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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

The problem is there's no ecosystem and no added value.

The iPhone and iPad had apps, the iPod had podcasting and iTunes. WATCH has nothing equivalent. It seems to be a drastically cut-down iPhone you wear on your wrist, with a few haptic doodads added to create a USP.

It's aiming for a weird market that Apple has traditionally done well in - emotional spending and evangelism - but it's trying to cultivate desire by attempting to be explicitly fashionable, instead of offering 'magical' user benefits that lead indirectly to the perception of being fashionable. ('Show, don't tell.')

Obvious conclusion is that it's not a Jobsian coup like the last few revolutions were.

Maybe it could be with more thought about where it fits as a product, and what makes it unique. But currently 'small iOS wrist device for semi-fashionable people' seems like a challenging place to succeed in.

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On the contrary, the iPhone (and iPod Touch) launched without an app ecosystem. Instead of having third party apps, Apple pushed for developers to produce web apps for Mobile Safari. It wasn't until iOS 2.0 that an API was released and the App Store was launched. In that time, the sole way to load apps onto these devices was with a jailbreak.

Additionally, the iPod launched when the iTunes Store was in its nascency. In fact, iTunes wasn't released for Windows until a few years afterwards. It wasn't possible to load apps (small games) on the iPod until the release of the iPod video.

With the promise of an API at launch, there is more of an ecosystem in place than existed for the previous products you mentioned.

I realise Jobs needed a push to get to the open app system, and was originally against it - or at least for something that was more like the Widget system on OS X, and not so much like the Objective-C monster the App Store turned into.

But my point - which apparently no one understands here - is that the products were always conceived originally, from the top, as part of a strategy that included a stack of support services and interactions with a user community.

I'm not seeing that on offer here.

Of course WATCH does apps. That was always a given. But the App Store is saturated, and once devs have produced the obligatory new watch faces, fitness, dating and friend-finding apps, my guess is that the opportunities for doing something compelling, original and gotta-have-that are smaller than they were with the original iPhone.

There will be an exception, or maybe four or five. There will not be thousands of potential gotta-have-that apps to match those that are available in the iPhone/iPad app store.

Apple has always been one of the few tech companies that understands that you don't sell hardware, or software - you sell a complete package of unique and exclusive benefits that happens to run on a hardware device.

That worked for the original Mac, then the OS X Mac, then the iPod, then the iPhone, then the iPad. All had obvious user benefits that were so intuitively compelling they barely needed explanation, and which were enhanced and supported over time with software services that made the package even stronger.

I'd be interested to know what the downvoters on this thread believe is the equivalent user benefit and software support package for WATCH.

I don't believe 'It does apps too and there's even an API, so therefore there's an ecosystem' is the most insightful answer to that question, or that it's what users are looking for to persuade them this is a must-have device.

Think outside the box a bit. The watch is potentially a new input device, can simplify action and interaction (just look at the watch rather than pulling phone out of pocket)

It's gonna take some time to figure out the killer apps for this computing paradigm. There's nothing at all wrong with the Pebble, it's just that the apps to make it worthwhile don't really exist yet. Apple has enough dirty money to get other people to do the heavy lifting in that arena.

It has NFC for payments, and Apple has partners for that. In that instance, and in many others, it's leveraging partnerships and infrastructure established for the iPhone. Just as the iPad leveraged iPhone, which in turn leveraged iPod's iTunes. e.g. maps, siri, appstore, music/video suppliers.

Probably existing developers (knowing objective-C, libraries, OS; swift too) will end up being the most important resource...

But I think you're right that it's simply not a general-purpose device, like apple2e, mac, iphone or ipad. It's too limited. It's more like an ipod, appleTV, game console or kindle.

BTW: I hate the way apple fanboys downvote any comment that can in any way be interpreted as remotely critical of Apple or Apple products. It's more interesting to have a discussion. As it is, your first comment is so down-grayed, I can't actually read it.

NFC is still a solution looking for a problem.

It's the same issue really with EMV cards in the US, no one will install readers until there are cards, no one will issue cards until there are readers.

At the core of it, the physical card standard is 'good enough' for most people.

Apparently in Australia, half of card transaction < $100 are by NFC (in cards). So, there's demand for it.

Apple may have the market clout to drive adoption in the US. They have experience in getting partners together, to make new technology actually work. Yes, it may take time, and they may go niche by niche.

Perhaps I should have prefaced in the original post "In the US..."

But the first OSX versions were horribly buggy. Nobody wanted to upgrade. Real stability came by about 10.6 Snow Leopard.

"there's no ecosystem"

I think the 200 million iPhones are the ecosystem. I don't see an obvious point to the watch by itself - it seems like it's main "feature" is to expand what your iPhone can do.

The absolute most expensive iPhone is the 128GB iPhone 6 Plus - $950 w/o contract. But it's the highest-end phone in a world with millions of millionaires. This gives a way for iPhone customers to pay more to get more.

I think the watch is analogous to Google Glass. Glass is, essentially, an accessory. It adds a remote display, camera, and audio functions to an android phone. (It has bluetooth, not a cellular radio)

I think the Apple Watch is similar.

But Glass's full display makes it capable of being a standalone device (once the guts shrink enough).

