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Apple Watch |OT| Apple invents the watch!

Some non-tech site reviews:

WSJ: Apple Watch: The smartwatch finally makes sense.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-w...watch-finally-makes-sense-1428494495?mod=e2tw

NYT: Apple Watch Bliss, but Only After a Steep Learning Curve
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/t...ss-but-only-after-a-steep-learning-curve.html

It's almost like they are trying not to piss off Apple with some of these titles. The body of the NYT article hardly makes it seem like bliss. Especially the siri dictation issues and some of the apps flat out not working properly right now.

The WSJ article has a sub header that starts with "If you can tolerate its flaws".

The fact that the UI is slow according to Verge is worrying.

Maybe they can fix this with software updates?
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace

thought these snippets from the recode article were interesting

The most interesting observation from my workouts so far is that the heart-rate readings I’m getting from the Apple Watch during indoor cycling are very close to the readings I’ve gotten from a chest monitor. I haven’t yet seen the kind of wildly-erratic readings that I’ve experienced with other health watches that measure heart rate through the wrist.

This is pretty big for me if it is somehow more accurate than other wrist monitors.



this is shit though:
But asking Siri specific questions on the watch often leads you right back to the iPhone.

Hey Siri, what time is the national championship on? Siri: Use Handoff to search the web for [insert question] on your iPhone.

Hey Siri, how much rain has fallen in California this year? Use Handoff to search the web for [insert question] on your iPhone.

why wouldn't it just be able to use siri on the phone, get a web result and show you at least the initial information? Hopefully they update that - being able to ask siri something when your phone isn't on you would be very handy (not including shouting across the room to siri when your phone is charging)
 
The fact that the UI is slow according to Verge is worrying.

Yeah, that seems to be a worrying theme. All the apps looked like they'll be annoyingly slow and unresponsive. People really should watch The Verge video, or another hands-on video, before deciding on buying one of these. The length of time it took just to load up the Evernote app was long enough that I could see it driving me crazy.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
I didn't realise devs can't access the heartrate monitor. Does apple's fitness/healthkit allow other apps to get at that data? Eg so Apple does the capture but apps like myfitnesspal can read it? If not, then that is a big restriction - there are already lots of apps that work with each other, and being limited to Apple's solution wouldn't be great.
 
I was getting really tempted to order one this Friday despite the fact that I have a Pebble Time coming in May but I am starting to think I will hold off a year. I still ultimately want an Apple Watch though. I love the concept of smart watches and I think they are going to get it right.
 
The Verge review is quite damning (ignoring potential) and it still gets 7.

But right now, it’s disappointing to see the Watch struggle with performance. What good is a watch that makes you wait? Rendering notifications can slow everything down to a crawl. Buttons can take a couple taps to register. It feels like the Apple Watch has been deliberately pulled back in order to guarantee a full day of battery life.
 

-1x-1.jpg

Love the look of this device.
 

chadskin

Member
I was getting really tempted to order one this Friday despite the fact that I have a Pebble Time coming in May but I am starting to think I will hold off a year. I still ultimately want an Apple Watch though. I love the concept of smart watches and I think they are going to get it right.

Same here, I really like the idea of what the Watch does but with Apple it's always good to wait for the second or third generation before jumping in.
 
KR8lVq.gif


For some reason I'm still tempted to buy one to mess around with. Maybe I'll jump in with the Sport version this year and then upgrade to something fancier once it's fully baked.
 
The pricing is outrageous. I'll be waiting for gen 2 anyway but still the goddamn pricing.

To get a black stainless steel watch you have to pay $1000 even if you don't want the band. Another thing, why do the bands cost more than the watch which has all the hardware and technology?

$500 for just the steel band, are you fucking kidding me? Who will buy this shit?
 

SuperPac

Member
KR8lVq.gif


For some reason I'm still tempted to buy one to mess around with. Maybe I'll jump in with the Sport version this year and then upgrade to something fancier once it's fully baked.

For my own use case, I plan to turn most notifications OFF for the watch. Nilay kept them all on for whatever reason. I don't plan to use many apps outside Apple's default stuff and maybe a few others - Evernote takes long enough to load on my iPhone just by itself or update its notification center list on my iPad.
 

Blackhead

Redarse
I'm still waiting for reviews by Ars, GSMArena, Anandtech, MKHD, PocketNow... I'm also surprised that John Gruber wasn't at the Watch event and his review isn't up yet...

Was anyone given an Edition/Sport to review? (SuperPac would you segregate reviews by model when adding them to the OP?) I would really like to know if the Sapphire screen makes a difference... has any review mentioned visibility in sunlight?
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
So far the reviews don't make me feel bad for missing launch.
The "raising wrist to turn on the screen" not working 100% of the time would be the most annoying thing for me.
 

SuperPac

Member
I'm still waiting for reviews by Ars, GSMArena, Anandtech, MKHD, PocketNow... I'm also surprised that John Gruber wasn't at the Watch event and his review isn't up yet...

Was anyone given an Edition/Sport to review? (SuperPac would you segregate reviews by model when adding them to the OP?) I would really like to know if the Sapphire screen makes a difference... has any review mentioned visibility in sunlight?

Gruber wasn't at the event because he had a retinal tear and the fix grounded him from flying.

Yes I'll expand the review section later with quotes and details on what model if there are differences.
 
For my own use case, I plan to turn most notifications OFF for the watch. Nilay kept them all on for whatever reason. I don't plan to use many apps outside Apple's default stuff and maybe a few others - Evernote takes long enough to load on my iPhone just by itself or update its notification center list on my iPad.

