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[Fliesen]

They said during their earnings it's still on track for release in April - that is prior to May 3rd.

the only issue would be that Austria is usally not in tier 1 of rollouts (like Germany, France, UK, Italy(?) ), but a few weeks later.

though that gives me time to wait for actual reviews.

regardless, i'm probably gonna get the first gen, anyways, as i'm far too curious about the emerging capabilites of the watch and i have doubts they'll add much "untethered" (without a paired iPhone) functionality within gen 2 or 3.

 

[SuperPac]

the only issue would be that Austria is usally not in tier 1 of rollouts (like Germany, France, UK, Italy(?) ), but a few weeks later.

Oh. Then back to what the other guy said - probably not.

 

[SuperPac]

Some new news -

http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/06/apple-begins-training-retail-employees-about-the-apple-watch/

Apple begins training retail employees about the Apple Watch

Apple today began training its retail store employees in multiple countries, including the U.S. and the U.K, about the upcoming Apple Watch. The training is said to not divulge many new details, but the beginning of the training program does represent Apple’s first move on the retail employee level in preparing for the Watch. We reported last week that Apple is preparing to use traditional jewelry store tactics for the gold version of the Apple Watch. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the wearable will launch by April. Apple will begin flying out select employees for more hands-on training over the next couple of weeks.

 

[infiniteloop]

UK launch must be close to, or same as, US launch if they're training at the same time.

 

[SuperPac]

Some new hyperbole from Tim Cook for those interested in Apple Watch:

http://www.imore.com/tim-cook-goldman-sachs-conference

If you think about the, for those of you can remember, the MP3 industry, before the iPod — we weren't the first company to make an MP3; there were lots of companies in the... you may not be able to remember that, but there were lots of them out there. They weren't used very much. They were fundamentally too hard to use, and the user interface was really bad. You almost needed a PhD to use these. They weren't, they're not memorable. They didn't really move the dial.

And the tablet business was kind of like this, too. There were lots of tablets shipping when the iPad came out. But there was nothing earth-shattering. There were very niche-y kind of applications; you probably weren't using one like you're using now.

And so I see the smart watch category very much like that. There are several things that are called "smart watches" that are shipping, but I'm not sure you could name any. Maybe you could. I'm not sure the audience could name very many. But certainly there's been none that have changed the way people live their lives.

And so what we want to do at Apple, that's our objective: We want to change the way you live your life. And just like this iPad has changed the way you work, and hopefully the way you live, and the iPhone has done that, we see the Apple Watch doing that.

I've been using one, and I'm actually wearing one now — but I wear it all the time, actually. And I think one of the biggest surprises people are going to have when they start using it is the breadth of what it will do.

And so, obviously it's a precision time piece. And just like you're wearing a watch and you probably think it looks really cool — I'm not sure I do, but...

The look of this is fantastic. And of course there's lots of different ones. And so you may look at this and you might want a different color band, or a different type of band, or you may want an 18 karat gold one, or whatever you may want — the variety is incredible, the customizable nature of it is incredible.

You'll also find that there are some new, innovative ways to communicate that you didn't have before. And so I constantly use Siri with my watch, and ask different things, and all of a sudden, y'know, it's just there. You can do things like get notifications across your watch.

And so right now, if you're like most men, you carry your phone in your front pocket. I see too many men in this audience, by the way, there needs to be a lot more women, a lot more diversity here.

*clapping*

Thank you. But most men do that. They put it here. And so you can imagine, in a meeting, how distracting it is to watch everybody do this all the time. *Miming pulling an iPhone out of pocket.*

And here, it's kinda little subtle. And if you're interested in keeping up with the sports score to the financial markets to whatever it is, it's like this, the Watch knows you're looking at it, and it comes on. If I'm not looking at it, the Watch is off. Which can be very important, right?

And so there's so many things like that, and the third-party apps — the things third parties are working on? — I'm super excited about. And so I think it's going to be, everybody's going to have their favorite thing. Just like when the App Store came out, and you remember the tagline, "There's an app for that?" And the way you felt with your favorite apps, and so you're going to have a feeling like that.

