From Apple’s financial followers to the culture pages, expect few technology topics to garner as much attention in 2015 as the Apple Watch, which is set to launch “early” in the year.
Why? Because it’s not just a new gadget. Several people, companies, and entire industries are counting on it to be a hit. Without hyperbole, the Apple Watch has the potential to create new billionaires and to change the way people live.
The Apple Watch will sell well, surely. However, this article is definitely not without hyperbole. It will not create new billionaires (well, maybe some Apple employees). It will not “change the way people live”.
I’m not a fan of making predictions, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Apple Watch – and the entire smartwatch market – is not going to be all that the technology press wants it to be. My Moto 360 is already in a drawer.
Oh I’m sure that throngs of Apple fans will line up in droves to pay four times the price for Apple’s new smart watch. Because it’s soooo hard to reach into a pocket or purse to see if anyone has texted or e-mailed. Ridiculous!!
Well, we all know that Apple has been like a cult in the past; they could LITERALLY put turds in a box and have people lined up around the block to pay top dollar for whatever they were shoveling. I’m not saying their products aren’t good, but they’ve just been REALLY good at marketing things to people. However, I am sensing that the reality distortion field has died down considerably since Steve Jobs passed.
If that is the case, I don’t know what makes this particular watch any different than any of the others on the market, and the article didn’t do a thing to shed light on what this particular watch will do to set the world on fire, other than it is made by Apple. I’m not really sure this will be enough to get asses in the stores anymore, although it might …
Edited 2015-01-03 01:51 UTC
Nope, no interest in a watch of any kind.
My pebble and LG smart watches are in the drawers too.
And I think I know why.
That’s right: I already carry a phone. A really smart one. It has a screen that’s big enough to allow reasonable input and tons of information is displayed. Yet, it’s small enough to fit in my pockets.
My phone gives a gentle vibration or a beep when a message or mail arrives, so a watch didn’t add anything in terms of keeping up.
Finally, carrying a watch is annoying, and thus people do it as a fashion statement (which is why Apple Watch Gold will sell).
Carrying a watch that runs out of battery four times a week and needs security and software updates and is probably outdated the week it’s launched, well – that’s even worse.
My wrist is once again liberated, and it’ll stay that way.
(PS: there’s one area where smart watches rock, namely fitness. Microsoft is on to something there, believe it or not.)
My wife purchased a Microsoft Band as a Christmas gift for me. I thought that it was kind of gimmicky and it is…the sensors don’t work that well and it does not tell you much about your fitness unless you actually start a work out program with the Microsoft fitness app. Despite this, I have been wearing it, and it’s useful for things that I did not realize in the beginning. Two areas are useful…receiving notifications and commanding Cortana. Notifications that someone is calling is great especially when occupied, and you can decide before you reach for your phone whether you want to answer a call or text. Commanding Cortana to fire out a text is quite useful too without grabbing the phone. For just those two reasons and perhaps the ability to see live stock quotes on the watch make it convenient for me. I am actually getting so lazy over the past week wearing it that taking the phone out of my pocket is pathetically becoming like work…
I entirely agree. In fact just the battery alone is a big enough problem.
The frequency with which you have to recharge a phone is broadly proportional to its usefulness. I own a cheap Nokia and recharge it once a fortnight. Those with smartphones don’t mind doing it more because they get more out of it. But a phone peripheral just provides minor conveniences, so a user’s tolerance for poor battery life is going to be very low indeed.
Also, while its a pain having to recharge a phone, at least you don’t have to untangle from your body first then re-entangle it again four hours later. And at least it can still serve its basic function (ring or bleep when a call or message is incoming) when charging. A watch not on your wrist has no function at all.
I mostly agree, but one thing most (all?) smart phones are really bad at is showing what has happened if you aren’t around when it happend.
The most common “persistent notification” technology currently seems to be a LED (the 1980s called and all that).
I often have my phone out of the pocket in safe environments, e.g. at home, and if I’ve missed the actual event, I am left with a “something has happened” indication, happly blinking.
The best phone in this area has been the Nokia N9.
It did actually display icons for various events (missed call, new text/email/chat message, etc.) with a monochrome, low power mode of the display.
I always wondered why no other phone could do that, but once you are used to that a fricking LED is nothing more than a joke.
So it seems that other vendors are aware of their phones’ shortcomings and either don’t have or can’t afford that screen technology, using these watches as a best possible alternative instead.
With the notable exception of the Samsung Edge I guess, which integrates the secondary display in a different way.
Having a smartphone that takes reasonable photographs and can be used a music player means having having less devices to carry about and worry about charging.
Having a bulky, expensive watch that needs charging everyday is a step backwards as far as I am concerned.
Not for me.
Yeah, I’ll just stick to classic luxury watches
Just give it time. This type technology is brand new and will evolve. Not only that, users will evolve with it as well, creating new usage opportunities.
I don’t wear a wrist watch and I don’t plan to, but I think it’s too early to dismiss smart watches.
I actually thought cellphones would evolve into smaller and smaller every day until fitting into a wrist as a watch.
The actual things evolved to be bigger and bigger in order to be more useful, easy to use, better to read into them and to work with them, so, I do not know where do smart watches fit into this “evolution”.
