The Poor Reviews of Apple Watch Now Probably Means It Will Be a Major Success | Hacker News Reader

The Poor Reviews of Apple Watch Now Probably Means It Will Be a Major Success

nytimes.com

23 pointsrawbzeee54 comments

I have an Apple Watch and haven't worn it in weeks. There are a few reasons:

1. It's too fancy. I work a lot with my hands, and am afraid of beating the watch up with daily use. So far it's been fairly scratch and damage proof, but it's only a matter of time before it makes contact with a surface that will scratch it.

2. The gesture doesn't work very well. I have to over exaggerate my viewing gesture in order to see the watch's updates/alerts. I also can't wear it on the inside of my wrist for the same reasons.

3. It's rude. If I get an alert on my phone, while in the pocket, during the middle of conversation, I can check when the conversation is over. Not so with the watch. It's thumping and alerting me with every alert, which is a distraction. Furthermore, there's nothing worse than talking with someone and seeing them check their watch. Are they too bored? Are they in a hurry? No, they're checking their phone/watch.

Overall, I didn't feel like it added any value, and felt like it made interactions with people even more awkward.

Honestly, if you bought a fancy watch and don't want to wear it because you do manual work, that's a poor choice on your part and zero to do with the product.

I think you may have missed the point. Apple isn't trying to position this as just a "fancy watch", they're trying to position it as the next must-have consumer item.

Watches designed for heavy manual labor are a niche, not a consumer item.

To add to the other replies...I bought the sport watch. It wasn't supposed to be fancy.

I've had a different experience. I wear mine most of the time. It feels durable enough to me that I don't worry about scratching it (the stainless steel version), and I actually find it makes me less attached to the Internet, not more. I can check it with a quick glance at my wrist when it is convenient, rather than having to fish my phone out of my pocket. It is nice to know that nothing important demands my attention so I can focus on the conversation at hand.

My behavior has completely changed in the 2 months I've had one. Notifications are the biggest one. My phone stays in my pocket more often, I use it very actively to pay for things, and of course as a tracker.

Is it a must have? No, but it works very well for me.

My issue with the tracking is that the data is locked in. My opinion would change if they made an integration/export API.

What's missing? https://developer.apple.com/healthkit/

Export: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qs-access/id920297614?mt=8

Import:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/health-importer/id930943780?...

Both use the HealthKit API.

So it's too valuable to wear and adds too little value when you wear it ? :)

For number three, couldn't you just put it in "Do not disturb" mode?

http://www.imore.com/how-use-do-not-disturb-your-apple-watch

Yes, but then what's the point of having it?

I haven't completely stopped wearing it, but I was also quite disappointed after the novelty wore off.

My main qualms were the viewing gesture not working that well and problems in the heat. We regularly reach temperatures in the mid-to-high 90s during the summer, and the watch becomes pretty useless in those conditions (screen is unresponsive and performing touch actions on its own). This makes it very difficult to use as an activity tracker.

Maybe the next version will address some of these problems, if they even make it that long. It is really hard to see this taking off like the iPhone did, though.

I've only had mine for two weeks. I wrote how I use it here:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/my-first-two-weeks-w...

My top 3 uses that I discussed are:

1. As a remote for music and podcasts

2. As an activity monitor (health)

3. As a phone.

Granted it has only been two weeks but I feel that the health "benefits" could be a big selling point. Who doesn't want to be a little healthier, or at least believe their actions are making them healthier?

I feel like Fitbit is a better alternative here for daily activity monitoring, and specialty watches for running/biking/etc. I need data export in XML format to really make it portable.

Garmin has a much better offering in their Vivosmart product. Every Fitbit I've owned has failed within 4-5 months and their very developer hostile when it comes to data export and access to your own step data.

Both of these devices probably are better, at least at this time. However, the Apple Watch is a general purpose device that over time should prove to be more useful, especially as the hardware improves in future versions.

To be blunt, I see no point in getting an Apple Watch for numerous reasons (price would be another one for me). But your 1. and 3. sound exactly like the complaints about all the early Apple devices.

I still don't get why we need something between a laptop and a smartphone (especially since it's not really 50% laptop but more 99% smartphone + 3 times the screen size) but hey, even I am tempted to get an iPad, nowadays. I held out on buying an iPhone for a long time since I found it way too fragile but now, of course I have one in my pocket. And let's not forget about the iPod release: "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

I see no reason for the Apple Watch to succeed but even less reason to trust my instincts.

I have one. I don't work with my hands, but I'm clumsy; it's already a little scratched. Oh well.

