Apple Watch Is and Isn’t
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
Now, you're stuck in an airpot and bored. You keep your phone in your pocket and stare at your watch with a 38mm screen. Can you imagine spending an hour or two interacting with and consuming content on this thing?
These watches deliver the information density of WAP feature phones with interactive models that are not much different (scroll wheel), plus panning and zooming on a tiny screen.
The people projecting the launch of the 2007 era iPhone as an industry defining moment that's going to kick off whole new app business models I think are extrapolating without thinking about it.
These devices are primarily best suited for sensors, and for information radiation tasks: notifying you of information and allowing quick response or dismissal.
But a 300Mah "smart" device with a 38mm screen being something you're going to spend a lot of time downloading apps and using "on the device itself" (and not on the iPhone) I think is too far of an extrapolation.
Maybe I'm wrong and this will be claim chowder thrown in my face in a few years, but to me, the trend towards bigger screens on phones is a perfectly example of why these watches will always be limited.
Humans are visual creatures, and a device that has the screen size and interactivity of a virtual tamagotchi is a fashion accessory toy, not something we will build our whole life around like mobile phones and tablets.
I don't expect to watch a movie on it, I just want it to look stylish and help me stay connected in a less douchey way. The fact that it may replace my Polar heart strap and watch when I'm working out (Hopefully it's more reliable than the Basis watch) is just icing on the cake.
I have a feeling there will be some interesting third party applications, off the top of my head it might be nice to know when my boss is nearby, perhaps based on strength of his phone's bluetooth signal.
At best I think Smartwatch apps will
just be secondary notification displays
for apps you're already buying and
putting on your phone.
But this is not the kind of story presented at the keynote. What they presented was intensive interaction with apps: dragging, panning, zooming, etc.
I think any usable watch app is going to have to be pretty simple and lightweight on the interactivity side.
I don't recall Apple pitching this as something you watch to play around with for a couple of hours at an airport with.
You're right, they didn't. But I'm hard pressed to figure out a great deal of apps for the watch other than what's pretty much going to be shipping with it. reddit mail notification? point to my car?
I dunno. It seems like there's a very limited ecosystem (read:business) to spending lots of effort making Apple Watch apps for exactly the reason you're stating.
The first thing I thought was, other than tic tac toe, what game could you possibly display on a display that small?
I also think, a watch like that is good first and foremost as a quick check on what going on regarding your phone in our pocket.
But for this usecase, I think the price point of this watch is a bit much. I would love to have my watch buzz when getting a new text on my phone. And with a quick glance I can see if it is important or not without having to take my phone out of my pocket. This would be neat. But I don't think I would spend 350 dollars for this convenience.
The modern smartphone is a huge compromise. It has to do everything but it has to fit in our pocket and run all day. It's basically a Swiss Army knife: sure, it does everything. But it doesn't do anything very well.
I think the trend toward larger phones is exactly why wearables will be big: If you can have the little and low-interaction things on your wrist, then that lets the phone change to be better for the tasks that remain for it. A bigger screen and a bigger battery are more appealing if the phone only comes out when you actually need a big screen, rather than just to check the time or to acknowledge a text.
But as a side effect, I think moving a bunch of watch-friendly things to a watch will let you make the phone bigger. That won't reduce total power usage, but it will increase power availability.
That said, Apple didn't compare Watch to the TV. They compared it to the original Mac.
Meanwhile, the mass market watch is something very different (and nearly extinct after the cell phone display accomplished the same goals).
So let's learn from two wildly successful watch brands in the 90s:
- The information density on the Apple Watch display more comparable to something like the Timex Ironman watches than a mechanical watch. Apple also implies their watch can 'take a lickin' with their sapphire display and completely encased motherboard design.
- The ability to customize the bands and face designs is in line with Swatch in the 90s. People will likely buy several band accessories the same way Swatch's customers bought multiple Swatches.
The only thing not mass market about the Apple Watch is it's price.
I'm guessing the low end of the product line will fill out the same way the iPhone did. They will keep all the tooling and production the same, but gradually reduce the price to $100 while they work out the software kinks.
But in the end, the product will be amazingly successful because it has the DNA of amazingly successful predecessors.
The iPhone's price did not drop over the years. The cheapest iPhone 6 you can buy today is $650. The original iPhone launched at $600 back in 2007.
EDIT: I'll eat my hat if Apple ever sells a Watch for $100.
Yes, some people figured out how to crack the SIM-lock, so they could use a different sim card and not activate the AT&T contract that you were supposed to activate when first connecting it to iTunes, but that's an edge case that doesn't change the fact that it was sold on contract.
The 650 dollar price for iphone 6 is OFF contract. So the iPhone price has significantly dropped over the years.
Is once enough to denote a trend? I'm willing to bet that Apple will release a cheaper option next year, but maintain the $350 "flagship".
So far there are 2 smart watches that have nailed the design the Moto 360 and the Apple Watch. The rest have a ways to go.
A smart watch has to function pretty well as a nice looking fashion accessory before it ever is going to do anything else useful.
This is a problem with circular displays. They naturally have quite a smaller area than the circumscribing square -- they're missing all four corners, every one of which can be used for a UI element. To compensate, the display just needs to be larger -- too large, in the case of the Moto 360, in my humble opinion.
1. You do not want it to extend along X axis too far toward the fingers, or it will interfere with moving your hand at the wrist.
2. You do not want to extend too far either way along the Y axis, or it will be too easy to accidentally hit things with it.
The point of the post above yours is that if a circle with diameter D is an acceptable size--it doesn't extend too far in the X or Y directions to interfere with your wrist or hit things--then a square of side D will generally also be acceptable. The square will give you more face area than the circle.
But the best quote for me is this one:
"In the future though I see a risk: a generational fracture. The old people, you and me, sticking to the good old mechanical watches and the young people sticking to digital watches - their comfort zone."
That said, if you buy a Garmin or similar heart tracker watch, they package it with a Heart Rate monitor transmitter you strap around your chest. Garmin would love to be able to cut costs and keep everything in one piece of hardware, but the prosumer crowd who buy this hardware for Triathlons etc would be furious if the product was inaccurate.
If Apple nails the HR sensor, I will be stoked. I have often wanted to have an entire days worth of HR data so I can make better guesses about my daily caloric burn rate.
Smart watches will take off. For all ages.
They're already in trouble. Astonishingly few people wear watches anymore. We're basically never more than a glance away from a time keeping device and display pretty much anywhere we are these days.
And then I realize I got rid of watches when I start carrying a phone around with a clock on it and have no interest in returning to wearing them at all. I got rid of them for a reason, and the burden of pulling my phone out of my pocket every once in a while isn't so bad that I feel the expense plus discomfort of any kind of watch is a good tradeoff.