Who the hell think that a watch that can't even function a day is an acceptable product? This just blows my mind. And yet, I'm pretty sure they are going to sell millions of them. I wouldn't want one if it was free.
You'll have your answer in a few days. You'll even be able to tell who these people are by looking at their wrists.
He said, the Apple Watch is as much a "watch" as the iPhone is a "phone".
I think the idea is that we are thinking about it all wrong. The "phone" functionality of an iPhone is just an app and is in fact one of the least used apps on the device.
The same line of thinking will probably start to explain the Apple Watch. It's actually a wearable computer with an app that tells the time.
When I got my first iPhone (after a Blackberry Curve), one thing I noticed: everything my Curve did, it did better than the iPhone. It was a better phone, it was better for email, it was better for texting. (Ok, it technically had "apps", but they were so bad I never used any).
But my iPhone did a million things that my Blackberry didn't do (via apps).
Was it a worse phone? Absolutely. Did I love it much, much more than I ever loved my Blackberry? Absolutely.
Don't think of this as a "watch."
[slight edit for clarity]
A pocket computer with a touch screen is a general computing device. But there's very little anyone can do with a watch-sized consumer product - especially if it lacks extras like really good fitness and health hardware.
I totally get the potential of haptic wearables, but WATCH seems like a 0.5 product with some eccentric design choices that's still on the wrong side of industrial practicality - not like a product with enough awesome to appeal outside the fan/early adopter crowd.
I'm sure Cook & Co are thinking of it as a beach head, not a finished battle. But even so - it has to entice a critical mass of consumers or there will be no follow-ups.
The iPhone is fundamentally a phone. While it does a lot more than just make calls, and is likely purchased for more than the ability to make calls, it is fundamentally a phone first (it's in the name and the hardware), most people buy them in conjunction with a phone carrier or phone plan, and on and on.
The Watch (again, right in the name) is fundamentally a watch. It also will do a litany of other cool things above and beyond a typical watch's feature set, but this doesn't change the fact that it is fundamentally a watch. At best, it strikes me as a secondary display, or peripheral device to the phone.
I think of how Jony Ive talks about the products... what their essence is, how they strive to make them the "inevitable" ideal object or iteration of a given thing. So, to my mind, if we're calling this a wearable computer that simply also tells time, it isn't more than the sum of the parts anymore, it's an amalgam of features, already done in other form factors, that still won't last on full day's charge.
None of which is to say people won't buy it and love it. They will.
We heard the same arguments about cell phones. Who would want a smartphone that would discharge in less than a day, when you could get a dumb phone that would hang on for days? or a wired phone that didn't have power problems (even when the power went out)? Then people discovered how darned useful that power-sucking capability was, and have adapted to charging daily.
I do wonder when smart watches will include self-charging "eco drive", tapping wrist motion for energy.
Just my personal anecdote. Those who aren't rushed out the door in the morning would probably have a different experience!
Also, one reason I am happy with the Pebble's 4 - 5 day battery life is because I actually like wearing it to bed because of it's vibrating alarm feature which allows me to be woken up without disturbing my partner.
No idea how the Apple one works, but the Moto guys figured it out pretty quickly. Just use the Qi standard, ship a cradle, or let people use their own Qi pads. I imagine Apple's "not invented here" mentality is going to make this a worse experience. It doesn't seem to be using Qi. Its proprietary. That's a mistake.
I agree that the toxic NIH syndrome at Apple harms their users - why not use Qi? Because then they can't charge $30 ($50?) for a replacement / secondary charging cable.
Tellingly I barely use my phone as a phone. I suspect we will see a similar pattern develop with smartwatches, where telling the time will be only a single bullet point far down a much longer list of features.
It wasn't that long ago that your cell phone could last days or more on a single charge. Now many people have the routine of just charging their phones at night. The world didn't end, things just progressed.
Pretty much every day. By some counts, a watch doesn't really change that very much, by other counts it pushes my daily-shit-to-charge list over the limit. It's nitpicky when viewed in a vacuum, but not in relation to the overall technology charging burden. It seems like we should be moving away from charger dependencies, not towards it.
At this point I wouldn't go back to using a watch with less than a few days battery life, it takes out a huge part of the value for me.
How is that possible? It gives you ample low battery alerts.