I also have problems with the gesture, though for some reason it doesn't really bother me.

I have the opposite experience with rudeness...I feel like a subtle glance is just way, way less disruptive than pulling out your phone. I keep my notifications (both phone & watch) pretty dialed back, so it's mostly just when someone is directly messaging me that I get a notification. Before, I just couldn't keep myself from pulling out my phone and seeing what was up, and then at that point usually saying 'excuse me' and taking a moment to respond, even if it wasn't urgent. Now, I just glance at it, see it isn't urgent, and reply later.

I also find it helps me from accidentally slipping into my phone in group social situations, since I have zero excuse to pull it out in the first place.

I think it has a lot of potential overall as a device, but besides the issues you brought up, there are other frustrating things about it: Siri is ungodly slow (why can't this be natively recognized on device like my mac?). Replying to a message with voice or emoji is a ridiculously cumbersome process. You can't reply with more than a single emoji, which makes your responses seem overly curt and rude. Shipping with os1.0 apps (where all the computation is on the phone) means almost all 3rd party apps are terrible. &c.

I feel Apple has gotten away a bit from their 'do few things well' core (classic example: original iPhone shipping w/o copy and paste or 3rd party apps), and fallen into the temptation of 'do lots of things so-so'.

The whole "first generation" argument is flawed. Proponents of the Apple Watch claim that the hardware and software of the Apple Watch will get better over time. Fine. But the underlying form factor (a health tracker that makes it easier to read notifications from your phone) will not change.

While the first gen iPhone started out buggy and feature-sparse, the form factor was completely revolutionary: a phone with a touch screen and internet capabilities. A mini-computer in your pocket, rather than just a phone. It set itself up for future success as wifi, 3g + 4g networks, and the app ecosystem, developed over the next decade.

People will argue that there will be a different ecosystem of apps for the Apple Watch. The only input that it gets that is different from a smartphone is from the user's wrist. Otherwise, apps will be even more restricted by the small form factor of the watch. Who wants to play a game, read a book, or surf the web on a watch? Nobody. It's a glorified fitness tracker (do I really care about my pulse/heart rate? I just strap my iPhone to my arm and then I can listen to music while I run too!) that obviates the need to take your phone out of your pocket to check notifications. Which is simply awkward and rude in social situations.

The smartwatch form factor is not revolutionary and does not enable a large potential market for uses.

I think a lot of this has to do with flawed expectations. I've owned the first iPhone right after it was released, same with the iPad, and now with the watch. iPhone and iPad had initial issues, software flaws, lacking features, but all of them were still a pleasure to use and worked as advertised.

I feel that many people see today's iPhone and compare it to the watch, but the original iPhone with iPhone OS 1.0 had only 2G, no GPS, no app store, a miserable camera, couldn't record videos, no copy & paste, and a lot of flaws that I'm probably forgetting right now.

But just like the other devices, the watch will start small and expand from here. You could say the current incarnation is only the shape of things to come.

I use the watch for three core features: As a remote for phone apps and functionality in the phone, as a time keeping device, and for fitness measurement (where it replaced my fitbit). The watch is a great device for these three features, but it's not a phone replacement, and it won't be for a long time I suppose.

i find it difficult to use as a phone, the speaker is so low i have to raise it into my hear, (maybe its hearing loss)

I do agree that its a nice fitness measurement tool, although i do want to compare the accuracy and precision with other instruments.

Gimme a pip-boy though, full sized, GNU based OS.

As far as I know, it's specifically not supposed to be used as a phone. Making a call from your wrist is a terrible idea if you have to hold your wrist up to your ear or face, or can only use it in speakerphone mode. (using wireless earbuds + microphone would be fine obviously)

yeah, have you gotten Bluetooth headphones to work? My beats don't pair up to them, but my beats also have issues where they just deteriorate around the ear muffs.

>I feel that many people see today's iPhone and compare it to the watch, but the original iPhone with iPhone OS 1.0 had only 2G, no GPS, no app store, a miserable camera, couldn't record videos, no copy & paste, and a lot of flaws that I'm probably forgetting right now.

I'm still scratching my head today how they managed to turn that into a success. I thought for sure with all of those issues it was going to be a flop. I still don't understand why it wasn't.

Because even with all those issues, it was still the best user and developer (once native apps were allowed) experience for a phone at that time.

It had a working web browser.

I had two smart devices at the time. A Windows Mobile iPaq or whatever it called and a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry was the ultimate two-way pager, but the browser experience was MISERABLE. Given that Citibank and JP Morgan owned like 150,000 of the things, you'd think that the browser would render CNBC. Not so!