It wasn't just Evernote though, even the glances felt like they took too long to load.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace

I’m split on one feature Apple includes on the watch, something called Glances. Glances act like little cards hiding underneath your watch that can give you a glimpse of information from first- and third-party apps. Twitter will display the latest tweet in your timeline, there’s a controller for your music app, or you can see a detailed description of your next calendar appointment. In theory, these screens should be wildly useful for quick access to information. In practice, I found them to be clunky and overwhelmingly useless. What hinders many of the experiences is that the watch must pull information from the phone, leaving you with a spinning wheel that indicates data loading, rather than a quick hit of info.

not great. You'd think it would have that information cached to be instantly displayed. Let me hit a button to refresh it if necessary - most stuff like weather doesn't matter if it is an hour old.


Pricing in the UK isn't too bad for the lowest model - about on par with something like the moto 360 with a little bit of Apple premium sprinkled on top. But it does sound like it needs more time in the oven - lets see what they come up with for next year's model, should be able to iron out lots of wrinkles by then.
 
Yeah, hype is deflating after reading some of the reviews. I know its not a MUST HAVE, but the slow UI and location data stuff is really worrysome.

Might jump in if they make some software updates to fix these but otherwise I dont feel bad about not having this day one.
 
Yeah, I really don't want to see spinning wheels on my smart watch.

I am curious of how the new Pebble will handle this and if there will be loading. I have yet to see a production model in action.
 

Ambient80

Member
Lots of people seem to be running with "It's the world's best smartwatch, but...."

I feel like the tech for these things is just not here yet, particularly from a battery life standpoint. In two years these would have been huge, must-have items. Right now they're just "Oh, neat..."
 
Lots of people seem to be running with "It's the world's best smartwatch, but...."

I feel like the tech for these things is just not here yet, particularly from a battery life standpoint. In two years these would have been huge, must-have items. Right now they're just "Oh, neat..."

None of them have made a decent argument for why it's the "world's best" smart watch either. I have seen it implied in some reviews though.

I am looking forward to some legitimate comparisons.
 

Fliesen

Member
For my own use case, I plan to turn most notifications OFF for the watch. Nilay kept them all on for whatever reason. I don't plan to use many apps outside Apple's default stuff and maybe a few others - Evernote takes long enough to load on my iPhone just by itself or update its notification center list on my iPad.

i'm in the same boat. I have absolutely no interest in navigation, twitter, facebook, evernote(?!) on my watch.
it's all about music controls, notification handling and maybe Wunderlist (for grocery shopping) for me. And i hope those'll offer a reasonable performance.

Since i'll be getting the 38mm one anyways, i can just hand it down to my girlfriend if the 2nd gen really is a worthy upgrade.
i'm no more or less hyped about the thing than i was before the reviews.

the WSJ review put it somewhat accurately:
For now, the Apple Watch is for pioneers. I won’t pay the $1,000 it would cost for the model I tested, only to see a significant improvement roll in before too long. But I plan to pay $400 for the 42mm Sport version once it’s on sale. That’s worth paying for a front-row seat for what’s next in tech.
i'd replace "pioneers" with "enthusiasts" though. maybe even "fanboys". pioneers is almost as cringeworthy as "google glass explorers"


what irks me a bit is this focus on "The AppleWatch is a great device you don't need" in many reviews, since pretty much all of the latest gadgets are things we don't need. That's one of the charms of playing around with the latest consumer electronics, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, any iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 review should have the "well, it's great but you don't really need it, if you have a phone from 2012 or newer." preface.
 

btkadams

Member
Yep, hype massively deflated. If it's going to take native apps to get rid of those loading times, maybe waiting for gen 2 is a better idea.
 

Red

Member
Reviews seem in line with what I expected. Vindicate my decision to not consider a first-gen device. Shows promise though.
 
So far the review which was expected to be the least objective (verge) is the lowest scored and the ones expected to the most objective are rating it the best smartwatch with caveats
 
Question is if they actually will fix these UI speed issues for this generation of hardware.

A lot of the issues seem to come from the fact that most apps are actually running off of your phone. Perhaps when/if Apple actually allows developers to run apps on the Watch things will get better.
 

Vyer

Member
Yeah, nothing about the reviews makes me feel any differently about sitting out these watches at least for the first gen.

The Verge review is quite damning (ignoring potential) and it still gets 7.

7 isn't really any great score for the Verge. Moto360 was like an 8 or something. Their score seems about in line with their review.
 

RoKKeR

Member
Welp, hype deflated. (thankfully) Slow UI, unresponsive watch face when raising your wrist, Siri fail, general UI clutter/quirks... I'll wait for second gen.

I absolutely plan on owning one at some point, but certainly not this round. I wonder how/when they do a refresh of a product line with so many different options.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
the verge video wrap up says how the apple watch is so much more powerful than other smart watches, yet talks constantly about how slow it is because it is always fetching data from the phone. Android Wear seems decently powerful - not that power is all that relevant really. Just seems an odd comment.
 

Rootbeer

Banned
After watching The Verge's video review... yeah, this product is a big no for me. At least in this first iteration. It will be interesting to see, after the first year, how people feel about it and if it catches on, especially after more apps start coming out. But glances, the fact it has to load so much from your phone (slowly), the whole UI they came up with... nothing is resonating with me.

I'm looking at him bring up that transit app and all I can think is... no, I'd rather just do that on my phone and it would probably be faster, too.
 

Fliesen

Member
everyone waiting for second gen - you do know you can easily just ebay your first gen when 2nd gen comes around and that one year of "pioneering" (urgh...) the AppleWatch won't have cost you more than a hundred bucks. I don't see how that would not be worth it.
 

Rootbeer

Banned
everyone waiting for second gen - you do know you can easily just ebay your first gen when 2nd gen comes around and that one year of "pioneering" (urgh...) the AppleWatch won't have cost you more than a hundred bucks. I don't see how that would not be worth it.

But you are assuming people are going to want an Apple watch in a year.
 
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