to those devices -- then he spends a few paragraphs excusing why it's not that great of a watch.
He doesn't compare it against other smart watches or other fitness tracking devices at all, but both are market segments the Apple Watch explicitly markets towards, which he spends almost 1/6th of this essay talking about. It's not that I think the Apple Watch would fare poorly against those other devices, but that it brings up uncomfortable questions about the entire segment that Gruber isn't prepared to talk about because Apple hasn't told him how to talk about it (either directly or through their marketing and advertising channels).
> so a comparison arguably isn't particularly worthwhile.
Why wouldn't a comparison be worthwhile? They all have significant product overlap, the Venn diagram of all smart watches is almost a circle, while the Venn diagram with traditional watches is not. Yet he chose to spend 1,000 words on the regular timepiece comparison, and zero words on the market segment. I'm positing that this wasn't an accident. It's an easy comparison to make against the rest of the offerings in the segment.
- The battery life is better than just about any Android Watch on the market
- It's not as good as a Pebble
- But the screen and functionality is better than a Pebble, and most of the Android watches on the market
- The styling of the Apple watch appears to be better than other competing watches on the market
- But this comes at a cost, it's among the most expensive devices in the segment
- You also have to be in the Apple ecosystem to use it
There, that's easy. My mini-comparison review even makes the Apple Watch look like a good choice. It's because that's what a critical analysis looks like. You don't set the outcome of your review then fudge in 6,000 words to support it.
By not doing that there's only a few possibilities:
- In all the years that smart watches have been out, he's never bothered to even check one out, showing an extreme lack of interest in the segment, he's only now interested at all because Apple has put one out. This is useless.
- Now that he has an Apple watch, he could go to the his local electronics store and just use the novel technique of looking at a few competitors and give some impressions. He didn't and this is also useless.
- He did do the above, and doesn't want to write about it, because several years into the market now, the competitor's offerings are more mature and compare better to the Apple Watch. By not writing about this issue, he's shilling and is useless.
- He already decided to write a positive review about the Watch. This is preordained, since he always says positive things about Apple products. He acts like the rest of the market doesn't exist or is irrelevant, but $20 Casio watches are. This is useless.
The only useful thing he could have done, at minimum is say "I'll be doing a comparison test against the rest of the market in an upcoming article", at a maximum is use some of his 6,000 words to compare against the entire rest of the market.
But he doesn't and all we know is that Gruber wants you to think he thinks the Apple Watch is good.
>He's definitely a shill. Imagine a couple years ago, when Gruber couldn't even bring himself to pretend to provide critical analysis of Apple products.
Ironically, Gruber's review is perhaps one of the more critical one that I've read so far of the Apple watch. My takeaway was that he didn't think, as a life-time watch wearer, that it wasn't as good a time piece as any of his watches, that the battery life didn't meet almost any watch in existence, that the delay in looking at the watch was annoying. Gruber care's about design, quality, and fit/finish, and from that perspective, the Apple watch is significantly more advanced than watches like the Pebble, and so he spent a bit of time talking about it.
Here's the thing - John Gruber is a partisan (to quote Siracusa), but so is his audience - so it's entirely reasonable that he would offer a partisan's analysis of the Apple Watch.
Even so - I thought he was more critical of the watch than most other Apple products - and perhaps it's because he does wear a watch, and was trying to decide whether he was interested in wearing an Apple watch instead.
His conclusion seemed to be that it wasn't clear he would.
Put another way, of the four reviews that I've read so far (NYT, Recode, The Verge) - Gruber's was the first one that made me think that buying a version 1 Apple Watch wasn't such a great idea - simply because it was a partisans review that was clearly calling out disclaimers.
> Given his history with the company, I feel like with Gruber we never ever get the real deal.
You should try listening to his podcast(s). Just like pre-Functional-High-Ground-Marco, I find Gruber to be a lot more realistic and balanced when he is talking, not writing.
This is the same Marco Arment who just came out and wrote an essay basically saying the iPhone 6/6+ is poorly designed, and he's hoping Apple will stop with the "thinner, thinner, thinner but sucky experience for the user" design process?
Yep. I don't think he has been writing essays as these before his infamous blog post[1]. He has, however, been criticising Apple for a while (forever?) on podcasts. On a recent episode of ATP.fm, he even mentioned that the blog post did not come out of nowhere, but was simply a write-up of things that have been discussed on the podcast for a long time.
Yeah - I used to feel like Arment was in he bag for Apple (and I say this as a hardcore Mac guy, though I use Android phones), but these days I find myself respecting his take a lot more. Gruber...no. He is a very good writer who uses that skill effectively, but he's so far in the bag it's not even funny.
I think Arment has realized he really has nothing to lose, and everything to gain by just speaking the truth. A number of times he's been hosed by Apple sitting on an patch release for overcast, he's not invited to any events, and doesn't get embargoed gear. As a result, telling the truth improves his braaannnd (read that with a zombie like braiiiinnsss sound), with very little downside.
I wouldn't be surprised if we'll continue to see more honesty from Arment - I think he's realized that it only did Siracusa good. Gruber, who I love his reading, is in a tough position - he has to tow the company line in order to get the invites and gear from Apple, which are somewhat important to DF.
I agree with this. I've heard him give talks on a few occasions and found them far superior in content and delivery than his writing. Which is hard to believe because Gruber honestly is a very good writer.
What new ideas and improvements would those be? Honest and non-argumentative question. I mean of course besides the beautiful engineering (I like the appearance of the Apple Watch) and digital crown.
Well, the heart-rate monitor for starters (and I suspect, based on the optical design of it, that it was built with an eye toward measuring blood oxygen content in future incarnations). Extant activity trackers on the market don't really do it for me from a value standpoint--but I do own a Garmin cycling GPS. The Apple Watch also has enough computational oompf that they should be able to implement Suunto's Firstbeat HR algorithm for better calorie burn estimation (this is all speculative, of course).
Strava is a killer app for those who already have an iPhone: Watch Sport costs about what I would pay to upgrade to the latest Garmin Edge, plus it tracks non-exercise activity (which is something I like but am not willing to pay for by itself). On top of all that, Apple Watch comes with maps (and turn-by-turn directions) for free (something you pay for out the nose with Garmin).
Then there's the mobile payments piece. Taking out your phone is fairly low-friction, but double-tapping a button on your watch and holding it up to a terminal is even less so, plus the idea that I could go out with just my phone and watch is pretty appealing.
Most Android Wear watches also have an optical heart rate monitor, and they all do turn-by-turn.
Fair point on the payments, though. I think only the Sony watch has NFC, and I haven't heard when/if that will be actually supported by the OS for payments.
I'm not a fan of what I've seen of Apple Watch, or wearables in general, but the UI innovations that Apple has made for a tiny screen feel clear to me. The manner of navigating apps with the crown (and using a crown to navigate, period), is the one that jumps out the most. The casual sketching and heartbeat communication modes are a bit contrived, but novel. Their approach to haptic alerts sounds distinctive and thought-through.
To be clear, I am not a believer in this product, and I really like Apple stuff. But if you're not seeing ideas and improvements, I think a closer look is warranted.
Taptic feedback. Diversity in product design. Digital touch. Architecture of Apps.
Those are all unique to Apple's Watch as is pretty much every aspect of the look & feel. You can argue different watches having the same features but Apple's implementation will always be quite unique.
