The Elephant in the Smartwatch Room
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As a Garmin user (Fenix 3 HR), I find it indispensable on my rides, swims, runs, etc. Nothing works better with the same battery life and integration. The notifications are kinda nice, but honestly the fitness part of it matters far more.
Apple clearly has been moving in the fitness watch direction, but it's unlikely they'll get the same performance because they're unwilling to sacrifice svelte design (dedicated altimeter, GPS, temperature, extra radios plus long-life battery take more space). Even in the current watch they have about 1/3 the battery life using GPS. Of course that's fine for a lot of people, but there's a healthy number who want more.
I think the final layout will be Apple/Samsung with a large majority of the market, and sports specialists (Garmin) having the rest, but that segment being quite strong and healthy over the long term. Where that leaves Fitbit, I don't know. They don't have a model that meets the needs of someone who wants a Garmin (though Garmin is expanding down into their space), and they'll never have the integration the "cool-accessory" market wants.
This is exactly what I came here to say. On top of that I'm not sure how the data from the second chart got put together? It just says that the data came from their own site and IDC. IDC's report for the 3rd quarter puts three competitors above Apple in terms of market share, YOY growth, and unit sales.[1]
1) Garmin is selling almost 20% more than Apple
2) Fitness is the killer app for wrist-wearables. The 3 front runners are fitness focused.
Problem with Xiaomi have been more supply side than demand side. I know because I tried to buy MiBand 2 when it originally came out and for weeks most vendors were sold out. It's possible that Xiaomi is having trouble keeping up the manufacturing volumes at the low price point they've entered the market.
But for 'normal' fitness people the Apple watch is a pretty strong value. It's much better than a basic FitBit but works better. It integrates with your phone very well and the notification handling quickly became my favorite feature.
I think the Apple watch is far more than good enough for most people's fitness needs, and I don't think Garmin's strength there will be enough to elevate them out of the niche of hard-core fitness people.
That said, coming at it from the other side, I think the Garmin smart watch features are good enough for many, many people.
Thing is, these are bloody expensive devices. I'd never buy both, but then again, maybe if you can afford one, you can afford two?
Makes me think it will be hard for Garmin to break into the mainstream.
Despite my complete ignorance, I'll still challenge your statement "no chance Garmin or Fitbit gets that kind of functionality." If Fitbit Blaze can do bluetooth music control it doesn't take much imagination to think lock/unlock.
Unlocking a computer has two different problems.
First, you have the basic problem of access. Only Apple has the rights necessary to make something that can unlock a Mac. You may be able to do this in the windows world, but I don't think anyone else can accomplish it on the Mac.
The second is the issue of security. When Apple created this feature they explained that they were using time of flight information from the two devices to be able to figure out when they were close enough to unlock. They claim this is only possible because they control both sides in the firmware on both devices.
It's very easy to know if something is in range. And I'm sure there's a way to get some sort of signal strength. But how do you know if someone is using a signal booster? How do you know what "close" is? If you're dealing with random computers from different manufacturers then how do you calibrate with the correct "closeness" value is for each one? Even if there's a very good way to do that, do you have the resources? And to keep that database updated as new computers come out?
I've been using the feature on my personal Mac and you do have to be VERY close. It won't work from a couple feet away, even though Bluetooth will work form a much much longer distance.
That really is one of those little things that Apple is able to do because they have such tight control of everything. Even in the PC world, I would think it would be hard for someone like Microsoft to do on anything other than the surface computers that they build.
(It occurs to me that I'm thinking of doing it automatically. Just like the music controls, you could always have an app on the computer listening for a special message sent over Bluetooth when someone tap the button on the watch that would unlock the computer. But that's not as convenient or secure)
That's something a lot of people use as an example, but in practice I don't find it to be a problem at all. I only had to charge my FitBit every week or two, but I don't mind what I do with my watch at all.
I plug my phone in every night, and I put my watch on its charger at the same time. That takes care of it, no need to think about it any further. The first generation Apple Watch would usually have 40 to 50% battery left when I put it on its charger at the end of the day. I'm not sure about the newer one, but I know the battery life is supposed to be better.
The FitBit could go for 10 days, but I would have to monitor it (usually wait for the app to tell me) and then go find the charger and plug it in. Oddly the fact that I charge my watch every night seems like less of a cognitive burden to me because I don't actually have to think about it. I did occasionally have to think about my FitBit.
