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Comment by cnbuff410 | Hacker News Reader

I think there are two things Apple did wrong here

1. They have customized size and band, while not the shape. I for one love round shape and hate the square shape, and I believe I'm not the only one with this preference.

2. They emphasized too much on the interaction with watch. IMO, watch is supposed to notify you new things, have you glance over it and do some quick responding. That's it. User should not use watch in the same way they use phone.

In Apple watch's demo, they have too much interaction showing there and the information on one screen is sometimes crowded. That's not a good sign.

I do like the new interaction pattern they introduced there though. Quite innovative IMO.

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> User should not use watch in the same way they use phone.

Nonsense. Would you have said the same thing about people using phones only to talk when the iPhone came out? Not an Apple enthusiast, but I'm impressed with their efforts in constantly trying to redefine how we use "established" products.

Not impressed by what is shown of the Apple Watch, by the way.

> Nonsense.

I entirely disagree. I would hate to use a tiny watch the same way I use a phone. Input is dramatically more constrained and expecting to use it the same way seems silly to me.

It's going to remain a fundamental problem for the smart watch market: watches are primarily fashion items, and every single person has an often quite different preference from the next person. I have a very specific style of watch I like to wear, and there's zero chance Apple or Samsung is just going to happen to make that style.

That said, I'm sure they can sell millions of watches per year. It's just not going to move the needle on their $170 billion in sales.

I think even now, the smart watch market is very, very, very early. As in, these products are ten years too early, at least. The technology needs to get so small, the watch stays primarily what it will always be about: fashion, and the technology becomes so small, cheap, and hidden away you don't notice that first and it doesn't get in the way of the primary role of a watch.

>> "watches are primarily fashion items, and every single person has an often quite different preference from the next person. I have a very specific style of watch I like to wear, and there's zero chance Apple or Samsung is just going to happen to make that style."

I think it's important to remember than most people under around 30 years old do not wear a wrist watch. So they probably don't have a specific strap or face style they like. They want something cool something that makes it easier to take selfies or send stuff to Facebook.

I think that we will look back on this like the first iPhone. Very cool but missing lots of obvious features. If they can sell enough of them they can afford to push the research to make them smaller, faster, and better and in a few years we'll have the equivalent of the iPhone 4 which is when I think the iPhone finally nailed it. But to get there you have to start somewhere. I think this is the right place to start. It's good enough, it's better than what's out there, and lots of people will buy it.

customizing shape (round, oval, square) would make app development incredibly painful -- you'd probably have to design one UI per

>> "IMO, watch is supposed to notify you new things, have you glance over it and do some quick responding. That's it. User should not use watch in the same way they use phone."

Not enough people will pay several hundred dollars for that. I'm a geek and heavy smartphone user and I wouldn't pay $50 just to get notifications on my wrist. It needs to do more or there's only a small market.

yup. I keep my phone on vibrate in my pocket; the fundamental question they have to answer is why the hell do I need to pay $400 just to get notifications on my wrist? I presume the answer is look at all this cool stuff too! fitness / ui tracking, quick interactions, etc

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