I don't know if diversity in product design is valid for the watch. There was a UI side-by-side with Android Watch UI products at the reveal of the Apple Watch, and they're pretty much identical (save for the top-level app view)
Put aside the UI. There are a couple different case sizes, a few different case materials, a lot of different wrist bands, some special editions, etc. All combined, there are a lot of choices when it comes to the physical appearance of the Apple Watch on your wrist, spanning a huge price range. The Motorola watch comes closest on this score, but it's still a distant second.
Moving the space app centric is a pretty big deal for me at least. Even if it requires teathering to a phone, and with the performance issues, it's a big step above the notification centric nature of Android Wear. Plus the ability to run on wifi and stay connected with the phone.
Not saying the device isn't worthy of most of its criticisms, but let's not pretend this is and iOS-ified version of Android Wear.
Gruber's scenario with the two high school kids sending each other love taps, scribbles, and heartbeats was poignant. While the Apple Watch isn't for me, I can't begrudge those who decide to buy one. I think back to the late 90s and how I wouldn't have met my wife if not for IMing a screenname a mutual friend of ours passed along to me.
The internet, a crappy eMachines desktop, and AIM made this possible. Technically, I didn't "need" my own computer at the time, but it made interactions like this possible. Maybe the Apple Watch will create new interactions that could spark something great between people.
Gruber's scenario with the two high school kids was probably the worst thing he's ever written. There needs to be an annual 500-word short story writing competition, for best story turning on the sentence "But you both wore an Apple Watch".
I say this as someone who generally admires John Gruber's ability to sell me on 1000-2000 word blog posts on Apple minutia purely on the strength and clarity of his writing. This post was painful.
It certainly pulled my heartstring. It also was the first piece I've seen written that was forward looking about the purpose about a touch interface, and it's implication for the advancement of HCI. Not sure what it was that you disliked, but I guarantee you that an impartial observer would not say it was "probably the worst thing he's ever written." - perhaps it's fair to say it's "the piece he's written that you've most disliked?"
Perhaps we could have a competition here? Some childish teenagers likely flirted by nudging each other, pulling each other's hair to get attention or flicking elastic bands at each other.
My concern on this (connected watches generally) is the upgrade treadmill this might create. So a person would buy a ~$600 iphone + a $400 watch. How often would they upgrade the watch? Lots of folks upgrade phones every year or every other year. Will they do this with a watch? Will they need to? I have a Casio watch that I still wear that's 15 years old. And an old wind up that's 30 years old. I can't imagine that being the case for a smart watch. Apple and android watch makers are gonna want folks to upgrade as frequently as possible. Just seems both wasteful and needlessly expensive at the $400 price point. Consumerism gone a muck as twer.
Lots of folks upgrade phones every year or every other year.
I question whether this is the bubble that geeks live in. Plenty of people don't know there are new phones to get until their old one breaks. In the case that someone's upgrading when their contract gives them a new phone, I can see more of a strain, but they rarely think of themselves paying $600 for a phone.
To an extent, Apple is producing the Watch to offset the slowing growth of smartphone sales, which tells me that people aren't buying them as often as you think.
I'm interested how long the average phone lasts before it breaks in your pool of anecdotal people?
My social circle sounds similar to yours. I have two phone junkie friends who seem to be moving to a new phone every year. Then a handful of geek friends who upgrade their phones at the end of their contracts, which is normally two or three version numbers higher.
That leaves the majority who upgrade when their phones break. These range from clumsy people who seem to end up keeping up with my phone junkie friends to some people still using iPhone 3's. But basically... the breakage upgrade cycle sees the majority of them upgrading every other year.
Good question. I think we're actually in the early stages of the cycle. Those people I don't think will upgrade for a while are still on their first smartphones, mostly iPhone 5. I've noticed significantly less breakage once they switched from dumbphones... they actually like and need their smartphone where a dumbphone was like any other phone - you lose some contacts and that's it. Obviously, that attachment has something to do with the ridiculous growth of smartphones.
In the time since I got my current phone (an S3), my wife's gone through 3 of them (though all S3s, and primarily through insurance replacement). The primary reason I haven't replaced my phone (as this is my third or fourth "smartphone") is because my carrier changed their hardware policies, making a new phone more expensive unless I move to an older phone (though I could still get a newer model than the S3 for a fairly low price). My particular S3 has been great, while my wife's have been less resilient.
As for anything really keeping me from upgrading, other than a slight fear that the new phone might not be as good as the current phone, I'm really not afraid of losing contacts or anything else. I think I've gotten to the point where the new models aren't really offering a compelling reason to upgrade (other than planned obsolescence as apps get more bloated and OS versions become unsupported).
As for the Apple Watch (and competitors), I think there are three primary demographics:
1. Boomers who look at it as the "Dick Tracy" accessory.
2. Those who like to wear a large, expensive watch primarily as a showpiece (especially since so many people stopped wearing watches when they started using their phones as a timepiece).
3. Those interested in the tech.
Yes, true. Working in tech, I'm probably seeing the end of the spectrum that updates their devices more frequently.
I have nothing against the apple watch per se other than price. Just a personal thing. But I can't see paying that much for a device with a) a rechargeable battery that may or may not be easily replaceable and b) has tech that will age out quickly (compared to for example just a digital watch of some sort). Just seems like extreme planned obsolescence. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
It may be the utility of such devices outstrips any such concerns.
No one in the general populace cares about replaceable/removable batteries, any more than they care about the increasing difficulty in fixing your own car. Samsung gave in with the Galaxy S6, and they're obviously following the numbers.
And every watch I've ever owned has a battery that's just as replaceable as the Watch's -- that is, you take it to the dealer.
I'm pretty sure when this Pebble I've got on my wrist needs a new battery, the answer is not going to be "send it back to Pebble", but "take to it with a Dremel then some epoxy". And I'm OK with that. (And, I've got a new Pebble on the way now, a cople of years after buying this first one...)
Not quite so sure I'd be as happy taking to a ~2 year old $400+ iWatch with a Dremel...
> I can't see paying that much for a device with a) a rechargeable battery that may or may not be easily replaceable and b) has tech that will age out quickly (compared to for example just a digital watch of some sort).
Nor can I, but I'm a Luddite with a cheap Timex and the smallest, dumbest off-contract phone I could find. Given that the $350 low-end model and the $17,000 high-end model have the same battery and guts, I expect/hope that Apple will offer some kind of trade-in or hardware update program. If I could pay $200 every couple of years to replace the non-jewelry bits of this thing, it would make a lot more sense.
When Apple Watch was first announced, while everyone else was busy rolling their eyes at Digital Touch, I immediately started looking forward to using it with my wife. We're both planning on getting the watch, and I fully expect that—even after the initial novelty has worn off—we'll be using Digital Touch repeatedly throughout the day, both as just a way to keep in contact, and as a way to non-intrusively request the other's attention.
Which is to say, I think Gruber's on to something, but I think he's actually understating it with the way he presented it.
I haven't read what you're referring to, but one Apple employee I know uses Digital Touch pretty often (he says he uses it to silently attract the attention of other people at meetings, and I've seen him use it to send doodles to his friends). Why do you think it sounds painful to use?
Verge review calls it "remarkably small-time" and "a weird thing to hype as much as it's been hyped" -
"But here’s the thing — it doesn’t happen in real time. I had assumed that sending a heartbeat meant that my recipient would just start feeling my heart on their wrist like some sort of cosmic love connection, but that’s not how it works. Instead, you get a regular notification which sends you into the Digital Touch canvas, where the message plays back: the taps come through, the drawings draw themselves, the heartbeats beat."
