Support NeoGAF

[Fliesen]

I feel the iPad was a massive success because of the "bigger is better" trend that was untapped,

and now we're witnessing the untapping of the "not in your pocket is better" trend. just like "too small" of a screen is a first world problem, so is "getting my phone out of my pocket / purse(!)" - still i feel it's an inconvenience people are willing to have solved.

and the fact that 99% of what people did with their laptops they could easily do with an iPad so the purchase was easy. The Apple Watch I'm not so sure, I wear a watch everyday and I can't see myself wanting to look at the dial for anything else but the time. But we will see what Apple does to convince us on Monday, because they haven't done so yet for me.

Were you personally super convinced by the iPhone and iPad at their reveals?

With new Apple devices i feel like you have to actually use it to realize what it'll actually do for you. When my iPod had a broken earphone plug, i went into an Apple Store planning to get a new iPod. I left the store with an iPhone (2G).
I was utterly disappointed by the iPad's unveiling, especially the fact that it was just using the upscaled phone OS. After setting up an iPad for my grandpa, i was convinced i'd be getting the iPad 2 on release day. My Nike Fuelband broke recently, so i'm gonna be giving the AppleWatch a chance, even the first gen model, which i intended to skip.

Millions will still run to apple stores to buy it day 1 regardless

and rightfully so. It's an exciting new product.

Spoiler

and also a great opportunity for scalpers. as always

There's videos of riots over 20% off PS4s during grand openings of big electronics stores. At least the campers at the Apple stores are somewhat civilized.

 

[Theonik]

It's definitely a niche, made even more of a niche by the fact that most people who this thing is targeted at already have something in their pocket that offers the same functionality, plus a lot more. For me personally, I'd be open to a good smart watch, but the Apple device isn't that. It loses right out of the gate for me simply because it's ugly as shit.
They also said big phones would never be popular. Apple says lots of dumb shit. As do a lot of companies.

All I'm saying is they will probably change their tune pretty fast.

Spoiler

I still think the iPhone 6 is an unsightly monstrosity and I wouldn't touch it, large phones are terrible as phones, and they also made it too thin to actually be durable and not have that camera bulge but that's not really an argument for this thread.

i personally don't believe that at the release of iOS 1.0 they were so utterly blind to the possibility of native apps.
I do believe a company like Apple does have a roadmap that goes further than 1 year.

I don't think Apple would have put so much emphasis on this if they were planning to change it so fast in that case. They probably still had some kind of roadmap but the damage control and quick change of tune after jailbroken phones illustrated the utility for this kind of thing probably forced them to reveal their hand sooner.

 

[Andrew Ryan]

Were you personally super convinced by the iPhone and iPad at their reveals?

I was blown away by the iPhone reveal, the iPad reveal I was skeptical but was convinced as soon as I saw it in person. So maybe the Apple Watch may be the same, but as of now the appeal is close to zero for me, but I'm still very curious about it

 

[Fliesen]

I don't think Apple would have put so much emphasis on this if they were planning to change it so fast in that case. They probably still had some kind of roadmap but the damage control and quick change of tune after jailbroken phones illustrated the utility for this kind of thing probably forced them to reveal their hand sooner.

eh... Apple was always vocal (if not cocky) about the current iteration of their product being "the best they could / should do at that very moment" - especially during the late Jobs era.

i think there's a stark difference between what Apple knows and has planned along their roadmap and what they communicate to the public. (less so today than during Jobs - see the example about native AppleWatch apps)
They're just big fans of treating what they currently sell as the best damn thing since sliced bread and not putting much focus onto things that are yet to come. That's why they only pre-announce stuff if they feel like it's necessary (due to supply chain leaks or them having to beta test the software over the summer anyways)

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

They're just big fans of treating what they currently sell as the best damn thing since sliced bread and not putting much focus onto things that are yet to come. That's why they only pre-announce stuff if they feel like it's necessary (due to supply chain leaks or them having to beta test the software over the summer anyways)

They're a company trying to sell high end products to people. Of course they're going to flaunt and bump their chest about what they're doing. Every.single.company does this when they announce products. Pot shots happen all over and features are touted as being the end all be all.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

$16 million for Pebble Time says otherwise about that market. You underestimate the smartwatch and its growing fanbase, particularly thanks to the growing social trend of fitness.

This signals nothing to me. If anything it signals that Pebble is still struggling to remain relevant in a market being penetrated by the big guns (Samsung, Moto, Huawei, Asus, Apple, LG). Why? Because they again turned to kickstarter as a way to drum up marketing and buzz. If Pebble was really driving the market and creating a fanbase they wouldn't have used it.

 

[Fliesen]

They're a company trying to sell high end products to people. Of course they're going to flaunt and bump their chest about what they're doing. Every.single.company does this when they announce products. Pot shots happen all over and features are touted as being the end all be all.

yeah, i didn't say there was anything wrong with that.

They're a "here it is, it's the best damn thing, you can order it ... right now. see ya around next year." company

i actually prefer this over "here it is, it will be the best damn thing when we release it in Q4/2015, you can order it then, price and exact release date is still TBA, also we'll be announcing multiple similar devices until then. See ya next week at CES"

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

i actually prefer this over "here it is, it will be the best damn thing when we release it in Q4/2015, you can order it then, price and exact release date is still TBA, also we'll be announcing multiple similar devices until then. See ya next week at CES"

Or the Google method for software of: Here it is and it's out now, but it's only about 75% complete and we'll be adding those features we showed off...eventually.

