Apple says it spent three years trying to bring Apple Watch to Android
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
Edit: Sounds like it was about privacy concerns, so probably something like there not being a completely foolproof way of preventing a third party from grabbing health data from the android app.
The claim would hold up even if it were a lie. "We concluded that Androids API wasn't compatible with the Apple Watch". Not a lie, but obviously still a complete lie.
> and I’m sure they’d love to increase Watch revenue by addressing the other half of the duopoly.
What they would love way _more_ is lock-in. You want this new shiny? It's only in the Apple ecosystem.
What Apple could do instead to get around this would be to make the watch be 100% standalone. I don’t think that’s as easy as it sounds though.
Look at something like Active Directory that is in theory ldap.
Do you really want to mix AD and open LDAP? You can, and it's a massive pain in the ass. Now you have apple iWatch apps talking to android. Where does apple maintain the translation layer? Does google/samsung take a "fuck off" stance and lock them out? What does the user experience look like when the "bug" in the app is on android and your CALLING apple for support...
I think that last bit is the limit that folks dont really think about. You can call apple, show up at store and they are going to try to fix your issue... when your random android device breaks who do you call?
"the technical limitations" are "we cant control android" and "does not fit our customer support philosophy"
Sure apple could have likely brought the baseline functionality of Apple watch to Android, however apps would have likely been much much more complicated, and are a key part of apple watch.
As for issues with the Garmin ecosystem, that's totally irrelevant. The basic fact is that nothing is stopping third-party smartwatch vendors from building good integration with Android phones. Garmin is just one example. Others such as Suunto and Coros have done the same thing. There are no significant technical obstacles.
If anyone involved in it could explain to me why they chose to force an OO language on people on a platform where some targets have so little memory that you’ll find yourself cutting lines of code to save memory used by the code itself, not even when it’s executing, thus throwing away a bunch of bytes supporting objects when there’s not enough space to even really take advantage of inheritance—I’d love to know the story. It’s such a weird choice.
So, Garmin may be bad but at least they are a lot cheaper and work with more things. At any given price point, they are a lot better as sports watches too.
Anyway, I stopped caring because there is no real compelling use case for a smartwatch, my next one will be a sport watch from Garmin or another competitor. Problem solved.
it's hard to believe anyone buys an iphone to get access to the watch, but if your watch is easier to use than your phone the incentive could run the other way
I've personally considered making my next phone an iphone just to get a watch (though I've so far avoided doing so out of distaste for the iphone). I've seen other people on the internet claim that they have.
One particularly anticompetitive and anticonsumer action that Apple has taken is locking down the iPhone API for replying to text messages. Android devices allow third-party smartwatches to both display and respond to text messages. Consumers can pair a third-party smartwatch with an iPhone and read text messages but they aren't allowed to reply. There is no legitimate reason for this artificial limitation beyond product tying.
I don't see how they could have done it without significant co-operation from the Android OS team far deeper than even two allied companies are typically able to communicate. The other alternative would have been to design a totally different piece of hardware that operates according to the Android OS expectations but that's hardly "bringing Apple Watch to Android".
Again, there exists a totally different hardware product Apple could build for Android that runs on Android OS expectations but it wouldn't be an Apple Watch.
The DOJ is going to argue about the Apple Watch being a lock-in? Isn't that like telling Toyota, you need to make engines for Ford cause theirs suck... Hey Tesla you need to make batteries For ford cause theirs suck.
I dont think there is a real case here. I think this is going to be a big fat L for the DOJ. I think at that point in time the US will have the ability to say other countries actions around apple are anti free market/trade.
This is political theater at its finest.
I accidentally bought a large inventory of toner during a sale, and it's really cost prohibitive for me to buy a new printer as a result.
My comments might be a joke, but they're about as rigorous as the claims in the DoJ complaint. They invent a "performance smartphone market" and then claim Google is a distant third to Samsung and Apple because of iMessage lock-in.
I suspect forcing Apple to allow this device to operate without an iPhone (even lacking features that might reasonably require an iPhone) could come out of this.
Does Sony have a monopoly?
Is that true? I’m pretty sure they will connect up to desktops and work fine there with no PlayStation around.
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/pair-dual...
>How to use DualSense wireless controllers with PC, Mac, Android, and iOS
No it doesn’t. You can use a PS5 controller on Windows and all current Apple operating systems.
Most likely neither are true for Sony but even if it is, it should be self apparent that distorting the smartphone market, or even the iPhone market, devices which are almost essential parts of modern day living can cause orders of magnitude greater harm than anything Sony could do in the game console market, which is much smaller, much narrower, and far less important.
And all this ignores that the DoJ's filing is about antitrust issues beyond just monopoly issues.
again, seems like half these threads are ideologue android fanboys who think there’s not a file browser or think you can’t sideload an app but are hellbent on banning the thing they don’t understand anyway.
Ok, so maybe it means no app store, but general rx/tx between an Android & Apple Watch is far from a difficult task, if Apple wanted that.
They don't and that is the problem
Can anyone who uses or has tried to use recent "watch" style products from Google/Fitbit provide anecdotes on this claim?