I'm kinda harping on the difference between us and the general population in this whole thread, as some HNers don't get it, but I don't blame them - the behavior of other demographics constantly amazes me. We'd do well to observe more.
I see digital touch as "the killer app". The reason for this is communicating with my wife will be much easier. I think contextual based communication can be really powerful, for example coming home with a huge box of stuff from Costco it would be nice to be able to tap on the watch to get her attention to open the door for me as she does not always hear the knock and I'm there fumbling with my keys while trying not to drop the box. (or maybe get a smart door lock that is activated by the watch) This happens on a weekly basis and is just one example of the many ways that it'll make communication more seamless.
Or maybe get a smart door lock that is activated by your phone, and save $400.
I mean, I kid. But I think that you're overestimating the amount of truly useful stuff that you can do where the only input is a tap or two and contextual environmental information, versus the truly useful stuff you can do with no taps and contextual environmental information.
How many high school kids have iPhones? Isn't it millions? I would not be surprised that huge numbers will have a $400 (or more) Apple Watch.
Now if that happens, it might be a sad commentary on the allocation of resources in our society - globally. But if the Apple Watch is successful, I would be surprised if it isn't common (>20% adoption) in thousands of USA high schools and lots of other high schools around the globe.
I would imagine high school ownership rate could well be higher than overall society ownership rate. Though I'll admit that is just a wild guess by a uniformed individual on this matter.
Kids also get hand-me-down technology from parents. Dad buys a watch now. Two years later he upgrades to the new model and gives his old watch to his 16-year-old kid.
While this is true, most people don't realise it. I often hear people saying they have a free upgrade to use, but haven't got around to it so may get something for a child. Or even get something free and sell it on Ebay... nuts I know!
Sort of true - if you are on a plan, and you are going to have to pay the same amount regardless of whether you get a free phone, then the phone effectively is "no extra charge."
I agree with you - people should differentiate between "free" (as in air, I don't have to pay anything and I can have as much as I want) versus "no extra charge" (as in, I have to pay a bunch of money for something, but then can get (usually 1) of something without paying any more.
Could go the other way. Would you bet against Apple already having people pushing iWatches and HealthKit/ResearchKit data as being mandatory parts of sports training? They _know_ the nerds are going to buy smart watches, but quite likely Android Wear or Pebble ones. If you wanna make expensive Apple ones cool, make sure every football player has one on his wrist, and all their girlfriends are giggling away in class getting "touched" by them. then see how the school administration goes trying to ban them...
Since the iPhone and watch have a tight coupling I wouldn't be surprised to possibly see the iPhone and watch get bundled together in the current subsidized phone carrier services.
And you, and your crush, each have both an iPhone, and an Apple Watch, both charged, both connected to the internet.
> You’re in school. You’re sitting in class.
Do, or will, many high schools actually allow students to use smartwatches while in class?
> You have a crush on another student — you’ve fallen hard. ... You’re afraid to just come right out and ask, verbally — afraid of the crushing weight of rejection.
But I assume you already have this crush's phone number or information in your contacts to send them a heartbeat or drawing?
This is a very interesting article, and I like how it's written in the perspective of a functional watch user instead of being about fashion or watch collecting.
I couldn't help but laugh at this part:
> Also, though it sounds trivial, I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match.
Isn't a mechanical watch hand ∞ FPS by definition? Real life has got to be at least better than 144hz :)
I'm going to take your ∞ FPS comment on go on a wild tangent because physics is fun :-D:
Nothing can be infinity FPS because it would be limited by the frequency of the light that we use to see the watch hand. In the case of the visual spectrum, it caps out around 668 THz with blue light (red light is lowest at 400 THz). This would make it "only" ~4.7E12 times better than 144 Hz ;-).
With that said, though, I believe that the movement of the actual atoms making up the mechanical hands is still happening in an "infinitely smooth" sense, although the way we measure and observe that movement (via reflections of light or perhaps some other type of electromagnetic radiation) may be limited.
You don't even need to appeal to Planck length here, because it's clear from more basic quantum mechanics that particles simply do not have classical paths.
Please don't misinterpret the Planck length. Please don't interpret it in any way, it's right in the wiki article:
>There is currently no proven physical significance of the Planck length;...
It's just dimensional analytical playing with some fundamental physical constants. Physicist believe that this scale length may have some connection with the yet to be discovered laws of quantum gravity. It has nothing to with the "finite resolution of the universe". There is no evidence that the universe has finite resolution.
To further complicate the issue, the human eye cannot see 668 quadrillion 'frames per second'. Under the best possible conditions, for parts of the eye, 1000 'fps' is the best we can do, though generally it's much, much lower.
Mechanical watches, think Rolexes, have smooth second hand movements but they are acutally still ticking, just about 6 times a second. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, has a second hand with 60 ticks per second so that the second hand is about 10 times smoother.
Some "hi-beat" watches tick 10 times per second (still well below 60). Seiko's Spring Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Drive) offers continuous movement, but it's not completely mechanical (a quartz oscillator controls the escapement). I would rather have one of these than an Apple Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-5YpNUwgc
(Edit: only now have I noticed it was already mentioned in another comment)
That's incorrect. The seconds hand moves 6 times in one second on my 7S26 movement (21,600 bph). On a modern Rolex, it would move 8 times in one second. You can check this with a high speed camera (such as the one in the iPhone 6). Nonetheless, there are vastly superior mechanical drives out there that are continuous (Seiko Spring Drive for example).
And Bulova has the Precisionist line that moves much more smoothly:
> In 2010, Bulova introduced the Precisionist, a new type of quartz watch with ultra-high frequency (262.144 kHz) which is claimed to be accurate to +/- 10 seconds a year and has a smooth sweeping second hand rather than one that jumps each second.
Huh. Cool. I always wondered why they didn't make quartz second hands jump in smaller amounts. Something difficult or not efficient to achieve, I guess.
By the way, Seiko has had a movement for some time that is rated to +/- 5 seconds a year. I think it was on a special edition of the Grand Seiko line (already rated to around 10 seconds a year, so you'd get 5 seconds off less. Yay!)
The guy has probably never heard of the Seiko Spring Drive, where the hands are moved by a spring and regulated by a brake. Therefore they're completely smooth.
The balance wheel oscillates at 8 beats per second, but it requires 2 beats to complete a full second "tick", so most modern mechanical watches actually tick at 4 times per second.
I'm not so sure about that, 60fps means that every single rotation of a second hand has 3600 individual steps; does a mechanical watch with a sweep second hand have that much precision? I'm inclined to think not, even from the perspective of backlash the digital version is going to appear significantly smoother to the eye.
Article aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that with this release so many people are discussing smart watches and their interfaces as something completely new with no established precedents. I've had my Pebble for almost 2 years now and my LG G watch for about 8 months. From my perspective this seems like a late-comer to a market that is already well under-way? I would expect more existing market comparison conversation.
Edit: for the record I love both of them after being initially dubious about the usefulness of such a device.
I suspect Apple have somehow framed the product for reviewers so the alternatives in the market don't come to mind, even if the reviewers don't realise that they're ignoring them.
As one example, they could've picked recipients who they know haven't previously worn a smart watch.
I agree, I have had my Pebble for a year and it works perfectly. Tells me when I get an e-mail or text message. I also keep my phone on silent all the time since I can get the notifications directly and can decide if I need to reply or if I can ignore it for later. I can also check my stocks and there are tons of apps on the pebble appstore.
The battery life is also very nice and lasts a full week.
The SDK is also pretty nice, I've made some simple apps with it.