I use it in the gym constantly to track my activity level, my exercise, how long I'm exercising; if I sit for too long, it will actually tap me on the wrist to remind me to get up and move. Because a lot of doctors believe that sitting is the new cancer, right? And arguably activity is good for all of us. And so if you haven't moved within the hour, ten minutes before the hour it'll tap you.

And it's been amazing watching this at Apple, because you'll be in a meeting — and we have a lot of employees now that are using the watch — and about ten minutes before the hour, everybody will start standing up.

*laughter*

And it took a little while to get used to, but it's actually very good. And so, there's just an enormous number of things that it will do, and I think you're going to find it something that you're going to think, "Wow, I can't live without this anymore!"

 

[Blackhead]

The Shape of Things to Come | The New Yorker
How an industrial designer became Apple’s greatest product.

Akana had proposed that an Ultrasuede cloth inside the box for a gold version of the Apple Watch should be an orangey-brown. Ive had objected with comic hyperbole, comparing it to the carpeting in a dismal student apartment. In the same amused spirit, Akana had then asked, “So you don’t like it?”

The Apple Watch—the first Apple device with a design history older than its founder, or its designer—was conceived “close to Steve’s death,” Ive said. It’s hard to build a time line of this or any other Apple creation: the company treats the past, as well as the future, as its intellectual property. But, in 2011, there may have been a greater appetite than usual for investigations of new products. One could imagine that executives were eager to act, in anticipation of grief, market upheaval, and skeptical press. (The Onion: “Apple Unveils Panicked Man with No Ideas.&#8221

He looked at the Apple Watch on his wrist. “This isn’t obnoxious. This isn’t building a barrier between you and me.” He continued, “If I get a notification here, it will tap my wrist”—with silent vibrations. “I can casually look and see what’s going on.” We were in a conference room at One Infinite Loop, a few doors from Jobs’s old office, and I noticed that, at this moment in the history of personal technology, Cook still uses notifications in the form of a young woman appearing silently from nowhere to hold a sheet of paper in his line of sight.

According to Clive Grinyer, “Jon’s always wanted to do luxury.” By this point, Grinyer said, Ive had already fulfilled one duty of industrial design: to design a perfect stapler, for everyone, in a world of lousy staplers. (Most designers driven by that philosophy “didn’t really rule the world,” Grinyer said. “They just ruled staplers.&#8221 A few years ago, Grinyer had considered working with Vertu, the British-based cell-phone manufacturer, whose bejewelled but technologically ordinary products sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Vertu’s survival challenged the assumption that inevitable obsolescence removes modern consumer electronics from consideration as luxury goods. Ive was “very interested” in Vertu, Grinyer recalled.

Bob Mansfield, then closely involved in the watch project, said that Ive’s role was to be “himself and Steve” combined. Yet Ive still had to make a case to Apple, and Mansfield recalled “a lot of resistance.” It wasn’t clear how the company would display such things in stores; there were also concerns about creating a divide between wealthy and less wealthy customers. (As Mansfield said, “Apple wants to build products for everybody.&#8221 But Ive won the argument, and in 2013 the company announced the high-level appointments of Angela Ahrendts, the former C.E.O. of Burberry, and Paul Deneve, the former C.E.O. of the Yves Saint Laurent Group. Patrick Pruniaux, from TAG Heuer, a part of the L.V.M.H. luxury conglomerate, was hired last year.

The shape of the body, meanwhile, barely changed: a rectangle with rounded corners. “When a huge part of the function is lists”—of names, or appointments—“a circle doesn’t make any sense,” Ive said. Its final form resembles one of Newson’s watches, and the Cartier Santos, from 1904.

Ive places the new watch in a history of milestone Apple products that were made possible by novel input devices: Mac and mouse; iPod and click wheel; iPhone and multitouch. A ridged knob on the watch’s right side—the Digital Crown—took its form, and its name, from traditional watchmaking. The watch was always expected to include a new technology that had long been in development at Apple: a touchscreen that sensed how hard a finger was pressing it. (A press and a tap could then have different meanings, like a click and a double-click.) But the Digital Crown, a device for zooming that compensated for the difficulty of pinching or spreading fingers on a tiny screen, was ordered up by the studio. In a reverse of “skinning,” Ive asked Apple’s engineers to make it. In time, the crown’s role grew to include scrolling through lists. Ive was delighted with its versatility, but the sight of one of his colleagues scrolling with a rigid finger—a Doughboy poke—made me wonder if a more natural watch-winding gesture will cause large thumbs to flop, accidentally, onto the touchscreen.