So in practice, it's never been an issue. Because the battery is so small (due to the size of the device) even if you do run it down it charges up very fast. I know some people use them all day and sleep track with them, and then simply charge them up while taking a shower in the morning.
If you want to spend all day doing a triathlon and having GPS tracking then maybe the Apple Watch is battery wouldn't be good enough for a single day. I imagine that some company sells a gadget that would be able to handle that. The Apple Watch is battery is WAY bigger than my needs, and I imagine it sized for a lot of people. Health is turned out to be one of the biggest uses of the Apple Watch.
I think this is something like range anxiety and cars. It certainly affect some people, but for your average user and even your average user who likes to stay fit and exercise a fair bit I don't think it's an issue. It's only the most demanding and serious 5 to 10% of the market that may not be able to use an Apple Watch.
The only place I ever saw a benefit to the battery life with my FitBit was when traveling: since I don't tend to take very long trips I almost always could get by without bringing the charger. I have to bring my Apple Watch charger. Since I don't travel much, that doesn't matter much to me.
At 10:30 PM my watch was at 75%. No charging since I first put it on.
I think with a Series 0 it would've been at 40 to 45% at this point.
I can agree that the fitbit is a little more fiddly in that regard, I sometimes get surprised when my charge is low. But one of the things that I love about the fitbit is that I can track my sleep - and I cannot do that if I've taken it off overnight to charge.
I guess different people use their watches for different things. For me I like the step-tracking, love the heart-rate monitoring (when rock-climbing, lifting weights, or cycling), and adore the sleep tracking.
I only have a single complaint, and that is that the thing isn't waterproof. If I could go swimming with it on I'd be a complete satisfied user.
waterfi will waterproof it for $99 - although this seals the altimeter which ruins your floor count.
On the other hand, if you are planning for something serious, like running a half-marathon in spring, or doing interval training, then you begin to need heart rate monitoring. Many then discovers that the Apple Watch HRM is cr*p (mine read 215bpm which is at least 25bpm more than my biological max) and you can't really use Apple Watches for fitness. Apple would need to invest massively in heart rate monitoring technology (+battery) to get any interest from fitness crowds.
One are that makes sense for Apple Watch is simple activity tracking. How many steps, how many floors climbed. Where you have been. How much sleep you had etc. Those are important metrics for your health and worth the price. But at the same time, you can get a Fitbit or a Vivoactive for $150 less
In response to your comments on the HRM in an Apple smart watch, that hasn't been my experience. It seems to work quite well, and articles I've seen say that compares surprisingly well to a chest strap or something like that. I will say that it is HIGHLY dependent on having a good fit. The band that came with my watch cost me a lot of problems, when I got one it was more adjustable it got a lot better.
I'd say an Apple Watch is a quite a few steps up from a basic fit bit, and it doesn't compare to a high-end Garmin, but I think it's more than enough for most people in the market.
Activity tracking like walking or cooking, gardening will also show good to excellent readings.
But you should try it in cycling on roads. Pebble stones, bumps, traffic, sudden stops. Readings are inaccurate, especially if you are reading fast (!= commuting)
The worst inaccuracies I saw was in martial arts and bootcamps. Those are when you move your hands in unpredictable speed and directions. I think readings would also be quite inaccurate in most racquet sports. I'm not sure I have seen any reviews about the Apple Watch in these conditions.
For the encouragement of would-be or newbie runners, it is of course entirely possible to run a half-marathon distance without any form of monitoring, diagnostic or tracking equipment.
Invest in good shoes first and don't worry about gadgets. The only one I'd recommend would be a small mobile phone in a back-pocket in case of emergency if you're running cross-country or remote roads.
A gps sports watch helps though to track progress and also get feedback. It provides that extra bit of motivation that makes a difference
How did you learn that max? One of the things I learned training for some events was that most people thought their max was much lower than it actually was — not just due using those crude age-based formulas but also things like trying to measure it too early or late in a workout, without the right level of warm-up, etc. A fair number of people had been holding back too much because they thought their max was lower than it actually was.
The Apple Watch has problems when you move your wrist above a certain speed.