Late to the party based on what timeframe? 2, 3, 5 years from now it won't look that way.
There were mp3 players before the iPod (I had one! it sucked) and smartphones before the iPhone (I had one! it sucked as well).
Early-adopter products exist in a niche where their shortcomings are accepted and embraced because people like their concept. But we can't mistake that for meeting the high standards of the broader consumer marketplace.
Remember when the iPhone was released? There were other smartphones like the Treo and BlackBerry, but none worked the way the iPhone did. That's what defining a market is about - entering where there may be 'competition' but as soon as you release, nothing competes.
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 that's already touch, and already using swipe-to-scroll, feels twice and wrong and unnecessarily confusing.
I understand the intent and the goal, but the inconsistent use of the crown -- if it's so great, why can I still swipe to scroll at all? -- is a tell. 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".
Four-ways-to-click (crown-click vs tap vs force tap vs tap-and-hold) is an eyebrow-raise-er all its own.
Also: displays should be wider. At fifty- to one-hundred-percent wider the display would be far better for notifications and would make the selection of A/B buttons more clear and precise.
The next time you get a notification on your phone, rest your phone on your wrist, so the notification is displayed roughly where a smartwatch would sit. Ask yourself whether that notification would still "work", if it were crammed into an Apple Watch-sized screen. Some certainly do. More can be made to work alright, if font size were reduced. IME, most simply don't work.
There just isn't enough room to get enough meaningful information onto a screen that size, in a comfortable font size, for me to make good decisions about what can be ignored and what should be addressed.
You can mitigate this problem if you can ignore all messages of a given type (e.g. don't even bother getting email alerts on your wrist). But even if you could do this, it would be better if you didn't have to. A screen that enables better decisions would make for a more useful object.
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.
> 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.
> 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".
That's how it basically seems to work, judging by videos. The video reviews I've seen have shown the user using one finger to operate the crown, rather than pinching it between two.
I'm unconvinced this is a better solution than sliding a finger along the side of the bezel - or possibly around the entire rim, for different functions.
Considering the technology in the crown, it's possible this would have been cheaper and more reliable as well as a better fit for the haptic features in the rest of the design.
I like the idea of using the edge of the device as a scroll area. Maybe Apple tried it and it didn't work out, or it didn't translate well into zooming, or it wasn't precise enough? (You can rotate a dial with a lot more precision than a big bulbous finger moving on the edge of a tiny device.)
Regardless, I'm glad there is a way to scroll without covering the screen and adding more skin oil to it.
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.
My quasi-educated guess is that Apple figures they have the best shot at wide acceptance -- particularly with the first model -- if it doesn't feel "weird" compared to other watches, and that that's informed a lot of design decisions.
I think a curved display could be pretty challenging. You write "the contour of our wrist," but the contour of your wrist and of mine probably aren't the same, right? So is the display flexible? Is it the same size for everyone? Will someone with a smaller wrist find the display "wrapping around" more than someone with a larger wrist? What interactions will be made better by such a curved display, and what interactions will be made worse by one? And is the tradeoff appropriate?
I've also been surprised that they maintained the same form factor of existing watches. If it were double the width, you'd have more screen space, more space for battery power underneath and something that would stand out.
I can only imagine they are marketing first to the people who want something new, but don't want it to look like new technology.
It's probably also important as a point of differentiation that they keep it looking very different to a phone screen.
But the line of argument that says, "Some dude once dismissed an Apple product that turned out to be successful, thus all future dismissals of Apple products are invalid" is still silly, and people should not make posts that are nothing by that quote.
Honestly, here in Anno Domini 2015, I'm not sure that that quote is ever relevant to anything. But if you're going to make an argument that there's some parallel between Malda's sentiment and somebody else, at least, you know, argue it. We can all come up with snide quotes that sort of vaguely involve one of the principles under discussion.
> Apple Watch’s screen remains off until you tap the screen (...) or it detects (...) that you’ve moved your wrist into a “tell the time” position.
That's really the one of the biggest problems I can imagine. Pity that the "show the time at least somehow" wasn't engineered as a special feature, something like "e-ink for somehow time" and the OLED (if that's what they're using) for the full color. I know that nobody made something exactly like that, but I've read that a hybrid e-ink/LCD exists (1). Maybe it wouldn't look so pretty at the moment, but that's why the "magic" is needed, I don't think anybody designed any such hybrid specially for a smart watch. That e-ink or any other magic wouldn't have to be able to display everything, just the time. Even the big unchangeable segments like on old passive LCD watches would be (maybe?) enough.
They did [1]. The color version is not yet available (first unit should be shipped in May), but the black and white ones were here since 2012. They actually got a wave of preorders right after Apple Watch was shown in March.
Based on the back and white version, it indeed is not as nice looking, but I like that it comes as a watch that has smart functionality rather the other way around. And it lasts for 7 days.
Can't comment much on the Pebble Time, but the color display actually looks quite nice, it is always on and still last for a week on a single charge.
It's actually not e-ink, they call it e-paper, but it actually is a memory LCD.
That said, it addresses the problem OP mentioned, which is ability to display content all the time. The color version has only 64 colors but this is something I'm wiling to sacrifice in order to have longer battery life, continuous time display and ability seeing the contents in the sun.
What puzzles me is why nobody else is doing the same.
Android Wear watches have a low power ambient mode, where the screen always diplays the watchface at a low luminosity. [1] Apparently it took quite a bit of tinkering from the manufacturers but even the Moto 360, notorious for its problematic battery life, lasts now a day with ambient mode.
> 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 will give place to the scrolling edge, longer area, more ergonomic.
Apple patented this in January 2009: "the touchpad is a touch-sensitive area of the device that, unlike the touch screen, does not display visual output. The touchpad may be a touch-sensitive surface that is separate from the touch screen 112 or an extension of the touch-sensitive surface formed by the touch screen."[1]
They've yet to actually implement it in a device, though Palm used an offscreen gesture area on its Prē later that same year.[2]
His description of a video call being an image rather than a direct view, and the equivalent with voice, helps put the touch features in perspective. They go from gimmick to potentially the start of something.
I wonder if that small postage stamp portal to your wife's wrist will be the notable precursor to larger contact features and eventually touch-featured clothing or (ooooer) playsuits?
He has a fairly flowery and gushing writing style with Apple topics, but it's obvious he thinks everything through and looks for a deeper angle.
I wonder if many people will buy a pair of these watches as something to experience with their partner? Touch or smooth/personal gestures are certainly a bit more personal and emotive than blue and green text bubbles.
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 per second). It would make interaction that much easier and wrist flicking could even become a thing. One flick for health, two for time, etc. depending on the context.
Another thing that could be mildly annoying for a lot of people is that it can only ever be operated by engaging both hands. Phone by contrast can easily be operated with one hand using the thumb.
EDIT: If the watch has enough sensors, I am sure it could detect users not only flicking the wrist via rotation but also bending your hand down/up (which tends to pull/push the tendons on your wrist) though the watch would need to be worn snugly.
A person from a decade or two ago might find a lot of things odd such as taking selfies, Facebook checkins, talking on a bluetooth headset, holding a 5.5" phone to your ear when the 90s was all about miniaturisation, the shake-to-shuffle a song, etc.
It's only an oddity because it's not common.
I am sure that things will gravitate toward gestures as this space evolves. It just seems like a very convenient way to interface and offers the path of least resistance for users.
“You’ll still be able to do with Apple Watch what you do with your current watch: tell the time (and if you want, the date) at a glance and trust that it’s accurate.”
...if you return your watch to a charging station daily.