When a product demonstrator gave me his pitch, they interrupted with design footnotes. “The materials in this thing are insane,” Howarth said. People, he noted, were saying that the watch’s face was made of “sapphire glass”: “It’s not glass, it’s sapphire crystal—completely different structure. And then the stainless steel is super-hardened. And the zirconia ceramic on the back is co-finished with sapphire as well.” He added, “This would cost so much money if a different company was making it—Rolex or something. It would be a hundred grand or something.”

“We sell it for just fifty thousand,” Hönig said, joking.

The Apple Watch is designed to remain dark until a wearer raises his or her arm. In the prototypes worn around the Cupertino campus at the end of last year, this feature was still glitchy. For Marc Newson, it took three attempts—an escalation of acting styles, from naturalism to melodrama—before his screen came to life.

ugh, wish it looked better

 

[yogloo]

Wow. I love that article. Thanks.

 

[CrankyJay]

I wish they would just come out and admit the screen is made from OLED.

 

[infiniteloop]

Macrumors via WSJ on dropped Apple Watch features:

The Apple Watch originally featured censors that measured the conductivity of skin, allowing the device to detect stress levels and heart-rate monitoring similar to an electrocardiogram, also known as an EKG. Apple also experimented with ways to detect blood pressure or how much oxygen is in a user's blood. However, a mix of consistency problems and potential oversight caused Apple to switch the focus of the device from health-related to a more general do-everything product.

The skin conductivity features didn't perform well with people who had hairy arms or dry skin, while results varied depending on how tight an Apple Watch was worn on users' wrists. Additionally, if Apple decided to use the health date to provide "health or behavioral advice", the Cupertino company would have to seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators.

While these features were dropped for the first version of the Apple Watch, sources tell WSJ that they could appear in future versions of the device, echoing a Reuters report from September.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/16/apple-watch-original-health-features/

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Thought the New Yorker profile was a good read. Lots of interesting morsels and tidbits. The timeline was hard to follow at times but overall I don't regret the 30 minutes I took to read it. (long article!)

It also makes the Steve Jobs era Apple seem like a lifetime ago. I know its only been 3-4 years but the way this article dips into nostalgia with lots of cute anecdotes really makes it seem like a long time ago.

Fun Times ahead.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Can you scroll by running your finger on the side, or zoom in and out by pinching the side and bottom? Hit the top to display the header/commands? Tap the left side to exit the app?

 

[Deleted member 22576]

I have no idea but I instinctively I feel like the thing will be designed to obviate that functionality's necessity anyway.


When you say "on the side" are you meaning like a capacitive surface that extends off the screen like the Pre?

 

[cakefoo]

It supports sliding gestures from any of the four edges inward- and pretty sure I read somewhere the corners were functional too.

 

[SuperPac]

Can you scroll by running your finger on the side, or zoom in and out by pinching the side and bottom? Hit the top to display the header/commands? Tap the left side to exit the app?

Well, from what I've seen...scrolling is controlled via digital crown or swipe. Zooming in and out on images and maps is also via the digital crown. There are headers, but it seems anecdotally they will always be displayed and not hidden unless you're looking at a Glance (not the full app). You press the digital crown in to exit an app. If you're a few menu layers deep in an app I believe you can tap a header at the top left to go one step back.

 

[Ether_Snake]

So the sides of the watch itself aren't touch-sensitive then. I thought they would be but I hadn't really paid attention to it. It seems like it would really make it more intuitive to use.

 

[BeatResetsTheWorld]

The Apple Watch is designed to remain dark until a wearer raises his or her arm. In the prototypes worn around the Cupertino campus at the end of last year, this feature was still glitchy. For Marc Newson, it took three attempts—an escalation of acting styles, from naturalism to melodrama—before his screen came to life.