The Windows Mobile Device was sort of better, but the browser was some sort of scaled IE 5 derivative. It still had a stylus, and a Windows 95 style UI, complete with checkboxes and other awkward UI elements. The only third party app of any use was Google Maps.

The iPhone broke free of the carrier nickle/dime racket, had a good web browser and offered a user experience 10x better than anything else. EDGE was a bummer, but a slow network that would work was better than 3G without anything to do. The touch interface, pinch to zoom, etc was a game changer.

I also had some earlier smartphones (Palm Treo, a couple of HTC PocketPCs running Windows Mobile) and agree that the browser experience was tolerable at best. I think I used Opera Mini and Opera Mobile depending on which ran best on a given device.

Still, there were just so many things I had gotten used to (and not just Google Maps and other nav programs like TomTom). I could still buy those phones without carrier junk if I wanted to pay full price. The main issue was that there weren't as many decent options for prepaid or MVNO deals and my $45/mo Sprint plan came with unlimited 3G so it was as good as any $80+ plan from ATT that I'd have had to get with an iPhone.

Even stuff we take for granted now like listening to streaming radio was missing. I was (and still am) a huge fan of several Shoutcast stations that I used via headphones or plugged into the car when everyone else was paying for XM. I had a tuner card in my home PC with my cable connection hooked up and a server app running so I could skim through my home media library or any live cable station and have it piped to my old Windows Mobile phone.

Hell, you could even make video calls at whatever low resolution the front camera had at the time and there were the precursors to services like Periscope like Qik. The iPhone didn't even let you change the wallpaper or ringtone for eff's sake.

That's not to rag on the stuff they did right. The iPhone wasn't targeted at me. It was targeted at people who used their phones for texting, calls, and maybe email or the early mobile web. Compared to those RAZRs and lower-end Blackberrys, the iPhone didn't really take anything away. It added a much better interface that was smoother and more responsive than anything on those featurephones or my beloved PPC. And yeah, the web browser was the killer feature. Passable web browsing was fine on my WinMo but the iPhone's browser was so much nicer to use.

In the end I just couldn't give up my unlimited 3G, GPS, multitasking, third party apps, or customization options in order to double my bill and pick up an iPhone. Still, I am thankful to this day that they hit everyone else where they were lacking (interface and responsiveness) so those later competitors were forced to address that even as Apple slowly added in the features they were missing from other smart phones.

Nowadays it's almost moot as the insane growth in mobile development has made even $150 contract-free phones capable of all those fancy features.

I think the key is, Apple rev' their product in a year. Had iOS not existed, a Treo would probably still be a thing.

Apple had a very unique position at that time: the had legions of iPod fans, who are relatively wealthy, locked on to the Apple platform(due to music they bought).

Than they used that leverage on at&t , which was the weaker carrier in that time - in return only distributing via at&t - at&t agreed to give Apple full control - a thing unheard of in the industry. They repeated similar tactic in every geography.

That full control was the thing that enabled them to offer the best user/developer experience like matwood says and ride moore's law curve much better than the rest .

  I still don't understand why it wasn't.

I distinctly remember the first iphone presentation and seeing [1] and thinking it was the first phone user interface where there was a clear, obvious way to mute or speakerphone a call without checking a manual or accidentally hanging up.

[1] http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c_m2F_ph_uU/maxresdefault.jpg

> and a lot of flaws that I'm probably forgetting right now

when the first iPhone was announced, I couldn't help but think of an emergency use case where I could dial 911 on my old nokia even while it is switched off. Now I have to switch on my phone, unlock, open phone app, dialer and then 911. A total of 4 additional steps.

Was this addressed in some way that I am not aware of?

Most phones have emergency lockscreen dialers, heck, some samsung phones have hold-down-button-for-emergency systems. That's besides the point though, what he's pointing out that this part of the iphone was a backtrack in capability compared to his older nokia. Now, we don't compare nokias to smartphones, we compare smartphones (most of which lack that capability) to smartphones, so it's never mentioned.

What phone do you have that requires you to unlock it to make an emergency call?

It has to be powered on, but the iPhone can call 911 from the lockscreen. This was very useful a couple times on the road (where I do my best to minimize non-map viewing phone usage while in motion) before the fingerprint unlock feature was added.

>> But just like the other devices, the watch will start small and expand from here.

If you asked futurists how the iphone will 10 years on - they would have predicted a lot of what we have today - because it's based on clear technological trends - moore's law, cheaper/smaller sensors, etc and reasonable use cases - i.e. mobile gaming, mobile info.

