[balloot]

My issue with the watch is the crown control. It just feels lazy to me to take a control mechanism made 100+ years ago for winding mechanical watches off your wrist, and repurpose it for digital control of a watch on your wrist.

Is it possible that the best possible UX solution for winding a mechanical watch and controlling a digital OS is exactly the same? Perhaps. But that seems improbable to me. It's hard to know until the thing is out in the wild, but I would expect a lot of people fiddling awkwardly with the top half of that tiny little dial as the bottom of the dial digs into their wrist. Doesn't seem terribly fun.

Or to look at it differently, both of Apple's other consumer hits (iPod, iPhone) introduced a navigation interface that was completely novel and way better than anything else on the market (iPhone => finger navigated multi-touch screen, iPod => rotary dial). A crown on a watch is definitely not novel, and I'm thoroughly skeptical it will be way better than its competition.

That being said, it's unlikely that this thing bombs. But as a test of innovation post-Steve, I'm just not seeing it. And over time, the luster of Apple will fade if there's no innovation.

[MBCook]

The control mechanism that's lasted over 100 years obviously works well. We are not too far into the touchscreen era, and when the thing is only 1 inch on each side the touchscreen isn't going to work especially well.

Someone made a mockup a week or two ago that used the ring around normal watch face as an input mechanism. I actually thought that was kind of a neat idea. I'd kind of like to see one of the Android watchmakers give it a try. But it was more of a 'watch with some interaction' (like the old Timex Datalink) than a 'smartwatch'.

[balloot]

Crown mechanisms worked well for a completely different purpose. They are the easiest way to set and wind a watch that is not on your wrist. Totally different use case than controlling the watch's screen while you're wearing it!

[eevilspock]

Apple could easily do that for a round "Apple Watch 2". It's the same as the digital crown in function, just in a different place. The just have to make the bezel touch sensitive. The feel of using it would be very reminiscent of the iPod scroll wheel.

[sschueller]

Ventura Watches[1] uses a similar mechanism to configure their watch. It is called Easyskroll (TM) and was patented in 2002 under 2002CH-1962 [2] so Apple may have a problem here.

[1] http://www.ventura.ch/

[2] https://www.google.ch/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=KScQVKCwL...

[jacquesm]

With about 100 years of prior art for configuring the settings on a mechanical watch I don't think that patent should ever have been granted, nor do I think it stands much chance of survival once they try to get money out of Apple.