I have to say, I love this feature in the Fitbit. Surprised Apple doesn't have it working well yet

 

[Deleted member 22576]

So the sides of the watch itself aren't touch-sensitive then. I thought they would be but I hadn't really paid attention to it. It seems like it would really make it more intuitive to use.

I think most of that stuff has been put on the crown.
Speaking of the crown I still expect that thing to be removable.

want a murderd out black watch with a bright neon crown

 

[sc0la]

I would be interested in seeing the make parts of the glass that aren't screen touch capacitive, not the metal sides though. Then you could scroll without obstruction, he crown covers most of that functionality, but is unidirectional.

 

[Napoleonthechimp]

As it turns out my cousin (who works part-time in a supermarket) decided to spend hundreds out of his wages on an iphone and one of these watches. I now think less of him (for the watch and not the phone).

 

[Blackhead]

It supports sliding gestures from any of the four edges inward- and pretty sure I read somewhere the corners were functional too.

Anyone have a source for this? Can't seem to find this info about sliding corners...

Pebble is coming out with a new OS soon designed by the former webOS team! I'm hyped! Pebble uses all physical controls, no touchscreen.

Android wear devices are voice control and touchscreen.

Apple watch is voice control, touchscreen and a few tacked-on physical controls i.e. digital crown, force touch.

 

[SuperPac]

Anyone have a source for this? Can't seem to find this info about sliding corners...

Pebble is coming out with a new OS soon designed by the former webOS team! I'm hyped! Pebble uses all physical controls, no touchscreen.

Android wear devices are voice control and touchscreen.

Apple watch is voice control, touchscreen and a few tacked-on physical controls i.e. digital crown, force touch.

Don't a few Android Wear watches have crowns? The 360 and that new Urbane model.

As for the sliding from the corners, I haven't heard any of that - just sliding from the bottom, but I don't think any of that is "new" to the Apple Watch in particular. I think the swipe up is to bring up the Glances. Aside from that I dunno.

 

[Blackhead]

Don't a few Android Wear watches have crowns? The 360 and that new Urbane model.

As for the sliding from the corners, I haven't heard any of that - just sliding from the bottom, but I don't think any of that is "new" to the Apple Watch in particular. I think the swipe up is to bring up the Glances. Aside from that I dunno.

Some Android Wear watches have crowns but only use it as a button, if that. But the android wear OS is designed to not need it. There's no zooming homescreen or zooming maps or zooming photos apps. There's no item picker i.e. long list of options to scroll through. I honestly don't think iWatch needs it either. Nobody needs to be looking at photos on a <2" screen especially when the device has to be tethered to a >4" screen to function. You can use the iWatch crown to change the colors or whatever of the watchface but all those options can be set via the Watch app (floating around in the iOS 8.2 betas) and it's not something you'll be changing often. I'm trying to keep an open mind but... the force touch is mainly used to bring up an options menu. Removing hidden menus from Android was the first thing Google did when they decided to take Design seriously. Android wear doesn't have any of that. I'm reading that New Yorker article about how the Apple Designers wasted so much time trying to blur the corners of photos on the iWatch, or how they picked the display so dancing butterflies look good, and I'm scared that the Emperor has no fucking clothes on...

more debbie downer: 4 Reasons to Expect a Slow Start From the Apple Watch | Wired

1. Battery Life
2. Android&#8217;s Head Start
3. Social Acceptability
4. No Killer App

p.s. recent rumor says the next Pebble watch will have a microphone so perhaps voice control (that I will never use) will be available on that as well.

 

[badcrumble]

I don't think the digital crown is a bad idea to be honest. Feels like it's nearly identical to the Click Wheel from the good old classic iPod days, and that was a pretty strong interface element.

 

[Purple Cheeto]

Anyone have a source for this? Can't seem to find this info about sliding corners...

Pebble is coming out with a new OS soon designed by the former webOS team! I'm hyped! Pebble uses all physical controls, no touchscreen.

Android wear devices are voice control and touchscreen.

Apple watch is voice control, touchscreen and a few tacked-on physical controls i.e. digital crown, force touch.

Action-based events. The single tap gesture is the primary way that users interact with your app. Table rows, buttons, switches, and other controls are all operated by tapping on them. These taps are then reported to the code in your WatchKit extension.