I was a Fitbit user from the day the initial fitbit went on sale for preorder. I used pretty much every 'flagship' fitbit since then until Google bought them. Ever since Google took over the Fitbit product got worse and worse. I decided a year ago I needed out when they got rid of the communities favorite feature, challenges. I'm pretty sure when I finally packed my fitbit away I had logged more days of usage then anyone else.
I started exploring what the other options were but was not able to even consider the apple watch because I do prefer android to ios. If it had supported android I'd have potentially gotten one though. Anyway as apple placed themselves out of the running I explored other options and decided Garmin had the best offerings. The biggest issue there though was they had way too many models and way too many versions of each model and little help to figure out which one is the best for you beyond super high level titles like "runner". That said I ended up settling on the Fenix series and after a year of use I can say I'm quite happy with it!
When I upgraded my phone this past fall to the latest Pixel Google actually was giving away free Pixel watch 2's with every purchase so I did wear a pixel watch for a couple of weeks to test it out. It was.. not great... especially the battery which was supposedly improved from the pixel watch 1.
Anyway, yes, I do agree with the statement that Google hasn't created something good enough, but I don't think they've actually tried. Like other hardware they've bought (nest) they just let it die. Garmin needs some major marketing help, but I do feel like they got a great thing going over there.
However, given your deep experience with Fitbit / Google's offerings and careful consideration of Garmin's as well, I'm curious: What do you think of the merit of suing Apple for antitrust for Apple Watch not supporting at least some set of Android devices?
When I bought the 8 I got a "free" Pixel Watch 2 with the purchase. I have not owned an Apple Watch, but my wife has an older model.
They do have Fitbit integration and it works pretty well for tracking walks, jogs, and cycling. I don't use it religiously and I'm not an exercise maniac.
The watch is nice and very functional. My biggest complaint is the battery life is really bad. I have to charge it daily -- I usually only wear it during the day and charge overnight. It'll charge pretty quickly 1-2hr but I don't care enough to do it.
It looks decent and works well enough to manage notifications and take calls when I can't grab my phone. The normal functions are on par with my wife's (older model) Apple watch.
I think if I was a serious fitness and outdoor activity kind of person I would buy a Garmin. I didn't do an in-depth comparison of the watches because I only use the base functionality of fitness tracking watches (my previous smart watch was a Withings) so it's entirely possible a new Apple watch offers some great feature I'm not aware of or wouldn't personally use.
That's my personal experience with the Pixel Watch 2. It's fine for my use case, but the battery life truly is bad.
Couldn't Apple also make a 1st amendment argument that the government can't force them to "speak" something (make iPhone work with Android)?
Also, couldn't Apple make a first amendment argument?
I agree that government forcing interoperability in this way is pretty concerning. Maybe Apple is an exception (arguable, I don't believe it, but not preposterous).
> Apple’s smartwatch—Apple Watch—is only compatible with the iPhone. So, if Apple can steer a user towards buying an Apple Watch, it becomes more costly for that user to purchase a different kind of smartphone
> Apple uses its control of the iPhone, including its technical and contractual control of critical APIs, to degrade the functionality of third-party cross-platform smartwatches
Apple makes the only functional smart watch.
Fossil got fucked over and left. Google did nothing with Fitbit (dead). Samsung as a product excites no one (I own a Samsung phone, I dont want a Samsung watch).
Printer ink? Cpu sockets? Are we going to compel apple to support intel chips again? Should Intel and AMD be forced to support old ram standards cause you happen to want to use that particular combination.
I dont think the DOJ has good enough lawyers to win this very tenuous argument. Im not even sure if they should. There are much better arguments to make both on merit and cause.
I don’t want their shitty UI with underpowered hardware, I want to use my phone
Here is some of what the DoJ actually says about the Apple Watch:
> Apple's smartwatch Apple Watch is only compatible with the iPhone. So, ifApple can steer a user towards buying an Apple Watch, it becomes more costly for that user to purchase a different kind of smartphone because doing so requires the user to abandon their costly Apple Watch and purchase a new , Android -compatible smartwatch
> By contrast , cross-platform smartwatches can reduce iPhone users dependence on Apple's proprietary hardware and software . Ifa user purchases a third -party smartwatch that is compatible with the iPhone and other smartphones , they can switch from the iPhone to another smartphone (or vice versa ) by simply downloading the companion app on their new phone and connecting to their smartwatch via Bluetooth.
> Apple uses its control of the iPhone, including its technical and contractual control of critical APIs , to degrade the functionality of third-party cross-platform smartwatches in at least three significant ways : First, Apple deprives iPhone users with third-party smartwatches of the ability to respond to notifications . Second, Apple inhibits third -party smartwatches from maintaining a reliable connection with the iPhone. And third, Apple undermines the performance of third-party smartwatches that connect directly with a cellular network.In doing so , Apple constrains user choice and crushes innovation that might help fill in the moat around Apple's smartphone monopoly
I'm so glad I stopped self identifying as an Apple fan many years ago because Apple fans' responses, first to the DMA and now to the DoJ's filing have clearly shown that Apple fans in their defense of Apple are willing to debase themselves publicly, pretending to be experts on things they know nothing about, without even doing the bare minimum of reading what they're actually talking about.
