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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 ;-).
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
“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.
> 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.
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.
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!
"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.
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.
[+] [-] DigitalSea|11 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gurkendoktor|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pareidolia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] threeseed|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitsoda|11 years ago|reply
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.
Shrug
[+] [-] tptacek|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ickwabe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eridius|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] shanselman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenrikm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakejake|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aesthetics1|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmeredith|11 years ago|reply
[1]It could also be eye-roll-worthy bourgeois douchebaggery depending on your socio-economic perspective.
[+] [-] bennettfeely|11 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] reubenmorais|11 years ago|reply
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 :)
[+] [-] green7ea|11 years ago|reply
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 ;-).
[+] [-] jonhester|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sz4kerto|11 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsBTXgksr4s
[+] [-] 13|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
I found this more informative because he used it a bit more like I expected someone to.
[+] [-] redacted|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
You guys are so silly sometimes.
[+] [-] 51Cards|11 years ago|reply
Edit: for the record I love both of them after being initially dubious about the usefulness of such a device.
[+] [-] roc|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] acqq|11 years ago|reply
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.
1) And Apple even has some patents, discovered as early as 2011! http://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-patent-hybrid-display/ Hmm.
[+] [-] Thiz|11 years ago|reply
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.
And I hope nobody patents it.
[+] [-] prawn|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] aleem|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] EA|11 years ago|reply
...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.
[+] [-] sylvinus|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sebnukem2|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mathgeek|11 years ago|reply
You'll have your answer in a few days. You'll even be able to tell who these people are by looking at their wrists.
[+] [-] skc|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ctdonath|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] brandon272|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pchristensen|11 years ago|reply
This is why I value Gruber's reviews. He's unabashedly pro-Apple, but he's also critical and observant.
[+] [-] bla2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 72deluxe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|11 years ago|reply
> 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!
[+] [-] ctdonath|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] EGreg|11 years ago|reply
I think he's the only one I've ever heard of who gets paid so much to write blog articles.
[+] [-] nickgrosvenor|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] damian2000|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bo1024|11 years ago|reply