Gestures. The system handles all gestures on your behalf, using them to implement standard behaviors:
Vertical swipes scroll the current screen.
Horizontal swipes display the previous or next page in a page-based interface.
Left edge swipes navigate back to the parent interface controller.
Taps indicate selection or interaction. Taps are handled by the system and reported to your WatchKit extension&#8217;s action methods.
Apple Watch does not support multi-finger gestures such as pinches.

Force Touch. As well as sensing touch, the Retina display also detects the amount of force applied by the user&#8217;s finger. When this combination of touch and force is detected, the system displays the context menu (if any) associated with the current screen. Apps use this menu to display actions relevant to the current content. For more information, see Menus.

The Digital Crown. Designed for finely tuned, accelerated scrolling&#8212;without obstructing the Apple Watch display&#8212;the Digital Crown makes it easy for the user to scroll through longer pages. Third-party apps use the Digital Crown only to enable scrolling.

That's what the documentation says.

 

[Ether_Snake]

That's really underwhelming compared to a touch sensitive band around the watch itself. That I think would make it much better and more impressive. I guess it would be more expensive.

 

[cakefoo]

I may have mis-read some documentation, or it might have been a feature on some other watch I recently saw a review for. For the Apple Watch, yeah I only see the left and bottom edge swipes confirmed. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

I've been under the impression up until now that force touch is only one additional layer of input (ie normal touch and then "force touch") but the wording in Purple cheetos post of the documentation ("The amount of pressure applied) makes it sound like it could be more analogue? Anyone have an idea?

 

[DECK'ARD]

I've been under the impression up until now that force touch is only one additional layer of input (ie normal touch and then "force touch") but the wording in Purple cheetos post of the documentation ("The amount of pressure applied) makes it sound like it could be more analogue? Anyone have an idea?

Hard to tell, the watch doesn't need degrees of pressure but Apple have probably been looking into that. Seems an obvious thing to introduce on an iPad revision.

So probably reading too much into the wording where the watch is concerned now, but wouldn't be surprised to see it turn up later down the road.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Nah, it could be put to use. I can already imagine weird gradient bars filling and changing based on how firm you're pressing. Shit lets get some suretype-like weirdness up in here for filling in those imessage bubbles idk. We need all the input we can get.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Some Android Wear watches have crowns but only use it as a button, if that. But the android wear OS is designed to not need it. There's no zooming homescreen or zooming maps or zooming photos apps. There's no item picker i.e. long list of options to scroll through. I honestly don't think iWatch needs it either. Nobody needs to be looking at photos on a <2" screen especially when the device has to be tethered to a >4" screen to function. You can use the iWatch crown to change the colors or whatever of the watchface but all those options can be set via the Watch app (floating around in the iOS 8.2 betas) and it's not something you'll be changing often. I'm trying to keep an open mind but... the force touch is mainly used to bring up an options menu. Removing hidden menus from Android was the first thing Google did when they decided to take Design seriously. Android wear doesn't have any of that. I'm reading that New Yorker article about how the Apple Designers wasted so much time trying to blur the corners of photos on the iWatch, or how they picked the display so dancing butterflies look good, and I'm scared that the Emperor has no fucking clothes on...

Yeah, this is why I don't really buy the digital crown as a game changing feature. I feel like most of the things it will be truly useful for are functions you probably shouldn't be doing on your watch anyway. Not that it won't be a nice feature or anything, but I think the haptic feedback (assuming it works as I think it does) is a much more important one.

 

[SuperPac]

Gruber contemplates Apple Watch pricing - http://daringfireball.net/2015/02/apple_watch_pricing

He now thinks the Edition will be $10-20k, that the regular one will be $700-$1000+.

I had my eyes set on a regular Apple Watch figuring they'd probably start around $500. I'm an Apple fan and buy iPhones every year, never been much for the "LOL Apple tax" reactions to their pricing. If they didn't want the Stainless Steel model to be at a decent, acceptable mass-market price why call the $350 edition the "Sport" - why not call that one the Apple Watch and come up with some other name for the stainless one?

*SIGH* Hopefully we'll get an event soon where all this crap gets cleared up.

 

[subrock]

The meltdown when the Edition is $10k is going to be DELICIOUS. I can't wait.