I am a happy user of basic Apple Watch but I am no fanboy to pretend they are something magical.
I understand some vertical integration is only possible with iOS devices but basic pairing for notifications etc should work with Android.
And it would have to be an issue that none of the other "works with android" wearables faced / managed to circumvent and an issue that google wasn't going to fix upstream.
I'm sure apple "tried" to bring the watch to android the same way a puppy tries to "drop it" before running away with something it knows it shouldn't have.
And working in BT consumer products, yes, android bluetooth is still a shitshow and device-dependent. Each radio vendor and android device has its own quirks that take time and resources to account for. Apple has had a very tight leash on what its devices do for bluetooth.
Very confusing. Maybe wait for a better source or for them to fix this article.
What I can see them doing is forcing Apple to allow the same level of access to APIs, sensors, etc. for competitors to be able to make their own integrations (e.g. publish the Watch protocols and allow third party apps to use them). Or to allow apps on the phone access to the same APIs, like allowing Tile to use the same APIs available to AirTags. There’s already precedent for that where Microsoft had to publish the SMB protocol so Samba could use it.
[1] (updated well after the date on the article): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68362334/united-states-...
1. Apple products work very well with one another
2. Apple products don't work very well (or at all) with non-Apple products
I would propose that these are both necessary entailments of the same principle, whose articulation we owe to, of all people, Martin Heidegger, the early-twentieth-century German phenomenologist. In _The Question Concerning Technology_ he called this 'referral', and it's present in all forms of tech, and the degree of referral increases with the complexity of the tech. For example, a fountain pen 'refers' to an inkwell. The more efficiently the fountain pen fits the inkwell -- the less _waste_ there is in the design of the inkwell and the pen -- the _less likely_ it is that another pen can use the same inkwell. (This is my example, not Heidegger's; also, I'm not sure if he noticed that referral increases with complexity -- it's been a couple decades since I read the QCT.)
Designs that optimize for interchangeability and multi-part sourcing are _intrinsically wasteful_ -- for example, your Electron app runs slowly because it uses several elaborate engines (Blink, V8) that in turn rely on protocols that are also in some sense wasteful (they aren't binary; they aren't protobufs, etc.).
Now, wasteful doesn't mean _bad_, but I propose that in some high-complexity fields where the envelope is being aggressively pushed (e.g. creating new market categories, like 'biometric, account-interlinked, phone-finding, app-running smartwatch'[^1]) it may be a tradeoff that is rejected by the market.
Further thinking:
Suppose that complexity necessarily increases over time (the Complexity Ratchet -- a persuasive theory I tend to endorse.) If this implies that Referral is always increasing, and does this imply that we are moving asymptotically towards a point where the amount of 'waste' necessary for competition is simply incompatible with the requirements of what is being engineered? This would imply that there is a level of technological complexity after which we lose the substantial benefits of free markets, as competition becomes impossible. I need to think about this more.
[^1] Yes, I know Fitbit got to 'smartwatch' first, but I'd argue that the Apple Watch is a tremendous advance over Fitbit, which is why they are preferred.
It seems adjacent to my thinking of who (and under what authority) can tell a company that they need to dedicate their resources to work on something they don't want to? In this case, the outcome would be the DOJ basically forcing Apple to use it's resources to help Samsung/Google. Apple certainly has the resources to do this, but it feels like there's a missing logical bridge here and that it sets a precedent that is based somewhat just on the current zeitgeist.
I acknowledge this could just be my interpretation of everything, and that if there's political will and support for action to be taken, then so it goes.
1: https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1770870612690358367
The DoJ could choose something with teeth but that would require actually wanting to regulate monopolies.
* Send high-def photos to other phones
* Allow full access to NFC
* Give same API access that Apple Watch uses to it's competitors
* Reverse course on the malicious compliance for EU, instead implement faithfully in the spirit of the law, and make those changes global
Instead they'll choose suicide; since Apple is unlikely to do any of that, it's time to break Apple up: Desktop Computers, Mobile Phones, Mobile Payments, Wearables, and software applications division (like iMessage and other things).
The DOJ views this as a way to deter iPhone users from switching phones. To do so they would need to buy a new watch.
They reference an Apple VP who wrote Apple Watches, "may prevent iPhone customers from switching.”
Fitbits were very popular, is this a fair characterization that lack of comparative first party hardware in the Android ecosystem demonstrates Apple Watch's limitation to Apple is not an anti-competitive play?
It's probably something that got brought up occasionally, maybe even some exploration was done to see what it would take to port stuff across.
My feeling is that the business case just wasn't there. Their customer base is people that buy into the complete Apple Experience. Not being able to control the OS-level removes a lot of that control, and the inevitable friction issues that result may tarnish the experience.
It's like: Could the French Laundry offer takeout / to-go? Sure. Do they want to? Ehh..
The goal is to welcome people into the Fold, not just sell them a watch. They want them to have an iPhone, so that they then use iCloud and buy apps / videos / subscriptions in the Apple universe.