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Comment by fillskills | Hacker News Reader

"Market Leader In A Category No One Really Asked For" -

Thats what I feel when I hear about any tech company launching a watch, be it Samsung or Apple. Maybe its just me, but since owning a smartphone, I feel I don't really need a watch. None I know wears a watch anymore. Werent watches one of the main things replaced by smartphones. Also, how many more screens can I handle? Laptops for work, tablets for browsing, smartphones for on the go tech.... and a smartwatch to do what exactly?

Maybe I am missing the whole point of smart watches. I am hoping its just not me.

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This is my experience going from watch, to smartphone, to smartwatch:

The phone replaced my watch because it completed the same task while also completing many more. Why bother with a watch (for me, at least, just another thing to remember) when the phone works just as well?

A phone is not a perfect replacement, however. I constantly have to pull it out of my pocket, input a code to unlock it for various tasks, etc.

My Android watch has replaced the action of pulling my phone out of my pocket and unlocking it for basic tasks. It tells me the time, lets me dismiss phone calls, can pause and play my music, take notes, remind me of things, and display texts--and I no longer have to fish around in my pocket for a phone that takes seconds to unlock and navigate through.

As the smartphone replaced a repetitive task (remembering to wear my watch), the smartwatch replaces another repetitive task (wrestling with a phone stuck in my pocket).

yeah...people somehow manage to justify buying anything that apple makes. And nothing wrong with that, just interesting observation.

Apple makes Android watches, now?

Exactly my experience as well. I got a smartwatch for a project and expected to hate it; I hate most gadgets. But it effectively made my phone more polite.

I've been around a while, and I've seen the "tech" industry evolve, or devolve depending on your perspective, into one that's entirely about fashion.

I guarantee that for most people who would buy a watch like this the actual functionality is probably so far removed from their minds it's a non-issue. The marketing doesn't say what the watch does, it fetishizes the laser-cut infinitely adjustable magnetic watch band with meticulous design to make you go, "Oooooooh."

We are so far from the days where tech reviews would contain a breakdown of the new instructions in the latest microprocessor. Devices are only tangentially about functionality and tech; people will buy this because carrying around a phone (that replaced the watch) was "so last year."

I think any attempt to debate the merits of the device on a functional level are misguided. This is a watch that you will have to take off and RECHARGE for pete's sake.

You nailed it - "This is a watch that you will have to take off and RECHARGE for pete's sake.". No tech-watch company has yet advertized what the major benefit of the watch really is.

Don't misunderstand me - This is a beautiful device. I will go check it out in the Apple store just to see if I am missing some major use case that can help improve my productivity in a significant way. Till then, its just another add-on device for me.

You are talking about tech for its own sake. The target market for this segment is vanishingly small.

But to address your point more directly. Do you already know how to make a wearable device of a similar size that offers all these features without having to recharge once a day, by "early 2015"? If you do, then I'm very sure you can find employment at Apple or one of its competitors.

Watches are fashion accessories first, and time pieces second. So no. And I wear a fossil watch 24/7 not sure if I want a apple watch, but it does look sexy.

> None I know wears a watch anymore.

You're taking functionality and fashion and grouping them together. Then you're dismissing one of the elements, functionality, and throwing out the other with it, fashion.

I wear a mechanical watch purely for fashion. The same way females wear rings in their ears. Ultimately, I don't think the first iteration of Apple Watch is going to supplant that, however it may in the future.

> The same way females wear rings in their ears.

That's an odd way of phrasing it. Are you a Ferrengi? Usually we call them women, not females.

No, it's not just you. I can't see using a smart watch. But (I realize this is an unpopular opinion), I don't care for smart phone either. Little tiny screen, slow button push typing, half assed internet with me _all the time. Not my thing at all. I finally got a Nexus 7 so I could have internet in my pocket for those times I really needed it. It sits collecting dust while I wear my laptops out.

It's funny to see the looks (especially being a web developer) when I take out my $15 dumb phone. Some people look like they think I'm one step above homeless. But I just don't have a use for a smart phone other than to make sure web apps display properly. I guess I like devices to do one thing and do it well. But I realize this is minority opinion.

"Werent watches one of the main things replaced by smartphones"

Weren't watches replaced by watches?

They started off in towers, then to rooms, then to tables, then to pockets and then to wrists. Is this not a similar evolution of computers?

Everything you described is actually called a "clock". Watches were the evolution from pocket to wrist, nothing more than that.

Which is exactly what is going on with the phone right now.

A watch is only to tell time. A phone is only to talk. Neither of these require a size bigger than "barely able to see easily. However smartphones have incorporated 'web browsing' (and analogues) into them, and they do have a size requirement that they can't get smaller than. The market has spoken, and all the vendors are bringing out larger phones with bigger screens. That functionality isn't something that can fit onto a wrist; not until we have sci-fi style holographic projectors, anyway.

It's about wearables not watches. Apple just hasn't totally abandoned skeuomorphism yet.

Apple has a pattern of doing things like this. They launch things, and you say to yourself "what problem is that solving? who's going to buy that?" Then they iterate on the design and functionality of the thing, and apps get developed for the specific device, and suddenly it makes perfect sense. iPhone 1 was ridiculously feature bare. iPad 1 had no real great apps, and was pretty feature bare as well. We all know how those both turned out. That's what I imagine will happen with this one. I'm looking to version 2 or 3 for when these things become amazing.

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