This one will be mine: (but oh man it's going to burn if its over $1000)

 

[Majine]

One thing I don't understand: Are the crowns exchangeable as well? I see they have a style to them that matches the bands.

Example:

 

[Sapiens]

This is going to sound completely insane, but I wish the screen was 3D with eye/face tracking to provide an illusion of depth for analogue-style watch faces. I mean, if they're going to cost 10,000....

 

[Alchemy]

If there are a good amount of health reasons to use the Apple Watch, I'd buy in after a revision or two gets the battery life up.

 

[subrock]

One thing I don't understand: Are the crowns exchangeable as well? I see they have a style to them that matches the bands.

Example:

relevant: http://sixcolors.com/2015/02/whats-up-with-apple-watch-editions-digital-crown/

 

[Majine]

relevant: http://sixcolors.com/2015/02/whats-up-with-apple-watch-editions-digital-crown/

So basically if you have OCD, you're stuck with one set of bands.

 

[Guevara]

Gruber contemplates Apple Watch pricing - http://daringfireball.net/2015/02/apple_watch_pricing

He now thinks the Edition will be $10-20k, that the regular one will be $700-$1000+.

I had my eyes set on a regular Apple Watch figuring they'd probably start around $500. I'm an Apple fan and buy iPhones every year, never been much for the "LOL Apple tax" reactions to their pricing. If they didn't want the Stainless Steel model to be at a decent, acceptable mass-market price why call the $350 edition the "Sport" - why not call that one the Apple Watch and come up with some other name for the stainless one?

*SIGH* Hopefully we'll get an event soon where all this crap gets cleared up.

The crazy thing about this, and a good point by Gruber, is that the Edition will be responsible for the vast majority of Watch revenue by far.

Actually from this post: http://daringfireball.net/2015/02/apple_watch_split

 

[Purple Cheeto]

I've been under the impression up until now that force touch is only one additional layer of input (ie normal touch and then "force touch") but the wording in Purple cheetos post of the documentation ("The amount of pressure applied) makes it sound like it could be more analogue? Anyone have an idea?

From the documentation:

Force Touch. As well as sensing touch, the Retina display also detects the amount of force applied by the user&#8217;s finger. When this combination of touch and force is detected, the system displays the context menu (if any) associated with the current screen. Apps use this menu to display actions relevant to the current content. For more information, see Menus.

The Retina display with Force Touch found on Apple Watch provides a new way to interact with content. Instead of just tapping items on the screen, pressing the screen with a small amount of force activates the context menu (if any) associated with the current interface controller.

They only really want you to use force touch for context menus, or maybe that's all you can use it for. The documentation isn't super clear.

Nah, it could be put to use. I can already imagine weird gradient bars filling and changing based on how firm you're pressing. Shit lets get some suretype-like weirdness up in here for filling in those imessage bubbles idk. We need all the input we can get.

I don't think that is the intention for force touch at all.

This is a good read on a lot of the UI/UX for Apple Watch: http://www.propelics.com/ux-apple-watch-watchkit-cant-watch-yet/

 

[subrock]

So basically if you have OCD, you're stuck with one set of bands.

AUGH MY EYES!

Re force touch. I think it is just a threshold for a certain amount of pressure. As developers, we don't have access to the value of the amount of pressure applied. That being said, there are applications for analog touches elsewhere in the device.

 

[LCfiner]

The meltdown when the Edition is $10k is going to be DELICIOUS. I can't wait.

This one will be mine: (but oh man it's going to burn if its over $1000)

I think it was discussed in this thread but, really, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;ll be too much yammering about the prices of the gold watches. they&#8217;re gold. shit&#8217;s expensive. tech press and online commentators will make some quips and move on. there&#8217;s going to be easy comparisons to gold rolexes to put pricing in perspective.

It&#8217;s the price of the steel model you&#8217;re eyeing - the one with a link bracelet - that could end up at over $1k, that I think will create the most negative reaction. Because it looks like it should be close to the sport edition price but it&#8217;ll be priced like a macbook.

the steel ones are the ones with the basic &#8220;watch&#8221; name. people are going to expect them to be fairly close to that $350 low end price.