He goes on:
That said, compared to a traditional watch, daily charging is terrible.
Before entering into the smartphone market, I charged my cellphone less than 100 times per year. Now, I have to charge my smartphone at least once a day. It's a tax on my lifestyle that I don't mind paying.
I hated the daily charging of my smartphone at first. Now, I plan my day and commutes with respect to a battery to ensure I have enough charge for me to interweave the technology in my pocket with my experiencing of the analog world.
I suspect I and others will make the same allowance for a smart watch and the Apple Watch will be a very profitable device for Apple.
> I suspect I and others will make the same allowance for a smart watch and the Apple Watch will be a very profitable device for Apple.
I'm still skeptical, the smartphone provided a tremendous advantage, namely that you had the internet with you, always. That made it easy to get over the tradeoffs. I'm still unconvinced that the tradeoffs a smart watch has will be compensated.
No? If the relative benefit is greater than the relative cost, it would make sense to adapt. It would be like going from a horse and buggy to a car and complaining about having to (gasp) stop in the middle of your journey to fill your tank up with gas. Sure, that one little piece of it is annoying, but owning a car is much more advantageous for transportation than a horse.
Humans are much better at adaptation than (so far) the things we build. I remember being surprised at how many things I was doing through a smartphone UI - and then I realised it's not because that's the only thing I can do, it's because that's the only way these services can understand me.
I never quite understood the complaints about smartphones not having a multi-day battery life. As long as it makes it from morning to bedtime and charges to 100% overnight, what's the problem? Obviously if it can't make it to bedtime on one charge, that's a problem, but nightly charging makes no real difference. I imagine the watch will be similar. A one-day battery life for a watch is kind of absurd, but it doesn't seem like it'll matter.
One exception to this is people who just never take their watch off. I did this for a couple of years. Having to charge it every night would have been a problem then. I don't know that people do this in large enough numbers to be significant though.
If you travel, it's one more thing to carry. Plus, I occasionally forget to plug the phone in to charge at night. My current smartphone makes it through two days without charging, though.
That's a good point. You'd probably want to carry the charger anyway (unless it's just an overnight trip and your phone lasts many days) but even just the travel itself can put extra demands on the phone, because of time zone changes or watching lots of videos or whatever. A phone that's perfectly acceptable because it can last 18 hours in normal use can cause problems if you're taking a 14-hour flight and playing with it the whole way.
One example is forgetting to plug it in at night and then in the morning the phone is dead. Luckily my phone is more like 1.5 days so I can get by with remembering to charge it at work a little in some cases
> Imagine: You’re 16. You’re in school. You’re sitting in class.
Honestly, I think it's impossible for anyone above ~25 to imagine what it's like to be 16 in school today.
Context and social dynamics have changed too much for anyone that old (and probably anyone at all) to be insightful about the behaviour of groups of teenagers using a yet unreleased product.
If I had to choose between a dumb watch that never needs recharging (like my Citizen Eco-Drive) and a "smart" watch that doesn't even last a full day, I'd choose the dumb watch.
Who the hell think that a watch that can't even function a day is an acceptable product? This just blows my mind. And yet, I'm pretty sure they are going to sell millions of them. I wouldn't want one if it was free.
The guy that runs asymco said something that got me thinking about this.
He said, the Apple Watch is as much a "watch" as the iPhone is a "phone".
I think the idea is that we are thinking about it all wrong. The "phone" functionality of an iPhone is just an app and is in fact one of the least used apps on the device.
The same line of thinking will probably start to explain the Apple Watch. It's actually a wearable computer with an app that tells the time.
While there's certainly truth to this, it's also a little bit of apologia/marketing speak.
The iPhone is fundamentally a phone. While it does a lot more than just make calls, and is likely purchased for more than the ability to make calls, it is fundamentally a phone first (it's in the name and the hardware), most people buy them in conjunction with a phone carrier or phone plan, and on and on.
The Watch (again, right in the name) is fundamentally a watch. It also will do a litany of other cool things above and beyond a typical watch's feature set, but this doesn't change the fact that it is fundamentally a watch. At best, it strikes me as a secondary display, or peripheral device to the phone.
I think of how Jony Ive talks about the products... what their essence is, how they strive to make them the "inevitable" ideal object or iteration of a given thing. So, to my mind, if we're calling this a wearable computer that simply also tells time, it isn't more than the sum of the parts anymore, it's an amalgam of features, already done in other form factors, that still won't last on full day's charge.
None of which is to say people won't buy it and love it. They will.
Right. "Phone" was the thing the iPhone did worst of all.
When I got my first iPhone (after a Blackberry Curve), one thing I noticed: everything my Curve did, it did better than the iPhone. It was a better phone, it was better for email, it was better for texting. (Ok, it technically had "apps", but they were so bad I never used any).
But my iPhone did a million things that my Blackberry didn't do (via apps).
Was it a worse phone? Absolutely. Did I love it much, much more than I ever loved my Blackberry? Absolutely.
That's my main concern about WATCH. The apps for it don't exist yet, and it's possible they never will.
A pocket computer with a touch screen is a general computing device. But there's very little anyone can do with a watch-sized consumer product - especially if it lacks extras like really good fitness and health hardware.
I totally get the potential of haptic wearables, but WATCH seems like a 0.5 product with some eccentric design choices that's still on the wrong side of industrial practicality - not like a product with enough awesome to appeal outside the fan/early adopter crowd.
I'm sure Cook & Co are thinking of it as a beach head, not a finished battle. But even so - it has to entice a critical mass of consumers or there will be no follow-ups.
In fairness, the time function for the Apple Watch will continue for 3 days. Comparing it's ability to do a whole lot of power-intensive activity (phone, video, etc) that the dumb watch can't do at all is disingenuous.
We heard the same arguments about cell phones. Who would want a smartphone that would discharge in less than a day, when you could get a dumb phone that would hang on for days? or a wired phone that didn't have power problems (even when the power went out)? Then people discovered how darned useful that power-sucking capability was, and have adapted to charging daily.
I do wonder when smart watches will include self-charging "eco drive", tapping wrist motion for energy.
I have a Pebble, which I enjoy. The battery lasts for 4 or 5 days, which is great. However, I find the biggest thing that prevents me from using it is the charging. I'll take it off, attach it to the charger on my nightstand and in the morning I am usually in such a hurry that I can't be bothered to sit down and put it back on my wrist.
Just my personal anecdote. Those who aren't rushed out the door in the morning would probably have a different experience!
Also, one reason I am happy with the Pebble's 4 - 5 day battery life is because I actually like wearing it to bed because of it's vibrating alarm feature which allows me to be woken up without disturbing my partner.
I also swear by my Eco-Drive. Never off my wrist, great water resistance, can see it in the dark without pressing anything - a little tough workhorse. I also can't see wearing a watch that you have to charge every day, or every x days. However, many people are different from you an me, mand people won't mind taking it off and charging it at the end of the day, and won't bother much if one night they come from a party and forget to charge it and find out the next day it has no battery to handle till the end of work. Many people are more used to a smartphone than to a quartz watch (young people, I guess who they're aiming the iwatch for).
I think it won't fly, as it's too geeky, a la Google Glass. Regular watches just look way better/cooler/nicer. Not the case with phones, where you didn't have anything to compete in the looks/style front from before. We'll see.
Moto 360 owner here. I take it off at night and put it down just like I would a real watch. "Down" in this case is onto a small Qi mat. I don't sleep or bathe with watches. Its a total non-issue. I take my phone out and put it on its Qi mat and the watch right next to it. My phone doesn't last more than a day either.
