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Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me or the iWatch "looks" really ugly, at least when compared with Moto 360 which looks beautiful. iWatch may win out on functionality and user experience etc., but it just looks funky.

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There is something really weird to me about Apple arriving at almost the same overall design as Samsung after Samsung:

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--L8XBEzVA...

http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/Watches/Samsung...

Especially with the Moto 360 already out there and the LG G Watch R coming later this year:

http://mashable.com/2014/09/08/lg-g-watch-r-hands-on/

Also very conspicuous that Apple made no mention of battery life, which is the achilles heel of all the current Android Wear devices.

I was about to comment the exact same thing. Perhaps it looks better in person, but honestly I find it weirdly jarring and just wrong --I never thought I would feel such distaste for a millennial Apple device. It's a shame: if it looked like the Moto 360 (except with a fully-round screen), it would have been quite something...

But then de gustibus non est disputandum, so please don't flame me if you disagree!

(PD: Also it requires an iPhone to work at all?!?? Really?? That's just sad...)

Maybe Motorola beat Apple to the PTO with a design patent for a circle.

Their patent portfolio is that ridiculous, so I wouldn't be surprised. I bet Motorola also holds the patent for "centering stuff" --hence the strangely off-centered everything.

Apple could argue that a circle is just very rounded corners, so they hold the older patent.

The crazy part is the Gold 'Edition' Version. It's not like a Swiss watch, which is sold to be passed on to new generations, since your children won't be happy to get such outdated tech. What will they do with old Gold versions? Smelt them?

It's about short term profits to cash in on the hype. I wouldn't be surprised several iterations of the Apple Watch down the line when they abandon the gold edition altogether once the novelty of the product decreases and stays constant.

makes perfect sense to me. People wear watches these days for 1. fashion 2. status symbol (see omega, longines etc)

this just covers the status symbol portion of the market

Regarding the watch to be 'passed on to new generations', this is well worth reading:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/11/luxury_branding_the_f...

Cutting and insightful. Thanks for linking it.

Thanks! Great insight into how watch marketing works...

Maybe, actually. Return your old gold watch when you upgrade, and get some credit toward the new one. I think they already do this with other Apple devices.

https://www.apple.com/recycling/gift-card/

Doesn't matter. Before we know every other person will now wear a watch.

I had this cynical feel to practically every Apple product released in the past. This time I am resigned to it.

Matter of taste. I like them, despite never having owned an Apple product.

I agree. I think it looks pretty nice, not amazing but not ugly... just pretty nice.

    iWatch may win out on functionality and user experience etc.,
    but it just looks funky.

As Gruber pointed out, "Everyone else has gone skeuomorphic." I think he makes a terrible point since there are a severely limited set of possibilities for putting a small screen on your wrist and since existing watches have more than exhausted those possibilities.

I agree about the Moto-360: whatever its faults, it looks nice. I understand that the watch on my wrist right now is round because of the sweep of the dials, but it's also pleasant looking. What I find exciting about the Android side of the equation is that [in a couple of years] we'll probably have a crazy range of watches from which to select. Grab a Tag Heuer Android watch with replaceable innards or maybe a few cheap Fossils for variety.

> a Tag Heuer Android watch with replaceable innards

Yeah I definitely do want that. Would pay in the $1K range for a Tag quartz, if they could somehow keep an automatic movement in there...

Can't wait to see what happens when the watch companies adopt tech rather than the tech companies adopting watches.

Yeah — I usually agree with Gruber, but I think round is just a better shape for something that's meant to be worn. Jewelry is generally round as well.

I have seen it through a techcrunch tweet with capital "it's beautiful". When the picture of the iwatch showed up I was shocked. Never expected such an ugly design.

I agree. I think the appearance of the watch is more important than the UX. You might interact with it for 10 minutes out of a day, but it'll be on your wrist for the whole day. The utility of the watch has long passed from telling the time to being a fashion accessory.

Does not look good to me, looks a bit like the first-gen iPhone.

I'll probably wait to see what they release next year.

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