But when reading about the potential of the watch, either you hear not so exciting uses(like a remote control for all your smart home devices, instead of a phone), or crazy predictions that's hard to see how get to technologically(the watch will have a small projector, the watch will detect an incoming heart attack).

And even with those crazy projections - it's not clear at all whether those technologies, if they work, would be preferably implemented in a watch.

On the other hand, Apple is great at marketing, so who knows ?

> The Poor Reviews of Apple Watch Now Probably Means It Will Be a Major Success

It's good to look at the water in the glass, even when it's not even half full. I guess.

The iphone made computing ultra portable, the iPad reinvented the couch, and both of them revolutionized the toilet experience.

The iWatch doesn't quite revolutionize or transform anything. There is no inherent advantage to having half-a-computer on your wrist at all times.

The iWatch is a fashion item at the moment - hackers don't seem to be impressed with it as much (judging by the very few articles about iWatch on HN :)). And if you don't impress the hackers, your days are numbered.

> And if you don't impress the hackers, your days are numbered.

I don't know if the Watch will be successful in the long run, and I don't want to post the slashdot quote for the millionth time, but that's exactly what people said about the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

On the other hand, hackers were extremely excited about Maemo and Openmoko.

Yeah, you're right I guess. Hackers are very poor predictors of commercial success, if not the opposite.

Although, I meant 'developers' when I used the term 'hackers'.. The watch is very limited in the amount of freedom that it gives developers, and if you can't attract them, then it's not taking off.

I'm sure Apple knows that a lot better than I do, so let's see how they attack that problem in the future.

"and if you don't impress the hackers, your days are numbered"

http://m.slashdot.org/story/21026

"no wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame"

This title gives me a headache for so many reasons.

So the first version of the Apple watch has failed, but the author hopes for a better second version, which may even be cheaper. Meanwhile he's happy about the software updates.

I guess the "sold more units than the ipod" argument refers to the first generation ipods, too?

"Failed" is probably a strong word. Seems like it didn't meet Wall Street's expectations, but to say the product failed seems overblown.

As a person who loves Apple products, I'm waiting for the 2nd generation, mostly because I think that's where Apple really tends to shine. The first gen is solid but obviously first-generation; 2nd generation seems to be where they figure out what's most important to customers and really tighten the screws there.

"$1b+ in sales" == "has failed"? Christ, I hope everything I do fails so well.

Margins matter, remember of PS3 which was sold at cost and even with losses since Sony was looking at profits from game sales.

Of course they do, and Apple has the highest margins in the business and never sells near cost. Apple Watch probably has margins in the mid to high 30% just like all other Apple products do around launch.

And according to tear downs margins are considered pretty high. Not as high as their other products, but they are certainly not selling at a loss.

I too find it funny talking about a failure of a product that had ~1B in revenue (more than the MS Surface tablets in the same quarter), and where Tim Cook said the sales were back loaded, i.e. accelerating.

Anecdotally I'm seeing more and more Apple Watches around.

EDIT

I guess the Apple haters like down voting facts. Here are some sources from yesterdays earnings call:

From the earnings call transcript (http://www.imore.com/this-is-tim-transcript-q3-2015): On the Watch, our June sales were higher than April or May. I realize that’s very different than some of what’s being written, but June sales were the highest. The Watch had a more of a back-ended kind of skewing.

From the CFO (http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/07/21/3730284_apple-strong...): But Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told The Associated Press that revenue from the watch amounted to "well over" that $952 million increase. He said the watch sales were offset by declining revenue from iPods and accessories, which are also lumped into that segment.

When you are the biggest company in the world, everything you do has to be big, otherwise it's a distraction.

Failure and success isn't binary. It's not an overnight bestseller, but it's had some sales, customers are very satisfied, and app developers are laying the foundations for an ecosystem.

The future could be very bright.

> If E is a binary event and P(H|E) > P(H), "seeing E increases the probability of H"; then P(H|~E) < P(H)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_o...

I think theres an argument we are missing when only talking about the technical aspects of the Apple Watch. To be honest, I think it's to expensive for regular people. Even if it could bake you croissants and turn you a soup bowl, most people already burnt their tech budget on a phone that used to cost $200 and last three years, but now costs four times as much and is expected to last for two.

The reviews are not poor, and the Apple Watch has outsold the iPhone and iPad over the same period in its lifecycle.

This is just a failure of journalism, or possibly an angle that pleases a major advertiser.

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