It's the watch I wanted when I was a little kid with the cereal box Tetris watch. [0] I had a whole bunch of Casio databanks, from the 32 number to 150 number [1] to the neato 'touch screen' version I saved up for a year to buy [2]. I remember dreaming of getting that computer watch off SkyMall's catalog (can't find a link just now), and dreamed of having something like it. Now I have a gizmo more powerful that Roger Smith's in BigO.
Again, it is an actual cell phone. My inner child is gleeful about it. But here's the gripe: the software to talk to it is only available on a mobile device. ONLY. Any my phone is more than 4 years old, so it turns out my bluetooth can't talk to it.
Still an awesome watch, and I can't wait to upgrade my phone and load my usual apps on it. Would I have gotten it if it were smaller, less capable? Probably. I tried to get an S2, but my phone store wouldn't sell it while the S3 was on the way.
EDIT: This is one of the first watches I've seen that is capable of standing on its own (somewhat) if untethered from a phone. There have been cell phone watches, but not at this price point, and not with the same slick interface.
[0] You know the one: https://stevecochrane.com/v3/2006/09/15/tetris-should-be-eve... [1] http://archive.casio.com/products/archive/watches/databank/d... [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/timepieceslove/6362901777/
Sounds more like a bluetooth headset that you wear on your wrist
> But here's the gripe: the software to talk to it is only available on a mobile device. ONLY.
talk is ambiguous
The 4g connection is pretty good, and I think the call quality is pretty decent. Battery can only handle maybe an hour and a half of call per day (between charges), but I'm not too chatty, so it works great for me.
So "talk" here means "change settings"? That's what confused me.
And you bet Apple will have some sort of untethered watch. I bet it's expensive though. Not as a joke, but to make sure it doesn't compete with their flagship. Or maybe not; if Samsung's method works and people bundle the 4G watch with a phone just as much, maybe we just get that much more connected.
Regardless, I think it's pretty premature to be whinging about the market for smartwatches failing like the article.
I didn't interpret the article as saying that the market for smartwatches was failing. My read of it was that smartwatches are consolidating around the Apple Watch, given marketshare numbers and what has happened with the competitors so far.
IMHO, there's a lot of room for growth and there's no reason to assume that Apple will dominate in marketshare (though if recent history is a guide they may dominate in profit).
Am I living in a parallel universe or just the future? You can get watch phones for less than the price of an actual (decent) watch. You can get ones that run Android for less than a hundred bucks. I don't understand all the hype about these super-expensive, low-functionality things (although your Gear S3 Frontier seems nice).
Here's one: http://m.banggood.com/KINGWEAR-KW88-1_39-inch-MTK6580-Quad-C...
It's like someone who used a DSLR camera all his life and then tries to write why GoPro don't make any sense, without every trying one.
The writing and the graphs are nice though. Now go out of your ivory tower
(yeah yeah it's a Reddit -like comment but this whole thread should probably be downvoted)
Never say never!
No, most of them are fitbit's but they don't fit with his narrative so they don't count.
The technology is also just a bit behind.
People see it as geeky and not really solving any problems they have.
Personally I am a fan of the new hybrid watches that are coming out.
They look great (they look exactly like classic watches, because they are), the battery issue is gone (modern hybrids last up to 6 months or longer) and do what people really want a smart watch to do:
see if that notification is something worth taking your phone out for. (most hybrids have different symbols or vibrations or lights that show what it is and who its from).
Throw in the activity tracking and controlling your music from your wrist and you have the perfect combo.
If the marketing is done right I can see hybrids really taking off.
As a nerdy guy, I love signaling my nerdiness with gadgets -- tablets, notebooks, cars, etc.
But watches? When I wear a watch I want something analog with a lot of gears and complexity, not a stupid cell phone OS crammed on my wrist. Have you seen folks in airports and such poking at their watch, trying to open apps? Talking to their wrist? It does not leave one with a positive impression.
And some of the watch faces are clever. The default chronograph one actually fakes the light reflecting around the face as your wrist moves. Complete BS, but passes the illusion nicely.
Here's one I came across today:
https://www.fossil.com/us/en/products/q-nate-hybrid-stainles...
(Disclaimer: I don't own one of these or recommend them...just pointing to one example. There are probably other vendors offering similar products)
Or something else?