No idea how the Apple one works, but the Moto guys figured it out pretty quickly. Just use the Qi standard, ship a cradle, or let people use their own Qi pads. I imagine Apple's "not invented here" mentality is going to make this a worse experience. It doesn't seem to be using Qi. Its proprietary. That's a mistake.
My use case is the exact same. Take the 360 off at night, I don't want to sleep in a watch anyhow. On the occasions I do, it survives a night (but complains of low battery in the morning) in case I need to use it for a silent alarm in the early hours.
I agree that the toxic NIH syndrome at Apple harms their users - why not use Qi? Because then they can't charge $30 ($50?) for a replacement / secondary charging cable.
My phone battery only lasts a day. In the years before smartphones, multi-day battery life was taken for granted.
Tellingly I barely use my phone as a phone. I suspect we will see a similar pattern develop with smartwatches, where telling the time will be only a single bullet point far down a much longer list of features.
Why is charging electronics such a problem? Do people wear watches while sleeping? Why is setting it on the charger on my nightstand actually a problem? This seems like an absurd nitpicky thing to complain about.
I already have to charge (and bring cables and charger with sufficient ports for):
Laptop
iPhone
USB Backup battery (many long travel days)
Wifi hotspot
Pretty much every day. By some counts, a watch doesn't really change that very much, by other counts it pushes my daily-shit-to-charge list over the limit. It's nitpicky when viewed in a vacuum, but not in relation to the overall technology charging burden. It seems like we should be moving away from charger dependencies, not towards it.
i find it interesting that 5 is over the limit, but 4 is perfectly reasonable. Personally i have 1, my phone, and increasing it to 2 seems like no change at all personally.
I compare the awful mentality of "why do I have to charge X so many Y times?!" to the same result of modern cell phones.
It wasn't that long ago that your cell phone could last days or more on a single charge. Now many people have the routine of just charging their phones at night. The world didn't end, things just progressed.
I wear my Pebble every night when sleeping. It's fantastic backup alarm, I never have to worry about forgetting to set my phone's alarm, not hearing my phone, my phone dying, etc.
At this point I wouldn't go back to using a watch with less than a few days battery life, it takes out a huge part of the value for me.
see, and i have the opposite problem with my pebble. since it isn't part of my daily charging routine, it inevitably dies because i forget about charging it ever. I'd be better off including it my daily charging routine.
eh the alert happens in the middle of the day when i'm not near my charger. since i'm not in the habit of charging it at night, sometimes i just forget about it.
So the Taptic Engine is just rumble right? I know phones are different, but pretty much all my phones (Android) have had the whole "different vibrations for different notifications" thing for years. I don't know how Wear's ecosystem is, but I imagine it does the same.
I understand he's not saying it's not present in the competition, but I'm trying to get what the fundamental differences are
>When my phone vibrates, it feels like it’s telling me, Hey, I need you now. When the Apple Watch taps me, it feels like it’s telling me, Hey, when you get the chance, I’ve got something for you.
I don't know, but if I get tapped on the wrist, that feels a lot more like a "hey I need you now" thing.
I don't think Gruber is particularly biased about Apple - they're just his area of speciality. He thinks very deeply about them, and has done for such a long time that he has an acute sense of them. But I think he calls them out fairly when he thinks they're wrong, whether that's policy decisions, devices, or software.
So the smartphones replaced watches and now watches are going to have a sudden comeback? I must admit I got rid of all my watches except for a purely mechanical one with a mainspring since my first smartphone. For gym/swimming/running I have a special device with a chest strap - if Apple solved problems plaguing strap-less heart rate monitors I might be interested, however for $400+ definitely not.
I can't help wondering how dated such a device will look / feel next year, particularly as I saw Swiss watches in a shop the other day and they really are timeless bits of machinery.
> You simply hold the connector near the back of the watch, where magnets cause it to snap into place automatically.
I would instantly buy a phone without a traditional connector port for headphone and USB - just metal pads flush with the surface (maybe laid in rubber to be watertight) and kept aligned by magnets.
Seriously, the amount of devices failed due to either bent (e.g. during gaming) or rusted/dust-damaged Micro USB connectors (and don't forget the headphone connectors, where even the tiniest damage can be heard) is ridiculous.
The only real option is to buy one of CATs smartphones or (iirc) one of the Galaxy series with protectors over the connectors - but again, the protectors start to annoy after a while. Too bad Apple holds a patent over MagSafe - and then doesn't even employ it in their phones!
My Mio watch connects to its charger this way too. In the image below, you see both the heart rate monitor and the charging port (which attaches to a magnetic piece that connects to the wall).
"Apple seemingly tries to enter markets at, or just after, that tipping point — when Moore’s Law and Apple’s ever-increasing engineering and manufacturing prowess allow them to produce a gadget-y computer that the computer-y gadgets from the established market leaders cannot compete with."
A recurring event in the advance of technology. I saw it hit hard when Smith Corona's computer-y typewriters couldn't keep up with gadget-y word processing software, and the typewriter died. Likewise when computer-y photography (lots of image processing introduced into developing photos) lost favor with consumers vs gadget-y digital cameras.
"the established market — watches — is not despised. They not only don’t suck, they are beloved. And the best and most-beloved watches aren’t even electronic. They’re purely mechanical — all gadget, no computer."
Yet...all they do is tell time. Elegantly, yes, or cheaply, if you like...but time and little else. Attempts to add computer-y function failed for a decade, succumbing to horrible interfaces and anemic UIs; the author completely overlooks the computer-y phases which watches have gone thru (and failed miserably). That a $5 POS watch tells time more accurately, and with less maintenance, than my elegant $500 Movado or the improbable $500,000 watches seen on http://uncrate.com et al, was setting off warnings that the market was ripe for...something.
Gruber has perfected the art of knowing your audience - and his audience is people who are neck deep in the Apple ecosystem. His writing is practically a prescription for managing post-purchase cognitive dissonance for Apple consumers.
I think he's an excellent writer but let's be honest, he doesn't really "review" Apple products any more than their marketing department. Apple could re-introduce the Newton and Gruber would be writing about it's "elegant simplicity" and "thoughtful processing".
I'm sure the Apple Watch is neat tech, but from what I've gathered, it's suffering from "version one syndrome" a little more than most of their product launches. That said, it will probably be a wild success anyway if only because it's an even more conspicuous consumption signal than the iPhone...
> it's an even more conspicuous consumption signal than the iPhone
At least until people start budgeting for their annual watch upgrade like they do for their phones, at which point it'll be commodity just like a smartphone.
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.
He wrote the original Markdown. Barely anyone uses the original Markdown. They just use semi-compatible formats (e.g. Github-Flavored Markdown) using software that calls them "Markdown".
There is no spec for Markdown other than his buggy Perl implementation. He also didn't exactly appreciate the fact that other people tried to standardize "his" language.
I'm not even sure Markdown in general can rightfully be called an invention (in the same sense as JSON is not considered such by its "inventor"). It's just one of several plain-text formatting conventions that happened to become popular (though, again, not really his exact implementation).
In fact, because of the limited scope Gruber's original Markdown addressed and the redundancies he implemented (such as the different "bullets" for unordered lists) are biting implementers now that the format is used for other things than originally envisioned (by making extensions difficulty or unintuitive).
Although you are right that people are getting more and more distant from the original markdown syntax. Google still suggest this as the first result on that specific keyword [1].
