Despite sizable sales, Apple Watch has challenges to overcome | Hacker News Reader

Despite sizable sales, Apple Watch has challenges to overcome

wsj.com

16 pointsdangerman13 comments

    And yet, there are detractors such as Fred Wilson, co-founder of
    venture-capital firm Union Square Ventures, in December declared the Watch a
    “flop.” Mr. Wilson, who owns shares of Fitbit through a fund, had earlier
    predicted the Watch wouldn’t be a “home run” like the iPad, iPhone and iPod,
    saying many people wouldn’t want to wear a computer on their wrist.

Why should we take the word of Fred Wilson on the Apple Watch when he is an investor in a product that the Apple watch directly competes with? Of course he's going to say that the Apple Watch is bad; he makes a product that competes directly with it! It'd be almost negligent if he didn't.

More generally, I find criticisms of the Apple Watch very similar in overall theme to criticisms of the original iPod. The Apple Watch is derided as over-priced and under-featured, and commentators can't fathom why ordinary people are buying it in such numbers. The original iPod showed that people are willing to pay a hefty premium for a product that offers clear design and ease-of-use benefits. As long as Apple Watch maintains those advantages over its Android counterparts (and fitness tracker rivals), it won't matter one whit if it loses the spec. sheet war.

I think the competitors to the apple watch are much more mature and sophisticated as well as have more mature "ecosystems" compared to the "Rio" or Jukebox MP3 players had.

Fred Wilson just does not seem to be a fan of Apple in general. He rage-quit their shares entirely during Steve Jobs' illness and blogged about it. Some sample posts:

Fear and Loathing Is Not a Great Brand Image (2007) - http://avc.com/2007/11/fear-and-loathi/

Does Apple Have A Blind Spot About Flash? (2009) - http://avc.com/2009/02/does-apple-have-a-blind-spot-about-fl...

Selling Apple and Google Today - http://avc.com/2009/01/selling-apple-a/

Android and iOS (2013) - http://avc.com/2013/08/android-and-ios/

Personally I don't understand the hype around smartwatches in general.

Don't get me wrong, I understand them as a viable product and why a lot of people like them, but the demand for them was wildly overblown.

Of everyone I know, only one or two people have one, and it's not because of price. If you're a huge fitness nut, deal with an enormous number of messages, or just plain like the gimmick, they're great. But otherwise they really don't offer much that offsets the cost, need to charge the things on a daily basis, and general hassle of having yet another electronic device to keep track of.

The problem (IMO) is that the tech isn't there yet to enable the focus on trying to be tiny mobile phones, without huge sacrifices in terms of battery life.

No matter how good it is, a device in a watch form factor can't provide THAT much in the way of utility, so it needs to be as hassle-free as possible in order to be a net benefit to its wearer. I think in this regard the early Pebble smartwatches were perfectly pitched.

Sadly Pebble decided to chase the Android / Apple Watch market instead of refining their niche, with predictably poor results.

I used to wear watches all the time, but stopped when I realized I could just pull my phone out of my pocket and look at it.

I did the same, but then started again when I realized I could read notifications or hold a phone conversation on my wrist.

To be honest I've gotten to the point where I leave my mobile at home 50% of my days.

Wearing a watch is a habit I've had for many years, and still the first thing I do when I wake up is wind it up, and put it on.

There are times when I check the time on my computer, or my mobile, but generally my watch is my first point of call.

What will make the smartwatch take off is probably not fully understood yet. I have my own theory (below), but first an analogy.

When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, he first teased that he was releasing 3 devices:

- A widescreen iPod with touch controls (huge applause)

- A revolutionary mobile phone (HUGE raucous applause)

- A breakthrough Internet communications device (tepid, confused applause)

But what drives iPhone growth and usage today? It's the third one, BY FAR. Heck the whole concept of "an iPod" has been taken over by streaming music services, which fit firmly into bucket #3.

So it's possible--I would say likely--that the true value of a smartwatch is not yet fully understood by us today.

Based on where Apple is teasing their efforts, I would guess it's some combination of:

- Personal health monitoring, and eventual connection to your doctors and specialists and researchers.

- Authentication, configuration, and activation of ambient computing. Basically--the key and control panel to everything around you. You get in a car and it sets the seat, drive controls, thermostat, etc. to your preferences--which are stored in your smartwatch. Same thing at home. You sit down at your computer and it unlocks and decrypts. You tap your watch on a register to pay. You tap your watch on the subway gate to get on. Etc.

You could/can do all of the above with a phone.

In fact with Watch you are doing them with your phone, but using a wrist terminal as an accessory.

That's not a bad thing - harder to steal - etc, but it's not quite a must-have USP.

I bought a refurbished Apple Sport Watch 38mm for 200 dollars last week. I have been pleasantly surprised how useful it is. I love using it to send a quick reply to a text message with either a canned response or a dictated voice recognition text response. I love the ability to quickly capture a dictated voice recognition note to Evernote. I love the Do button app from IFTTT to quickly send things to different apps. I have been finding new uses daily. I am not sure it is worth full price but it is definitely worth 200 dollars.

Horology survived the Quartz crisis, I'm betting they survive the smart-watch crisis.

It's an interesting thought, watching smartphone screens get bigger, just how much people want a computer so significantly smaller. The tracking is great, but can be done headless, and oh by the way my phone has a pedometer, too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think smart watches are going away, but I do imagine their honeymoon glow will fade a degree.

I can't believe Apple launched a smart watch without solving the problem of making them fashionable. The higher end bands are nice but they're still attached to something that screams gadget nerd. Maybe I'm a watch snob, but the nicest watches I've ever bought are Invicta...

To me the killer feature of a smart watch is just not missing calls and notifications. Woot had a good deal on refurb Pebble Time Rounds a couple weeks ago so I bought one of those and a $20 aftermarket metal band. Solved my pain point. Didn't cost more than I'd spend on a regular watch. I wouldn't quite call it fashionable but it is discrete.

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