Before long, a Watch can also be self-contained, technically, but remains limited by form-factor: tiny display. Unlike Glass, it must remain accessory... or so it seems.

But consider: the iPhone is primarily a consumption device. In many ways, it is predicated on many use-cases not requiring a full computer. Is it possible a Watch-size device will similarly turn out to cover many important uses? Obviously, you can use it as a phone. For music/video. To read txt messages/short emails. Casual games.

It's a real consumption device (unless Siri gets unrealistically good). Maybe many web-site functions (i.e. the actual use of the website, not actual current website) can be delivered via Watch: lookup opening hours; store locators; product list/price/specials. Perhaps Watch versions, as we now have Mobile versions - and of course, Watch App versions).

After getting powerful enough, smartwatches could be full "peer" devices in your Personal Area Network, though.

Rather than tethering the watch to your phone and having the watch just being treated as another phone peripheral, you could just as well do the opposite: have the phone tether to the watch to serve as e.g. a keyboard and secondary display.

There was no podcasting ecosystem before the iPod was released, and no significant app ecosystem before the iPhone.

It is called 'podcasting', after all.

Palm had a thriving app ecosystem. So did Psion. Even the TRS-80 Model 100 if you could view it as a precursor to the modern tablet.

define "thriving" because I find this hard to believe.

Sure for the Palm market - there were vendors making applications, people buying them, and people buying devices just to run those applications. At the time, you could subscribe to dead-tree magazines that had reviews, advertisements just for Palm devices and applications. The market was large enough to support many companies, and many people buying and selling software.

Even the TRS-80 Model 100 had it's own market for software that was thriving for about three years - complete with requisite magazine support.

...

My hunch is that the new generation of people who recently discovered the recent application ecosystems are shocked to find out that some slightly-older people remember when this same exciting feeling happened before - I would imagine all the way back to the late 1970's when you could put a computer together yourself and sell software out of your garage.

This is why I hedged with the word 'significant.' I completely agree that people were making and selling apps for mobile devices before the iPhone came along. Can we both agree that the ecosystem exploded in size and visibility to the general population only after the iPhone was released, though?

That's what happens when something becomes consumer focused rather than (essentially) B2B. Prices go way down, sales go way up. I paid $50 for a Palm app back in the day, and that same app would go for 99c today. That doesn't mean the Palm app marketplace was insignificant or unimportant. Smartphones wouldn't be here if their value wasn't proven with PDAs.

You're quite correct that the market is much broader now - not only are there more consumers, there's more developers.

But to me, this doesn't feel different - just larger.

Even the cycles seem to the same - with early adopters leading the way, the first wave of quick and dirty apps, then more polished apps, and then the tsunami of shovel-ware that kills the market for newcomers.

I appreciate the hint that I may be younger than you, but I was involved in the eco-systems around the Sinclair ZX81 and the Spectrum, and later on with DECUS, so I have a pretty good idea how this stuff works.

My point isn't whether or not there's an ecosystem, but whether or not there's a planned ecosystem which is deliberately designed to add value, and created as a conscious strategy - not just something that happens by accident.

I wish people here would stop thinking about technology and think more about the overall user experience - which is not about hardware or software or ecosystems, but about creating gotta-have-that experiences and life-changing tools.

So far I don't see WATCH doing that. It might, and there may be plans, and we'll all be surprised a year from now.

But so far, there's no evidence that Apple are thinking about WATCH in those terms. And that makes it different to previous launches.

Remember that the Internet wasn't as big as it is now, and not many people had access.

I remember there being a big market for these devices and apps back in the day.

I find the number of downvotes on your comment to be slightly depressing. It's one thing for readers here to disappear posts that are absurd, thoughtless, insulting, or spam, but this is just a person who apparently has a dissenting opinion and maybe slightly overstated the point. It's no reason to prevent everyone else from reading it.

Yeah I agree - I think people are overusing / abusing the downvoting thing too much. Although I believe pg himself said that you could use a downvote just if you disagree, the implementation of gradually fading out the text means that one lone dissenting voice can be shown as not being important.

Which leaves me in the obscure situation of upvoting comments I disagree with just because I think they shouldn't have been downvoted.

I don't understand. The apple watch does allow 3rd party apps.

They made mention of WatchKit in the keynote. It sure looked like there were third party apps on the devices demoed. (I think I saw a Path logo). It's not clear if these apps are sort of accessories that can be embedded in iOS Apps or watch specific apps.

Reading between the lines the impression I got is that the WatchKit API will let you define widgets that come with your app and that will be downloaded to the watch when the App is installed on the iPhone.

I think this shows there is an ecosystem- it's the App ecosystem and it's the most vibrant one out there. But it's not exactly the same (which may be the cause of the parents confusion)

Apple Watch augments your iPhone's capability and introduces novel use cases based on 'micro interactions' and ambient feedback. It's a consumption device. For now, it must be used with an existing iPhone. It will eventually become a fully independent and integrated device.

Regarding value.. imho, the next evolution of the technical maturity model for mobile will center around decision support. This is where I see wearables providing the most value, which may have significant impact to business process applications and sensor networks.

To the average consumer, this may mean having ambient access to specific economic information, transactional data or live media. It will become a part of your daily informata and utility / Internet usage.

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