Something more. Categorising markdown as an invention may be a bit wrong, but it is a huge push to what now is becoming a standard ( at least in dev's world ) for many companies that have a user input feature.
I can't just say everything he did is good ( I also miss standartization ), but for sure I can't neglect what he did. I still remember how markdown-featured textarea inputs redirected to [1] when I clicked on the help button.
This alone makes his attribution great and that's why I prefer calling him "inventor of markdown", rather than paid blogger.
I believe that some of the most popular celebrity ones bring in seven figures at least, and some of the get-rich-quick scam ones also do very well. You also have marginal cases like Gawker; is it a blog network, or a media site?
He's a thoughtful writer, and a writer first and foremost. He takes it very seriously. Frequently posts about things like style, typography and serious journalism.
As far as I can tell, he makes money from three sources. First, is the single ad on the from The Deck on his site. Second, he sells sponsorships for his RSS feed. Lastly, he makes money from ads on his podcast. So, it's not just his site. I think he makes more money from the RSS feed sponsorships than he does for the Deck ad, though.
It's ironic that the people who attack the Apple watch under the pragmatic guise that a regular watch performs better, are forgetting the fact that a regular watch is completely superfluous.
In this day and age, with a phone on you, and everyone else, you can always get the time. A watch is a relic of the past. It's Tradition. It's ornamental. It's redundant.
With tens of thousands of brilliant people working day and night to build amazing third party apps, the smart watches can actually do things. A regular watch can't do shit. It's not a tool, it's not a workhorse. People that are satisfied with their traditional watches are kidding themselves, as much if not more than the people who will happily buy an Apple watch and tout it's features.
The regular watch, a dumb watch if you like has some big advantages over a smart watch or a phone. Its always on, can always be seen, the battery lasts for years, its waterproof. Having said that, I think these advantages are mostly important for niche uses - scuba divers for example.
I'm not attacking the Apple watch (or anything else for that matter), but in my daily life a smartwatch would be no match in utility, convenience, or features I need compared to my $50 Timex.
Very informative, thanks. I avoid 192kHz and record everything at 24bit 48kHz when I'm recording (I would like some hard disk space left, particularly if you're recording 24 tracks at once); 96kHz is only really useful in live applications as you obviously get half the latency which is important if you're flinging audio from one side of the arena to the other.
But with regard to the content within the audio file, uncompressed is obviously superior to compressed. It is particularly apparent on decent speakers, not earbuds.
I thought CDs sucked. Scratched way too easy. Don't let some children borrow your CDs or else they won't play when you get them back. Cassettes were much more durable and even repairable. A CD warped by the sun is garbage, but a cassette warped by the sun can be salvaged if you put the tape in another cassette case. You could also tape two ends of the cassette tape back together if it gets torn or cut. Yes the song is garbled for a second but the entire album isn't ruined. A skipping CD is a more annoying sound than my alarm clock.
CDs only sucked if you didn't look after them! The same was true of vinyls, and your mobile phone. If I drop my phone, it will be damaged.
I never lend my CDs to those people who leave them in the wrong cases, bust the cases, leave CDs floating around drawers with pens, paperclips and scissors, attempt to get sleeve notes out by incessant gnawing at the edges etc. etc.
Cassettes were pretty robust though. They survive handling by the older generation far better than CDs ever did (or will)
I can barely stand reading Gruber because it feels like reading Apple marketing materials. But he is required reading because he is one of the few ways that Apple releases important industry information. It would be great to have a daringfireball tl;dr service emphasizing his forecasts and "predictions" (which are usually actually Apple leaks).
Did you read this review? Gruber's blind love for anything apple generally turns me off. In this article though i thought his fanboy-ism stayed pretty restricted to apple the company, and it seems like quite a fair critical review of the watch itself.
I like the health monitoring aspects the most. Fitbit type of devices, tracking activities/health, have been picking up and will pick up more. Apple has jumped on that pretty well and traditional watches can't compete on those features.
I stopped wearing watches but have thought about a Fitbit watch and why not have that be an Apple watch maybe.
I'm a die-hard iPhone guy. I love when I meet someone, get their phone number, text them, and the message bubble is blue. I feel like we're in the same club. (Albeit a very large club.)
However, I keep my phone in my pocket. Wearing a watch that millions of other people may have feels a bit weird to me. It's like taking that membership of the iPhone "club" and turning it into an external badge signifying membership.
Watches become part of your visual identity, and I'm not sure that I want something that ubiquitous as part of mine.
The iPhone was a computing device in a form factor that the market was able to relate to as a phone. The Apple Watch is a computing device in a form factor that the market will be able to relate to as a watch.
'Phone' and 'watch' are just entry points. The form factor, UI, and controls will dictate what it actually is. I'm fairly certain, NOT a smaller iPhone.
For people who want to skip all the non-critical Apple praise and marketing regurgitation and don't want to spend their time filtering out the endless variety of framing devices Gruber uses to try to turn Apple's lemons into lemonaid here's a summary review:
- Using the watch as a watch is broken. He spends almost 1,000 words across 8 paragraphs talking about how broken it is. It may be accurate, but it's overly complex, fussy and unreliable to get it to show you the time.
- The water resistance is unacceptable for a device intended as a fitness companion, some of this is due to compromises to the overly complex design.
- As a watch targeting people who wear watches, it's probably a failure. He repeats some variation of this a number of times.
- the build quality feels high, not as high as the early press hands-on
- the rubber watch band is easy to size and the material feels good, but swapping out bands is "fiddly"
- the watch is designed to hide the bezel, but in good lighting you can see it, again reminding that it isn't a great watch
- the shape (square) is not a good watch shape
- the gender-neutral design comes off as modern
- battery life will get you through a day of moderate usage
- the induction charger is easy to use and works as advertised
- one of the main marketing points, that it's a health and fitness device, is not useful to him in any way and he has no interest in it
- some of the fitness features intrude into non-fitness uses in a bad way
- other fitness features seem pretty accurate and potentially useful
- the digital crown works basically like a mouse scroll-wheel
- touch, the crown and haptic feedback work as well as you'd expect and they work together well
- haptic feedback works so well that you can turn off sound for notifications
- he had a 50% failure rate on the haptic feedback on his test watches requiring him to get a replacement watch during his week-long review
- the digital touch features were untested, though he provides a cute story of two rich teenagers flirting in class he provides no actual coverage of the feature
tl;dr none of the smart watch features were particularly interesting and it's not a great watch to use for time keeping
It's not really surprising, it's the same problem all the smart watches have, it's not really clear that the extra expense and fuss of a smartwatch, on a severely compromised display and interaction platform is worth it. The target audience he holds out hope for, non-watch wearers who wouldn't know any better, are probably not going to start wearing an expensive fussy fiddly device that provides no unqualified benefit that they have to charge every day. I'm not a watch wearer and the only smartwatch I'd even consider is something like the Pebble and that's only because it's focused on
a) being a watch
b) notifications
c) not making me charge it all the time
Except that I'm literally surrounded by clocks nearly all the time, so I don't need to tell time. My phone already vibrates and makes sound, and it's usually letting me know something that I'm already being notified about on my monitor. The one use-case I can really see for a smartwatch is to help with navigation, especially while walking since walking around with your phone out getting turn-by-turn isn't all that great. But it's something I need literally once or twice per year.
But his take on sending a heartbeat as a flirting 16 year old was awful. That was basically the same pitch for Facebook pokes, which initially were cute but quickly turned obnoxious. Sending taps sounds like it could be useful. Sending your heartbeat seems like a gimmick. Ultimately his last point is right, we won't know unless/until Apple Watch becomes a thing.
