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Comment by napoleoncomplex | Hacker News Reader

It's surprising to see it so early, but they probably see the writing on the wall. Once Android Wear and Apple wearables start rolling out, it's going to be a slaughter out there.

Apple and Nike teaming up for the iWatch launch is probably a safe bet now too.

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> Once Android Wear and Apple wearables start rolling out, it's going to be a slaughter out there.

For Nike, its already a slaughter -- FitBit has the lion's share of the market for activity trackers, Nike was in third well behind Jawbone UP. [1]

[1] http://mobihealthnews.com/28825/fitbit-jawbone-nike-had-97-p...

Those are some interesting stats, since amongst runner circles (at least here in DC), Garmins are the most popular by far.

Could they be classifying these devices differently?

I think activity trackers are classified slightly different from the GPS watch market you're perceiving Garmin to dominate. DCRainmaker says Garmin's first activity monitor device was first released in early 2014.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/01/vivofit-activity-monitors...

from what i've seen of the fitness tracker market, the customers buying these aren't typically athletes, they're dieters. People buying devices to track their workouts are a smaller market than people buying wristbands to track their steps over the course of a workday. Fitbit is for people who want a record of the fact that they took the stairs instead of the elevator every day this week.

Fitbit has absolutely nailed the user experience. It's incredibly simple. The battery lasts forever. Plus they've found the perfect level of gamification to make the thing a viral hit. In my social circle, at the very least, the thing has basically taken over. Everyone has one. Everyone is pushing it on their friends because they want to compete against them too.

They have a really nice business going. I have to believe that is miles ahead of what Garmin is doing (which is definitely a different type of tracking).

My fiancee is a runner and I recently purchased her a Garmin GPS watch as a gift. I had originally planned to buy a FitBit, but they're just not meant for the same thing as the Garmin watch. The Garmin is useful when you are actually running to figure out your pace, distance, etc. The FitBit is more of a logging device and you don't really look at it while running. The FitBit doesn't have a screen, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a GPS.

Possibly this http://fellrnr.com/wiki/GPS_Accuracy

It seems Garmin is more accurate.

I saw it on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/236lqy/gps_...

Interesting to note that Tim Cook is on the Nike board, while iOS8 is rumored to feature a new "healthbook" type app, plus all those iWatch rumors.

Worth mentioning too that Nike has several job openings in PDX for Android engineers to work on Nike+, so clearly they're looking to shed their Apple exclusivity thus far.

Or perhaps their website hasn't kept up with the restructuring? On another note, why are these reports saying the engineers were "fired"? It's one thing to be let go when a project was discontinued but nobody wants the stigma of being fired on their record.

Unfortunetly a lot of people slopply use fired as an exact synonym for redundancy or layoffs Its not!

One would have hoped that a suposedly jounalistic endevour would use correct language for fear of beiing sued for "professional slander"

How certain is everyone that Apple will launch a wearable? I just don't see it personally.

Right now wearables are in a pre iPhone era. I guess people are waiting for an iWatch, let's see which company delivers.

It's certain, they're working on it, and have hired some of the best people in the world for things like skin sensors (blood glucose, etc).

I can see iWatches as a big market for a startup, or add-on for Nike - but not for Apple. The profits can't move their meter.

The problem is input: Apple solved it for phones (touch screen). They tried voice-recog for shuffle iPod, but dropped it in the next iteration. If they really are making a mass-market iWatch, I think they must have solved this problem in some other way. (Glass solves it, so maybe it won't be a watch...)

I find it interesting that voice-reco is a primary input mechanism for both the Amazon Fire TV and Amazon's scanner gadget for their Fresh grocery delivery service. The Fire TV is not on battery power, so it's not surprising there. But the scanner wand gadget presumably doesn't have much of a CPU in it, nor does it rely on a nearby smartphone.

Yes, they claim their voice reco "really works" - I don't find it a credible claim... except that, when you have a confined univese of possible matches (e.g. grocery items), it doesn't so much have to recognise the word, as distinguish between the known candidates. For example, just counting the number of syllables can narrows it down (even identif it: yif expecting a digit, only "7" has two). And no verbs etc.

Isn't the scanner online (so it can tell amazon what you ordered)? If so, I expect it uses servers, like siri and google voice. (Also processors are pretty small these days: the CPU in a phone takes up dramatically less space than the display or battery).

They can back the voice recognition with mechanical Turk. If the recognizer has a lower confidence than desired they just ship the sample to a human.

They may have scrubbed voice recognition in anticipation of an iWatch-like product.

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