Comment by sanoli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanoli | Hacker News Reader

I'll bet 5 bucks with someone here that it will flop (as in, won't become a regular product). My reasons for winning the bet:

-Although it looks great, it doesn't look like a great watch, it just looks like a beautiful Apple product. The thing is, on this specific product, as opposed to all their other products, Apple is competing with an established design lineage that goes back for decades, and wristwatches have always been about good taste and good design, so the competition on the aesthetics front is not so easy for Apple as it was on their other products (meaning computer hardware/software makers suck tremendously in regards to design, but watchmakers are champions of it).

-Extending on previous reason: it's as if Apple decided to go the eyeglass route and take on Google. Easy, because Glass is downright ugly and too geeky. So Apple makes its own beautiful glass, which is still a little geeky, and then they have to compete with Ray-Ban, Gucci, Prada, wathever.

-Short battery life sucks for a wristwatch.

-People already have the functionality on the iPhone, and the iPhone is already pretty portable.

-Short battery life sucks a lot for a wristwatch, come to think of it.

edit: formatting.

You might want to define "flop" and specify a timeframe if you're offering a bet like this

Some suggestions:

* will sell less than x units in the y months after it becomes available

* is discontinued within y months

* will not make it to version n

* will bring in less than $x revenue/profit in [timeframe]

* will lose its link at the top of the apple website within y months

It's also hard to tell what Apple's internal expectations are. They may expect to only sell 100, or they may be expecting to sell 100 million. My guess is it's a "feeler" product to guage demand while they work on v2

Is apple trying to sell this to people that already wear a watch?

Tim cook knows that younger generations dont care about wearing a watch because the time is on their phone. They want a product that convinces people that have NEVER worn a watch that they want something on their wrist...

I think this is going to be explosively successful.

Of course the sheer fact that you will actually be able to BUY an apple watch will be great for its success (see: every android watch perpetually being unavailable when they launch)

High status individuals will probably view this as a toy for the 'plebs'. Of course they might buy one because of a passing interest, but in order to impress their investment banker buddies, they'll still go for Patek Philippe, IWC, Audemar Piguet etc.

I also don't think that the Apple watch will convince 'normal' people to suddenly start buying watches again. Why on earth do you need this if you already have an smart phone? Maybe as some kind of mini iPod? If you remember the gimmicky 'smart watches' of the 80's and 90's, everything they offered has been solved by smart phones a thousand times. Calendar, birthday reminders, calculator, moon phases and so on. What does the Apple watch bring to the table compared to an iPhone? The only thing the Apple watch might be somewhat useful for is as an unreliable sports / health sensor for people who don't want to buy into Polar or Garmin's ecosystem.

To me, the thing looks entirely ridiculous. Sending your heart beat? What a fucking gimmick. Having to recharge a watch every other day? Are you kidding me?

A lot of people will still buy it. Apple is good at marketing. But this won't be a new iPhone success story.

Forgot to add: check out Apple's 80s clothing line. Probably looked way better than clothes from Microsoft.

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