The only compelling feature that will get me to upgrade is built-in GPS. That way, I can leave my phone at home and still track my inline skating.
Sure, it needs to be faster and built-in cellular would be great, but not enough to plunk down that much money again. As for a camera, I can see my nose hair just fine in the mirror, thank you.
I still don’t see it as anything more than a pretentious, niche, status symbol product. First and foremost, it is ridiculously expensive. Second, it isn’t a smartwatch, it’s 2/3 of a full iPhone. And that’s just an impractical and downright dumb idea.
A touchscreen on a watch is impractical, a watch face is simply too small. A true cellphone-technology type screen on a watch is also impractical. One, it uses too much power. Two, a watch face needs to be lit constantly (anyone remember how annoying & impractical the first LED digital watches were so they all switched to LCD?) Three, like a cellphone screen they are not easily viewable in bright sunlight. The Pebble smartwatch solves all these by using an e-ink color LCD instead. You don’t get the resolution like on an Apple watch, but who cares? Looking at photos or video on a tiny watch face is a pointless gimmick.
And as far as answering calls and speaking & listening thru the watch: One, there’s the privacy issue of it always being a speakerphone. Two, there’s the issue of always being a pretentious, obnoxious, douchebag forcing others to listen to your phone calls (think idiots who still talk much too loudly in public on their cells). Three, speaking & listening to your ‘wrist’ like Dick Tracy is not only dumb but completely non-ergonomic.
Lastly, there are not really that many practical apps that need a smartphone. All of the fitness tracking stuff can be done on an iPhone itself (who goes jogging without their phone?!) All the GPS stuff, again, is impractical on a tiny watch face. And all the basic stuff, Caller ID, reading texts and emails, temp & weather reports, news & stock reports, controlling your music, all of these can be done on a Pebble (without a touchscreen and at less than a third of the price)…
I could disagree with pretty much all of the above, but let me just focus on the GPS thing. I like to go inline skating. For that, the watch is very useful: when I tell it I go outdoor bicycling (there’s no choice for skating) it’ll track my distance and speed using the GPS in the phone. So I can easily see how fast I’m going and the distance I’ve covered. I find that very useful. It would be even better if I didn’t have to bring the phone (because the watch could do GPS itself) and risk crushing it when I take a fall.
Hey look, it’s the same rant people make about every Apple product! It’s a wonder the company is still in business.
So it doesn’t fit into your lifestyle…nothing wrong with that. And the fanboi poseur aspect is overrated–almost all of my Apple Watch usage is in the privacy of my home or when I am running. If I’m going somewhere dressed nice I prefer an Omega.
As a runner, I disagree with your dismissal of its functionality. I use my Apple Watch on every run, and it is really nice to see the notifications that I would otherwise miss if I wasn’t wearing the watch (though as noted above it is possible to miss one).
You are correct about runners and phones: A key criticism of the watch initially was that it couldn’t track distance accurately (i.e. GPS) without the phone, but that’s not a problem for me–who runs for 1-2 hours without taking their phone along with them in case of an emergency?
With that said, taking out my phone to look at while running is definitely inconvenient, so having everything on my wrist is more useful than one might think.
ETA: Another vote for GPS in the next watch. I couldn’t care less about a camera on my wrist, but having proper GPS would be cool (the previous statements about always having my phone notwithstanding).
Please step away from the Apple. That is just my opinion anyway. Apple seems to have some sort of hold on it’s customers that I cannot explain. I find it akin to Harley Davidson in that regard. Apple seems to have a production and marketing strategy whereas customers find themselves HAVING to “upgrade”. Maybe somehow it is a “status” thing. I dunno. I own no Apple products and I do not plan to, but then I do not feel the need to be connected to everything all the time.
Soooooo…you’re opinion on the Watch is…? Or are you just threadshitting?
My opinion on the watch is the same as my opinion on all Apple products. I think one who has one of these watches will soon finding themselves being “forced” to upgrade.
Come on.
It’s true that once you’re in an ecosystem, be it Apple’s or Google’s (and Microsoft is trying at this, too) it’s hard to escape, but nobody is forcing you to update your stuff. I still have a computer from 2007 that runs the latest MacOS and I still see people using iPhone 4s regularly.
Maybe “forced” is not the right word, but, as you said, being in an ecosystem where you have so much invested in a single brand makes it hard to escape. That’s the point I was trying to make. I was semi-trapped in the Harley-Davidson ecosystem for some time until I discovered there are others better and cheaper. To me Apple is the same thing.
I agree.
There’s another element, too - aesthetics. For a lot of people, watches aren’t just technology, but also jewelry. Apple watches, at least the ones I’ve seen, are…well, ugly. YMMV, of course.
And that’s a factor in wearables that I think distinguishes them from smartphones, tablets, laptops, et al. People have different, or additional, criteria for objects that adorn their bodies. Granted, the design probably appeals to the sort of people who want to buy smartwatches right now; but the technology won’t really take off until it’s adopted by the non-cutting edge, vanilla masses.
Cheaper? Sure. For me, I haven’t found anything better than my iThings. I’ve owned plenty of other phones and computers.
get a Microsoft band. It works on all platforms.
I would wait for the price of smartwatches to come down closer to $100:)
I’m not spending $300 on a smartwatch.
Yes Apple or Samsung seem to be the top two of all the other smartwatches makers I would get.
The problem with smartwatches and other wearable tech is it is very costly so only nerdy people and people that have lot of money go for it. When the price comes down to $100 than more people will start to get it. And in two years from now the price may come down to $80
For the record, I am pleased with the updates Apple has provided for the watch so far. Not much in the way of glitz, but it seems that the annoyances are slowly going away.
One of the most annoying things for me in the first months with my watch was inaccuracy in runs–even outdoor runs with GPS data from the phone.
I would run a measured course that the competing Nike+ app nailed every time, and the Apple Watch native Workout app would always steal a half mile or so from my runs. My theory is that they were using fewer waypoints from GPS and interpolating, cutting corners as I ran through the park. Nike+ showed my runs perfectly on a map, and didn’t cut the corners.
That problem went away with release 2.0 of the OS.
Yesterday, I did a ten mile indoor run at the Y, on their running track, a hard task for any running gadget to follow, since there is no GPS–my Apple Watch registered the run as 10.05 miles. Now that’s an amazing job! I couldn’t care less about all of the social media and team stuff that is out there, I just want my runs accurately measured. The Workout app is pretty bare bones, but it does exactly what I need now.
Apple Watch - less annoying than before.
