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Comment by theg2 | Hacker News Reader

$350 and not out until "early 2015"

Dead in the water. That's insanely expensive and too late in the smartwatch market in my mind.

That exact comment has been said about every new Apple hardware product over the last 15 years.

There is no mass smartwatch market at the moment. There are some smartwatches that sells in very small amount to niche audience but there is no mass market and I doubt one will exist until the end of the year. It's like 2005 for smartphones - there were some smartphones in the market but they were pretty bad and definitely not for everyone.

There is no smartwatch market at the moment. Nothing out there save for the kickstarter release of the pebble has gained any positive buzz. If that continues then the 2015 release date won't matter. The price is another matter and may def. keep the watch from gaining any traction. Or it could play like the first ipod and iphone, with most everyone complaining about the price but sells well enough until price drops allow for ubiquity.

Which market? This might fail, but eveything else on the market is miserable too.

I'll take that bet: https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/509092715783401472

Also, I'm guessing that the "Edition" watches are going to sell for 10x that. And there'll be a months-long wait to get one.

It's definitely not too late, because there is not a single smartwatch on the market right now that has reached deep adoption. The Moto 360 has serious battery concerns and the Pebble Steel (the best smartwatch available right now IMHO) runs a fairly limited OS (which, on the plus side, gives it fantastic battery life).

Agreed. I just don't see why anyone would buy an iPod when the Rio Pearl is half the price and stores more music.

You might be right, but do bear in mind that almost exactly the same thing was said about the iPhone.

I have to imagine that if third-party apps make good use of the features and interface, it'll be quite a useful device to have. The fact that you can make NFC payments with it is cool.

>> You might be right, but do bear in mind that almost exactly the same thing was said about the iPhone.

But the difference is that the original iPhone was vastly better than everything else on the market in 2007/2008. It took a few years before we saw real parity from its competitors.

This Apple Watch appears to be a little bit better than its current crop of competitors, not vastly better.

NFC payments are awesome. Can't wait to try it.

That was easily the most important part of the announcement for me as well. Hopefully it's open and other platforms can take part as well. We all knew that we needed a push from someone like Apple to make it happen and take it mainstream.

There was a prominent PayWave logo on the terminal in the demo video - it's definitely using the current NFC standard already supported by Android phones.

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