 

[jts]

Remember when Apple claimed that webapps and html5 would be enough for ANYTHING their users would EVER want on the iPhone? Yeah that didn't last long. (thanks homebrew)

Remember when Apple makes people believe they are thinking something is the best thing ever when they are actually already planning for something even better? Only happens all the time.

iPhone OS was built from OS X. The App Store was always on the table.

edit: sorry, replied without noticing this was already addressed/discussed.

 

[Blackhead]

Apple's Secret Lab Lets Facebook Fine-Tune Apps Before the Watch's Debut | Businessweek

In a lab shut off from communication with the outside world and where visitors can't bring in a pad of paper, let alone a phone, Apple Inc. has given some companies special early access to Apple Watch.

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Facebook Inc., United Continental Holdings Inc. and others...

"There's a lot of confidentiality," said Stephen Gates, a vice president and creative director for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which is building a watch application to unlock hotel-room doors. Apple featured Starwood's application in September...

"Not every e-mail that lands in your in-box deserves to jerk you away from what you're doing at that moment in time," said Shawn Carolan, the co-founder of Handle Inc., an e-mail and calendar productivity app, and an early investor in Siri... Handle's watch application to send people reminders about e-mails in part based on location...

Social networks also are creating versions of their apps. Facebook's Instagram has developed a program to browse through photos and to be sent notifications when certain people post a picture. Twitter Inc. and Pinterest Inc. also will have applications. Airlines are building applications to check in to flights. Automakers are developing software to help locate a car in a parking lot, and Cook said earlier this month that the watch could unlock and turn on a car. During the September event, BMW's app was revealed to let users track their electric cars' battery charging status...

Not everyone is rushing to build watch apps. Slaven Radic, founder of Tapstream Network Inc., an application marketing software company, works with app makers to improve their business, and has found that many of his clients are holding back, especially as some struggle to see an early use case...

In working with Apple Watch, some developers have noticed problems, including slowness. The watch requires an iPhone to work and the Bluetooth connection between the phone and the watch caused lag time for some applications, one person said...

 

[Fliesen]

Apple's Secret Lab Lets Facebook Fine-Tune Apps Before the Watch's Debut | Businessweek

good call. It's an entirely new platform, but if people pay top dollar, they wanna have apps that have the sort of polish / functionality that we're expecting to get.

they can't afford essential apps like Facebook only adding proper AppleWatch functionality in August.
I hate any messenger app that doesn't let me quickreply form the lockscreen or notification popup.

 

[badcrumble]

I really hope that Apple's work on the Apple Watch leads them to seriously improve iOS's notification center into something much more focused and much less cluttered. Sure you can customize it (and you can customize Do Not Disturb mode) into something that is way less intrusive and much more useful, but a properly Apple approach would be to make it work that way from the start.

Giving iOS 9 a universal VIP/Favorites API that is set in your Contacts app and can affect third-party email/messaging apps would be fantastic, for example.

Oh, and I think third-party apps *can* use the NFC, unless that apparently-happening hotel app that lets you unlock your hotel room with your watch is using some other mechanism.

 

[border]

"the iPad is just a big iPod touch"

people often forget how much "where and how you wear something" (ergonomics) have an influence to its applications. - we're blinded by boiling things down to components and functionality.

There was a pretty big case to be made for the iPhone and iPad at the time. People liked the idea of a smartphone, but all the phones available were just garbage. Apple made a really good smartphone, and the rest is history.

People liked the idea of a cheap, ultra-lightweight computer that they could take anywhere and fit in a jacket-pocket, but the netbook experience was just awful and heavily compromised. Instead of that, we got the iPad.

In the instance of the smartwatch though, it's not like the iPhone/iPad where there's this incredibly desirable use-case that people haven't yet engineered the right solution for. Ok so you can check notifications without getting your phone out of your pocket -- is that convenience worth $300-$500, plus wearing a device you have to recharge every couple days? Are currently available smartwatches just engineered wrong, or is the problem that they just don't have very broad appeal?

 

[Antiwhippy]

There was a pretty big case to be made for the iPhone and iPad at the time. People liked the idea of a smartphone, but all the phones available were just garbage. Apple made a really good smartphone, and the rest is history.

People liked the idea of a cheap, ultra-lightweight computer that they could take anywhere and fit in a jacket-pocket, but the netbook experience was just awful and heavily compromised. Instead of that, we got the iPad.

In the instance of the smartwatch though, it's not like the iPhone/iPad where there's this incredibly desirable use-case that people haven't yet engineered the right solution for. Ok so you can check notifications without getting your phone out of your pocket -- is that convenience worth $300-$500, plus wearing a device you have to recharge every couple days? Are currently available smartwatches just engineered wrong, or is the problem that they just don't have very broad appeal?

It's not just notifications though. For me it's the fitness tracking, having turn by turn at a glance on your wrist and being able to control your music without having to switch out your phone constantly.

A smartwatch's potential definitely does not lie in just notifications. Though I don't agree with apple's app based UI for the watch either.