The Invisible Design Behind the Apple Watch’s Many Faces | Hacker News Reader

The Invisible Design Behind the Apple Watch’s Many Faces

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32 pointssnyp13 comments

I can't understand how could the iwatch work when it's so fundamentaly at odds with the core philosophy of the object.

A watch is a symbol of keeping time, and as such is deeply linked to the notion of eternity. You may want to offer a beautiful watch to someone as a gift because it will last for his entire life. How many times in movies have we seen the dying father giving his watch to his kid.

That's a reason why swiss watch makers are able to repair your 50 yo watch, should it break.

Now, even with the best effort, we know that the iwatch battery will wear off in two years, that the watch os won't be upgraded anymore in 3 or 4 years, and that the watch itself can't work if not linked to a device that also has a very limited lifespan.

Apple should have made the inside of the watch upgradable and advertize this fact. They change you the chip and the battery, but you keep the outside untouched. This way, you won't have to throw your very personal device to the trash every 3 years.

You have to understand that this device is not a watch, in the traditional sense its simply an iPhone Accessory which is named the "Watch because its worn on the wrist, same with all other smart watches none of them are watches they're jut phone accessories So to expect the kind of traditional sentiment that you get from a really beautiful well made swiss watch that lasts for generations is futile.

And yet, everything i read about this product including this article, emphasis finition and crafting quality, as well as the numerous watch face, and not new revolutionnary functions.

Apple clearly wants to make you believe it is a watch, and that's why the called it watch instead of Band, or any other neutral names.

I think many companies call it a watch is because, at the moment, the only things that do not look weird on anybody's wrist in daily life (1) are watches and bracelets, and a watch is the only one of these with a display.

(1) heart rate monitors don't look weird during exercise, but aren't worn all day long by any 'normal' people.

USD 17,000 seems a lot for a cellphone accesory

Apple seems to trying much harder to market the Apple Watch. I've never seen Apple being so open and giving so many journalists inside access.

Thank you, I've been looking for another excuse to wholly submit to a marketing campaign.

Thank you for insightful comment

For the watch to work properly it needs to be paired with an iPhone, right?

When are our future wrist-communicators coming?

In a few more iterations. This is v1.

Apple Watch v2 with an inbuilt phone and SiriNext peronal agent will probably be a great device that many will buy, similar to iPad 2 that was superb compared to iPad 1.

Perhaps it is because Apple are such perfectionists, that when they miss some tiny detail it's actually quite glaring, because you're not used to them missing that kind of thing.

For example, the Finder's tags configuration dialogue is a masterpiece of horrendous UI design. It's the kind of thing you'd never expect Apple to get wrong, given their usual attention to detail: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/8/#tags

Apple are portrayed as almost infallible when it comes to design. They obviously put a lot of effort into getting things right but I've encountered many, many bad design choices in OS X.

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