Everyone’s biggest question since the Apple Watch was announced last Fall was battery life. During the keynote, Tim Cook said 18 hours. But we all know the asterisk beside that number. Luckily, Apple published a great resource with more details.
PermalinkPeople that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck.
One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period. That’s insane when you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated our social interactions over the past decade.
One of my biggest speculations is the change that the Apple Watch and similar smart watches will bring to culture. This article from TechCrunch is stellar, but says exactly what I have been thinking for months. With notifications on your wrist, less things will require your phone to come out of your pocket. A quick raise of your arm and you see what the notification is and you can get right back to life.
PermalinkMarketing director Robbie Abed said that he couldn’t recall a single client request a smartwatch app before the Apple Watch debut, but some have “already decided” they want an app for Apple’s wearable, while others are asking whether it should form part of their marketing plans.
It makes sense. The only two smart watch platforms before the Apple Watch were Pebble and Android Wear. While Pebble had good sales, Android has not. It’s yet to be seen if the interest in the Apple Watch will be more than that of Pebble and Android Wear, but we’ll know shortly.
PermalinkPebble Steel vs. Apple Watch pic.twitter.com/z1cABZtXuW
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) March 3, 2015I said last week that the new Pebble watch was functional, not pretty. Well, looks like they fixed that. This looks like it was designed by a company that understood watch design.
Permalink
Apple today started sending out invites to a press event to be held on March 9th. Details on the topic of the "Spring Forward" event were not revealed, but it likely involves the Apple Watch, which is slated to launch in April. We expect Apple to confirm the final pricing and launch details for the wearable device.
Looks like we will soon be finding out more about the Apple Watch!
Permalink... So, yeah, this is technology going forward: pic.twitter.com/8Xmzh8ZO0T
— Emanuel Sá (@emanuelsa) February 24, 2015Got a point there. The Pebble watch is functional, not pretty. Apple made a point in their announcement that they were following the history of watchmaking when it came to design and function. Pebble openly mocks this. While I think Pebble is good in it’s own way, it is not jewelry like the Apple Watch is positioned as. This will be interesting when the Apple Watch hits the market in April.
PermalinkI think the same thing is happening right now in the computer and mobile devices industry. Computers and phones have historically been sold based on performance, screen size, and battery life. The slow march of technological progress through the 1990s and 2000s was obvious to anyone who knows the word “megahertz”. But in the past couple of years, I think we have finally reached the 1945 equivalent in automobiles: all devices sold today can do everything any reasonable customer would want. The computer is now feature-complete. Almost all model segmentation is now based on the personality of the customer.
Something that my PC-loving, Android-using friends haven’t recognized yet: the spec don’t matter to the average consumer. Even as a tech guy, the specs seldom matter. When I bought my new MacBook Air last year, the only thing I upgraded was the RAM, knowing that I couldn’t upgrade that down the line. The 128 gigabyte SSD was more than enough, the processor was more than enough, and the graphics were more than enough. I know that I can get a more powerful computer if I go with a MacBook Pro. I know that I could have a Retina screen if I went with a different line of Macs. But I wanted the 11" Air because of the size. Simple as that.
It will be interesting to see what the pricing scheme is with the Apple Watch. Will there be different storage sizes? Will the two different screen sizes have different prices? Will a band come with the watch or will you buy that seperately? We’ll know in less than two months.
PermalinkFor the watch, it was a year before Ive settled on straps that clicked into slots. Ive later tested watchbands by wearing them outside the studio with other watches. 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.
Love the simple logic of it. So many competitors to the Apple Watch let function follow form. A round watch has an interface designed to be round, but the moment you have an interface that scrolls, that round screen becomes the bane of your existence. A rectange just makes sense.
And this great piece on Steve Jobs:
Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,” he said. He lamented that there were “so many anecdotes” about Jobs’s acerbity: “His intention, and motivation, wasn’t to be hurtful.”
Those close to me know that I share a personality type with Steve Jobs. INTJ. I too see the value in being unambiguous in feedback. Be clear. Vanity has no place in this line of work. If all members of the team care to produce the best product, being clear about what is wrong about it is most important. If people care more about themselves, feeling get hurt too easily over something that has nothing to do with feelings. I just try to be a bit less of an ass than Steve Jobs could be. Sometimes I success. Sometimes I don’t.
Permalink[T]he feature that might give Swatch its biggest advantage is that the smartwatch won't have to be charged.
With the Apple Watch right around the corner, it’ll be interesting as more and more potential competitors try to carve out a piece of a smartwatch market, a market that currently barely exists.
Permalink[T]he earliest watches lacked a minute hand because of the need to pack so much technology in to power them and also to drive the “display.” This wasn’t a problem since the accuracy was so poor they drifted off accurate timekeeping by up to hours every day! Their tiny springs and inefficient clockwork also meant they didn’t store much power. Thus they needed winding very regularly—at first with a key, just like traditional grandfather clocks and whatnot, which is self-evidently inconvenient.
Don’t Stress About Smartwatch Battery Life—It’s A 500 Year Old Problem, Kit Eaton
Great article about the history of watches and battery life, going back 500 years. It’s interesting to me that Apple is very much positioning their Apple Watch as a watch and not just a wearable.
Permalink