Comment by clarky07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clarky07 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is so negative here. It sounds to me like a lot of people are making judgements without personal experience. I'll admit, I thought some of the same things before I got a pebble (which I originally bought just for development).

Having notifications on your wrist is actually really great. Being able to decide if that buzz is important now or not is actually useful, and it absolutely isn't more detrimental to being with people and having conversations.

Perhaps you don't get your phone out for every buzz, but you probably do at least check it most of the time when someone is calling you. Seeing who it is on your wrist and deciding if it can wait is much faster, more seamless, and less of an intrusion.

It may not be worth as much as this costs, certainly for a lot of people, but it absolutely is a great feature. The Apple Watch is also far more powerful than the pebble, and it looks much better too (to be fair the steel pebbles don't look bad, the original though...). It will be interesting to see if there is ANOTHER killer app in addition to the notifications that the more power enables.

For you, perhaps.

For me, I feel like I need fewer notifications in my life. The more I can batch tasks together the more time I can spend in deep, interrupted though. The trend towards being more connected more often has benefits but drawbacks as well.

The key element here is that the short glance allows the wearer to decide whether or not to act upon a notification.

I open my phone to do one thing, and end up doing something else -- for twenty minutes. I'm looking forward to the watch as a way to minimize my phone usage and simplify my interactions.

Chopping up the interruptions and making them shorter does not reduce the context change and mental swapping load.

This is the basic HCI problem everyone is ignoring about watches. It doesn't make the problem better -- it may even make it worse.

The key to managing your notifications better is... wait for it... not looking at your phone constantly.

Fair point.

I think when it comes to getting side-tracked, it's partly to do with the current 'pull' model of going into the phone for information, vs a 'push' model of the information coming to you. Though, as you point out, either is distracting and self-discipline is the real answer to staying focused.

The critical thing there will be managing what notifications you get, and which you silence. This is why iOS 8 made such a big change in the way notification permissions are handled.

There might also be a future where all of our devices are sentient enough to imply when we don't want to be disturbed... but that might also have it's own drawbacks. Everything's a trade-off I guess, not just in Engineering.

I think the Apple watch is already that advanced. I don't buy one, and therefore it's trained to not bother me. ;)

I own three smart watches, notifications are fine. And because Apple is Apple, millions more people will line up and get to see how somewhat useful they are.

It does seem in this case that a large amount of the value Apple is delivering with this product is on the "Apple as a lifestyle brand" side, not from a technological or design insight, or even (subjective, I know) from a fashion perspective.

I suspect that a lot of what will be going on is: "I'm an upper middle class or above person who likes/can afford an Apple talisman" tribal thing. Kind of like buying $5 coffee and sitting browsing the web on a MacBook Air. (Not casting shade: I have been know to do that)

But it'll be really cool if this new large pool of wearable users leads to the discovery of more killer apps.

As an educator, I can immediately think of a half-dozen small interactions/services/tools that I would employ if they did not distract me away from my primary tasks (or give the appearance that I am distracted, which is often just as detrimental).

Considering this, my gut says the real value of a wrist-bound device will be in the development of context & task-specific micro-utilities (rather than simply reducing the need to remove a phone from your pocket to check notifications).

So - maybe there won't be a 'killer app'; there will be a constellation of 'killer apps' that demonstrate value through the collective impact of their very small contributions to your life.

Not really, it's pretty obvious they are checking their watch to see if they have a notification. To me it's exactly the same as pulling your phone out since people have been using phones as watches for some time. It interrupts the conversation and it is rude.

Also it gives off the same negative signals as checking a regular watch when with company. In the same way that if you're sitting there having a conversation with someone and you're checking your (normal) watch it's telling me you're not paying attention and you have somewhere else to be.

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