Comment by mladenkovacevic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mladenkovacevic | Hacker News Reader

mladenkovacevic

Here's one thing I realized about the famous Apple "reality distortion field" with the release of this watch.

The reality distortion doesn't start with the consumer once the product is released. It starts within Apple while the product is being developed. I mean they really believed when they were building the Apple Watch "We are building a $350 device". Wheter you love the design or hate it, it's hard to deny the effort that went into designing this device, from getting the dimensions right, to the curvature of the screen and bezel camouflage to the bracelet selection. This reality distortion field only then gets transfered to the RIGHT customer who has no problem paying $350.

I still think it'll be a tough slog to get the watch through the early adopter curve and over the early majority hump simply because it has no compelling features as of yet, but that might change with a wider ecoaystem. As of right now, the main selling feature of this watch is the built in reality distortion field.

With the right offer though it might have an easier time. If you got the watch for $100 extra when upgrading your iPhone anyways that might be an easier pill to swallow than paying $350 outright. Whatever the offer may be, Apple needs to find the equivalent of the carrier subsidies which propelled smartphone adoption at the end of last decade.

TL'DR: What Apple realizes is that the way to sell their watch is to communicate to their customers that they want to wear the watch because they'll enjoy wearing it - no other reasons or features are needed. In fact many of the truly novel features (payment, identification, keyless entry...) will only scare away mainstream users. Just put in on their wrist first.. And show them the true functionality slowly and in stages.

Apple doesn't really sell early-adopter products. They sell to the early-majority segment, who then persuade the late majority eventually. [1]

You can tell because they don't do anything particularly novel. The early Mac innovations were taken from Xerox PARC. The first iPod came out 3 years after the first MP3 player. The first iPhone came out 6 years after the first smartphone. The Pebble was part of the YC 2011 class.

This is a smart approach. Apple lets other people pioneer a product space to figure out what works, and then use their immense design talent and their even more immense cash reserves to turn a good-but-geeky product into something that the bulk of the market will actually buy and use. And then they scoop up enormous amounts of money.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle

I don't really follow what you're saying. How is designing something to match its price point distorting reality?

Because the mark-up on the actual price of producing a product is inflated due to the reality distortion field. Apple is not in the business of selling a collection of electrical conponents, silicon and labour. They are selling admission to the experience of owning an Apple product.

Apple superfans won't wear this watch because of some feature that makes their lives easier somehow. The first buyers will wear it because they enjoy wearing it from a physical and psychological standpoint.

I'm not sure your follow up clarifies your point, but it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it.

Are you saying that the only way Apple can sell their products for such a profit (over the raw cost of materials) is because of the Reality Distortion Field? We know that they've been working on this for years with all of the associated costs of designing and developing a product in that time.

No what I am saying is that the much talked about "reality distortion field" is nothing Apple specific. It's simply the ability of a company to charge a higher mark up due to premiumness of its brand.

People don't buy Mercedes cars because of the high tech in the cars (although that's a bonus). They but them because they're Mercedes cars.

In the same way people don't buy Rolexes to tell the time (although that's a bonus). They buy them because they want to wear a Rolex.

As easy as it is for some of the snobbier techies to dismiss Samsung's or LG's R&D I am pretty sure their smart watches didn't come out of thin air. They simply end up charging less for them because they never imagined them as premium products but rather utilities. They didn't start with a "reality distortion field".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com