And I agree that Apple is gonna charge a fortune for the higher end bands. heck, a new Omega SS bracelet costs over 1k. Apple will price theirs similarly.

I do think Guber&#8217;s low end estimate for the SS edition is still a bit high. I think the one with the rubber strap will be closer to 500 than 700. but the fancier straps are gonna be in the same price range as luxury watches and it&#8217;s going to seem insane to people who don&#8217;t know how that market is priced.

as an aside, I&#8217;m a little worried by this potential dive from Apple into luxury pricing and massive pricing jumps for fashion. In that recent New Yorker article, I literally cringed when it said Ive was curious (did they use the word &#8220;interested&#8221;?) about what Vertu is doing with phones. ugh. Fucking Vertu phones, man...

 

[SuperPac]

as an aside, I’m a little worried by this potential dive from Apple into luxury pricing and massive pricing jumps for fashion. In that recent New Yorker article, I literally cringed when it said Ive was curious (did they use the word “interested”?) about what Vertu is doing with phones. ugh. Fucking Vertu phones, man...

I agree. There has always been an "apple tax" but it's not like they've made gold/steel laptops, ipads or phones that had much difference in price based on look/color. If the stainless model is better, then fine - but it's an iphone accessory that's going to cost more than the sim-free version of the phone itself?

 

[B!TCH]

Hmm, the non-sport watches may be a mistake. I don't know but it doesn't seem comparable to other high end watches because this is a computer that will be obsolete in 12-24 months. It's a different market.

 

[RedNumberFive]

Hmm, the non-sport watches may be a mistake. I don't know but it doesn't seem comparable to other high end watches because this is a computer that will be obsolete in 12-24 months. It's a different market.

That was my thought as well. As the owner of a first gen ipad, I know the feeling of Apple quickly abandoning support for the first release of a product.

 

[Guevara]

Hmm, the non-sport watches may be a mistake. I don't know but it doesn't seem comparable to other high end watches because this is a computer that will be obsolete in 12-24 months. It's a different market.

Not to mention, a $10k+ luxury watch made in a factory in China?

 

[LyleLanley]

Not to mention, a $10k+ luxury watch made in a factory in China?

They could ways assemble those in America.

 

[DOWN]

Anyone else wish there wasn't a sport version that's supposedly more scratch resistant? I don't think it looks quite as nice, but it makes me wonder how much trouble the regular version would get into compared with the sport metal.

Then again, no way am I buying this thing first gen. It isn't pretty overall, it's a little fat, and it is so sure to improve by the time i'm convinced.

 

[Dany]

Well the sports edition seems like right up my ally. But the display may be lacking compared to the other editions. But I agree, it needs to be incredibly slimmed down. I just want to go running with my headphones in my watch and listen to my spotify playlist. :/

 

[DOWN]

Well the sports edition seems like right up my ally. But the display may be lacking compared to the other editions. But I agree, it needs to be incredibly slimmed down. I just want to go running with my headphones in my watch and listen to my spotify playlist. :/

Would that be because of the Ion-X glass on the sport, vs. Sapphire on the standard/edition models? I don't personally know how they differ visually, or in scratch resistance. Sounds like the Sport version is meant to be lighter above all else.

I am very curious how well each holds up to scratching with them using different materials. At least they all look good in those campaign photos, if not very Photoshopped.

EDIT:

I must say, the shape looks a lot better and has an overall slimmer look in these photos for some reason. Perhaps all the close-up shots Apple has been doing are not the most flattering to my eyes.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

From the documentation:





They only really want you to use force touch for context menus, or maybe that's all you can use it for. The documentation isn't super clear.



I don't think that is the intention for force touch at all.

This is a good read on a lot of the UI/UX for Apple Watch: http://www.propelics.com/ux-apple-watch-watchkit-cant-watch-yet/

I don't really know what the intention is software wise I'm just curious if the hardware Itself is capable of sensing a gradient of pressure.

When the iphone1 came out the accelerometer was presented as a binary thing, and I remember when the app store and games came along being very surprised it was actually capable of very minute movements.

That's what I'm curious about. IF the hardware itself can detect an entire range of pressures that could open some very useful things eventually.

There is a ton of utility to be had with an analogue button.