Of course it would be better if there was an open standard, but unfortunately, with all the walled gardens lately, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
Apple's brand power and brand loyalty are well-reported and much-discussed, and compare favorably to Samsung's try-everything-and-see-what-doesn't-fail approach -- all the while being a mainstream brand with an appeal that transcends several income bands, and not just a purely luxury aspirational product for the ultra-rich.
Seems like they may eventually have custom firmware, and they have backups of the entire Pebble Store.
What seems much more likely to me is that middle-class wrist space will be claimed more by fitness devices which encroach more and more on the smartwatch territory without all the frills. E.g. Something like Xiomi Miband 2 at ~$40 is hard to resist with a tiny LED display and 20 day (yes.. actual 20 days) battery life. What I want on my wrist is something tiny, cheap, waterproof and hardy I can wear and forget (for weeks on end) as opposed to something bulky, delicate, not quite waterproof (say, in the swimming pool) and requires nightly charging. Who needs that?
Also checking messages is more discrete and less disruptive with the apple watch. Use mine constantly for this.
Don't care about the health trackers, wish I could delete that completely
It does all that. The Siri integration is a killer-app for me though. I use it all the time (when alone) to set reminders, reply to texts, etc. But since it's from Apple it will always have better messaging integration than any 3rd party could EVER provide.
Of course I'm guessing the Blaze is much cheaper.
While it doesn't apply here, I'll also say that I've come to hate FitBit. They really don't want to play with other people and I had to buy an extra app (that I have to run every few days) just to sync data from my last remaining FitBit device to Health on my iPhone. Since I first bought one they seem to have gone from very open to hostile and closed. And I don't want to reward that.
(And that ignores my customer support experience, which alone turned me off from them)
Sure, I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't. I was simply illustrating how different people have different use cases for these wearable devices. While we may see some more convergence, I think that multiple categories will remain (fitness, etc).
> I use it all the time (when alone) to set reminders, reply to texts, etc.
The great thing about the iPhone and Siri is that you don't need a watch to do that. Most of the time I don't even have to pull my phone from my pocket to do a "Hey Siri". Apple seems to have done a pretty decent job with the voice recognition and hotword detection (I think that's the right term).
> Of course I'm guessing the Blaze is much cheaper.
Actually not much. The Blaze retails for $199.
You're right about the phone, but it's very nice to be able to just raise my wrist and sort of whisper into my watch. I don't have to make sure I'm loud enough that my phone can hear me from my pocket. It just feels easier/more natural if you don't already have your phone in your hand.
I wonder if the pricing on the Blaze was set before the latest Apple Watches came out. That would have been a decent value against $350 or whatever they were, but now that a very nice one starts at $260 it's a tougher sell.
Apple Watch models in spots 2 and 10.
My experience is that “hey siri” works well if you're somewhere quiet but it's really prone to false-positives, even for things which sound nothing like th at. Most of the other iPhone users I know have commented about disabling that after Siri kept activating in meetings, which is the same reason I turned it off after a couple days, and then hoping that the next hardware release would do a better job. Maybe the 7S…
Amazon appears to have done a much better job - their users talk admit how good it is rather than joking about how it's faster to get there phone out of your pocket than retry your Siri query multiple times.
Fitbit has an API. Apple has developers. If Apple's app needs another app to get Fitbit data, hate Apple. Fitbit is trying to hire more iOS devs, and the ones we have are too busy trying to make our app better for us to loan them out to Apple to make Apple's app better.
If you're not aware Health stores data in a repository on the phone, it's not a cloud service. It doesn't really provide any features, it's just a central repository for all apps on the phone to share health data. It doesn't do meal planning or exercise tracking or anything else like that.
You get those things by choosing other apps yourself (or using the Activity app if you have a Watch)
Apple doesn't use the FitBit API because it doesn't use ANY API. It's job is not to go fetch data from other places, it's the repository that other places put their data in by the APIs Apple provides.
MyFitnessPal is able to do this, along with RunKeeper, Pedometer++, and TONS of other apps. It's a nice little system and works very well. It respects my privacy.
FitBit doesn't provide Apple Health integration. THEY want to be the repository, have the control, access the data.
This reminds me of when game center was first created on iOS and many games decided not to support it and to support something else instead. You know what happened to those other things? They died. There was too much friction and having to have additional logins and multiple systems and friend list and all the other things that went with it.
The stuff integrated into the platform provided by the OS vendor wins unless there is a very compelling reason.