I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match.
How can the the smoothness of an actual, physical piece of metal smoothly rotating in a circle at a constant angular velocity be "out-smoothed" by a 60 FPS simulacrum?
Lots of mechanical clocks have hands and seconds which ticks one unit at a time, and doesn't move in a smooth movement. But that's obviously done intentionally through the mechanics and requires extra effort to "implement", so it's not a sign of a "low" quality watch either.
I have one here in a clocks n' (stop) watches box that moves the second hand at a significantly higher rate than 60 per second, but I must admit I didn't know that was something special.
Mechanical watches don't move continuously because movements of the hands are controlled by gears with a finite number of teeth. As for the "simulacrum" comment, don't forget that watches are just a mechanical simulation of a sundial.
don't forget that watches are just a mechanical simulation of a sundial
I disagree. Sundials are rubbish for telling time and they look different throughout the year. A (decent) watch does not attempt to replicate the inadequacy of a sundial; it just tells you the time.
It could also be said that mechanical watches are rubbish for keeping time compared to their digital counterparts. Always gradually moving away from accurate timekeeping, they must be rewound to keep proper time. They don't sync with the official time distribution services so are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Same boat here. I lose jewelry. In my time I've worn earrings, ear cuffs, necklaces, dreadlock weaves, bolo ties, neck ties, zipper ties, hats, etc etc etc... they all get lost, they all get damaged quickly. And really, in the end, they just feel uncomfortable on my body. I haven't worn a watch in 15+ years and have never regretted it.
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 difficult emotional situations, like being rejected by the girl you really have a crush on.
What happens the first time that kid who was too afraid of rejection to talk to a girl he liked messes up in his "grown-up" job? Is he going to send his boss an apology over his watch? Or is going to break down in tears because he's never had to deal with an emotionally stressful situation "IRL"?
I was the typical nerdy, shy, socially inept teenager who read the z80 instruction set documentation alone at the cafeteria during lunch. In the 10th grade there was this girl I really liked, but my complete lack of social skills prevented me from acting upon it.
I forget how, but I eventually found a way to add her on MSN messenger, where we spent many evenings and weekends chatting. This allowed me to get over my initial shyness; we eventually dated for about a year. She was my first girlfriend, and I gained a lot in self confidence and social skills through this experience.
I don't lock myself in the bathroom when I mess up at my job these days.
I think your message is either a silly straw man, or that you really don't get teenagers.
...But in this case, you'll first have to work up the guts to go ask her for her phone number, so that you can go back to your desk and send her your heartbeat.
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 his watch is trying to create an "IRL" relationship with her.
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.
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.
Phones are unprofessional and slow and impolite, and even if its legal, recording is just socially not done other than call center script readers.
On the other hand, supplier writes in an email that he's shipping the microcontroller PCBs tomorrow, no kidding this time, you have a written record you can call him out on maybe the day after tomorrow, and unlike verbal phone calls no one freaks out if you stockpile emails, in fact its pretty much accepted. And this is exactly why someone lying to you or stretching the truth or making stuff up will refuse to do business by email and insist on using the phone.
So your employees are in cognitive dissonance... you're trying to set them up to fail and they're either going to be annoyed or offended or even worse, apathetic about it.
"you are trying to set them up to fail.." - a bit of a stretch don't you think?
I am referring to picking up the phone to call a supplier or similar. Basic commerce, not some elaborate plot to annoy, offend or cause apathy. More like "Bob, do you have blue widgets in stock?"
Phones are not unprofessional, they are a tool. A communication tool. Phones are not slow, in fact they are a lot faster than waiting for an email that never comes.
Part of learning to deal with difficult emotional situations is having a gradient of intensity that allows one to build confidence rather than being overwhelmed or crushed.
Teenagers already do everything they can to moderate this. And plenty of people actually fail to learn to deal with rejection. Providing another mechanism that makes the learning curve smoother is more likely to help than to exacerbate the problem.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Email, text messages, watch taps, Facebook likes, Twitter favourites, etc. are all forms of communication. Sure, they aren't face-to-face verbal communication. But that doesn't meant that when I'm having a Skype chat with my deaf grandfather in New Zealand 20 000 km away I'm not communicating. You seem to be making the mistake of privileging your preferred method of commuication over all others, and deciding that none of the other ways of iteracting are ACTUAL communication. This just isn't true.
However, I'm sure in the future we'll have people complaining that direct mind-communication via neural stimulation implant isn't ACTUAL communication, not like Apple Watch taps or instant messaging ;)
Replace these watch interactions with the less recent technology of "passing notes." I don't think the character in Gruber's story would have walked up to her and given her a kiss on the cheek if not for the watch standing in his way. I think he would have done nothing or found some other indirect means. And think about the story in the context of what he says about the phone and talking and video chat and seeing— it actually feels like you're being touched to enough of a degree that this interaction is more intimate. Mediation by technology is not inherently distancing.
Honestly, I think this social interaction talk is overblown. I was an original Pebble backer, and I've stopped using it because it's actually a greater physical barrier than a phone when you're sat talking to someone. Notifications are even more obtrusive, not less.
I wouldn't say it's a barrier, but a complement. An outlet for people to express themselves where none previously existed.
Yes the quality of communication is far lower, however if he wouldn't have otherwise approached her in person, then isn't this better than not having it?
Honest questions: How people can write such long articles? How many hours they might have spent in writing? Does anyone read it from the top to bottom completely? Is it not possible to express the whole thing in a small article without losing the gist?
EDIT 1: Gruber's articles have lot of useful information,analysis and insights but I feel, current article is too lengthy.
EDIT 2: Anandtech's reviews are also detailed but they are easy to select to go to required part of the review. Hope interface of DF may change in future.
Personally, I enjoyed reading through the article all the way very much. Gruber is not writing for people who want an answer to a particular question or who are looking for tabular comparisons. He gives you his experience with the watch, and a description how his opinions of various features changed after using them. He gives context for his opinions about it as a long-time watch-wearer, and detailed personal examples of its problems.
I don't think a review that just gives an opinion without any context is useful. How can I judge the relevance to my life if I know nothing about the reviewer's? With something as personal and intimate as a watch, the details matter and the context matters.
> Also, though it sounds trivial, I enjoy the perfect 60 FPS smoothness of Apple Watch’s second hand — a smoothness no mechanical watch could ever match.
Based on a culmination of reviews and early preview articles I have read, videos and basically everything I have read about the Apple Watch this statement seems kind of ironic. The second hand might be smooth, but the very real performance issues people have encountered with the watch mean the rest of the Apple Watch experience is anything but smooth. What's the point of a smooth second hand if the rest of the experience is somewhat crippled and unusable?
I like the look of the Apple Watch and the very idea of it, but to an extent. It feels as though articles like Gruber's here are talking with reckless abandon, from the perspective that existing solutions aren't out there. From a user interface perspective the Pebble watch and Moto 360 especially are beautiful, well-crafted and smooth interfaces. Apple are not entering new territory nor are they introducing any ideas or improvements into the space (besides the physical appearance).
Lets not pretend that there aren't as equally good, if not, better smart watches out there. They might not have had the same amount of design and research put into them, but I think there is such a thing as over-engineering something. I am pretty happy with my Pebble watch, the battery life is great and so too, is the battery life.
I am by no means an expert, but I like nice watches and to me the Apple Watch will never match the build quality, feel and longevity of a nice traditional mechanical watch even if it is only from a battery life perspective.