The interesting thing is that mobile phones actually did evolve into smaller and smaller devices, until they became useful for other things. It was only when smart phones came along that they got bigger.
No one knows where smart watches are going, to be fair. This niche market is still too young, but I doubt it’s anything other than successful.
I know 15 people who are buying them. None of them care twice about an android watch/wear.
Hum… Interesting.
Have these 15 people told you why?
I would (sincerely) be interested to know.
Do they really expect any advantage from it (And if yes what?) or are they part of the herd that buy every gadget with an apple on it because it has an apple on it?
haven’t we heard this before . ..
Tom,
If your watch is already in the drawer and you want to part with it, get in touch via email. I MIGHT buy it from you.
I am curious about what kind of software can be develeped for a watch, although I am not too enthusiastic about the form factor.
1) Apple CANNOT put crap in a box and expect it to sell. People seem to forget Apple products that have failed because they weren’t particularly good (or in some cases downright bad).
http://www.oobject.com/category/12-failed-apple-products/
There are actually quite a few more things that should be on this list.
2) I did a quick poll over an extended family lunch to see who if anyone would buy an Apple Watch ( A family that has over recent years become overwhelmingly mac-centric). The outcome was unanimous, no one saw themselves buying it – but no one would complain too loudly if they got it as a present.
This proved two things to me:
1 – the watch isn’t that desirable.
2 – my family has wildly optimistic gift expectations..
PS: personally, I think the killer app will be biometrics, that will make or break the Watch.
Everything on that list is old. Then again, the list might be older than Apple iBooks Author, which was supposed to revolutionise textbooks. Except it happened to be Not Good Enough for professional use.
The products being old doesn’t make it any less relevant.
In more recent years, the xserve flopped (despite being a decent product). The Apple TV took a very long time to gain any traction.
Hard to call AppleWorks a fail when the image shown is for a version that was in production for 7 years…
That would be like saying WordStar and WordPerfect were failures– sure, ultimately they were replaced by (arguably) better products– but they weren’t failures.
Appleworks always under delivered and had serious backward compatibility issues. Clarisworks was ahead of its time but Apple dropped the ball when they took over that project.
Edited 2015-01-04 11:59 UTC
I never said it was a good product (although it wasn’t that bad, really).
But calling a product a failure when it was around for 13 years (and that’s ignoring the Apple II version which went all the way back to 1984) just doesn’t make sense.
It was a GREAT product when it was Clarisworks. But by the end its run it was pretty poor. Which is the incarnation in which it appears on this list.
Regardless, ignore it then. The original point was that bad Apple products don’t get a pass because they’re Apple products.
The current crop of smartwatches just don’t interest me – horrendous battery life (where two days of life is ludicrously praised to the skies) and far too expensive compared to most “dumb” watches the average person wears.
Probably needs a few more generations for the tech to improve – if they can get an Android Wear watch to last a week on one charge and cost under $200 (or under 150 pounds in the UK), then a lot more people – including me – would be interested.
My curiosity was piqued by the new Alcatel Onetouch watch to be launched shortly at CES 2015, but I’m suspicious there’s no price, battery life or even Android Wear (which surely any new non-Apple smartwatch will have to use?) mentioned in the pre-show press release at http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alcatel-onetouch-at-ces-201…
In fact, the Pixi 3 phones sound more interesting in that release, because they can unusually run Android, Firefox OS or Windows Phone.
Edited 2015-01-03 13:41 UTC
as much as people would like their watch to be connected to their smartphone I really don’t think average joe on the street will ever pay a premium for one. Maye a 15usd watch with a bluetooth notification might sell for 25usd…or 20usd but 150usd??
The way i would love to see a “smartwatch” done is by combining this: http://liliputing.com/2015/01/montblanc-e-strap-makes-luxury-watch-…
With this: http://sensorcon.com/products/sensordrone-multisensor-tool/sensordr…
sounds almost as funny as “Year of the Linux Desktop.”
Somehow I don’t think this person understands the meaning of the word “hyperbole”.
The person might know the meaning of click-bait, but I could be wrong and he/she is a complete numbnut.
I got mine from the Kickstarter batch. I still use it daily. It’s great for tasker tasks, controlling music since I spend most of my work day driving, paying for coffee at Starbucks, and countless other things. It’s probably due to my job that I use my Pebble more, but I can’t look at my phone >100 times a day.
Up until last week I was running IT for a jewellery store. I can tell you right now the Apple watches are not going to sell. They completely miss the point of the high end watch market and they are designed closer to a ladies watch than a men’s watch. Watches are a sign of power and status. Men’s watches usually have massive round faces or a huge name brand on the smaller ones. The super high end ones are hand crafted in Switzerland or Japan and cost more than $20,000. Apple has nothing in this league. Everyone knows it’s made in china, in a factory, maybe laser cut, but certainly not hand crafted. They are not an elite boutique brand at the level needed to make it in this market.
Edited 2015-01-04 19:27 UTC
That’s part of the problem– it’s not a high-end watch, and it’s not a cell phone. It’s a solution in search of a need, and I just don’t see it doing anything special enough to justify it’s existence that isn’t already being done by Google Glass or a cell-phone.
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