Right now every single health-based app I try works just fine on my phone and can access all the data. Except FitBit.
Why should every single app I download have to have FitBit's API and have me sign in just to be able to read data that's already on my phone? Why should I have to re-authorize each of them every 30 days? Why should I have to depend on the cloud service working for data I enter in one app on my phone to show up in another app on my phone when there's a perfectly good system service available?
FitBit's position isn't strong enough to win. Their approach provides no benefit to me, only to them. It makes my life harder. The only reason their position is as strong as it is is because they were one of the first out of the gate with health trackers in their current form, giving them a very large market share. I think if you tried to start a new business today, even with a good brand name that already existed (coming from non-tech fitness brands) The approach that FitBit is taking would fail. Hard.
I'm likely not to reply back here on this thread, but I'll talk with coworkers about it internally.
I saw the news out of Pebble this morning and thought it was interesting that they committed to continue to integrate with Apple Health.
Calling it a watch makes it very clear where you're intended to wear it and that it will always be there.
Thing like the FitBit I had (which you could clip on your belt, keep in your pocket, etc.) was well described by 'wearables', but we have a more accurate term available for the Apple Watch or Moto 360.
Unfortunately, the technology just isn't there.
With my Apple watch I take it off in the morning while I get ready and stick it to the charger and by the time I'm done it's ready for another day.
In my perception, a watch should be something that is zero hassle, and smartwatches just ain't it.
Would that be the Tissot's (higher-end quartz movements) of the world? Or the Omega/Panerai's?
Maybe there is an impact on the former, but I cannot see anyone picking an iWatch over a SpeedMaster, let alone an AP.
The big draws for me were the full circle face (I don't like the look of the square ones or the 'flat tire' on some of the earlier cirlce watch faces), the fact it looks like a basically normal watch, and that it runs Android Wear (I considered a Samsung Gear, but I don't like that it's within the Samgsung software ecosystem).
I wear it pretty much every day, though I often take it off while I'm coding/keyboarding (which I've done whenever I wore a watch).
I've never wore a watch while I sleep, and always just put it on my nightstand beside the bed. The magnetic base is on my nightstand, and it takes about 2 extra seconds to put it on the charger vs just set it down, so I generally charge it every night. I've forgotten a couple times, and it easily gets through two days anyway.
For me the most useful things are message notifications and the ability to reply quickly with a couple canned responses and agenda.
I actually use Microsoft's Outlook watch face. The outer permiter shows blocks of time for the next 12 hours where something is scheduled and it's pretty cool. I didn't find any other faces that had quite the same functionality, but I think I could build one using one of the custom watch face apps, I just haven't bothered to spend the time yet.
I don't use the fitness tracking on it. An interesting side effect though is that my phone counts more steps. When I'm sitting at my desk, I tend to take my watch off but keep my phone in my pocket -- so if I get up to go to someone else's desk, bathroom or get coffee, my phone counts those steps whereas before I had the watch, I'd often take my phone out and then forget it on my desk when I did those things.
The Google Authenticator app is almost useful on it, but it generally only works if I've recently opened it on my phone. I rarely have to use it more than once in day, so I just use my phone.
Weather is useful. Oh, I also use Stocard to manually enter loyalty numbers at a gas pump. I've never tried using in store.
It's kind of neat for controlling Google Music whether I'm listening with bluetooth or casting to my living room stereo, but not something I use regularly nor would miss if it didn't exist.
I don't really use any other apps on it. I had to block quite a few notifications of random things -- it seems everyone thinks their app notifications are really important and should show up my on wrist.
People find it a combination of fascinating/impressive/weird that I can pull up a live HD view of my baby camera (via TinyCam connected to a Foscam HD IP camera). I don't find that to be a useful feature so don't do it other than when my wife asks me to show someone.
So I know there's a lot of negativity here about 'smart' watches, but overall I'm pretty happy with it and really have no big complaints. It's got a couple handy functions vs a normal watch. It costs within the same ballpark as what I was going to spend on a watch anyway (I'm not a watch guy). It looks like a regular watch (a few times I've had someone see me activate it and say something to the effect of "oh, it's a smart watch! I was wondering how you could tell time on that blank black face".
[0] http://consumer.huawei.com/en/wearables/huawei-watch/index.h...