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Apple Watch sales up over 50% since last year
- a2tech 9y agoI've been seeing them all over. I think they're going to be a sleeper hit with people
- valuearb 9y agoI think they've been a sleeper hit since Day 1. $6B in sales the first year is huge for any watch or consumer product, despite being just a trickle next to iPhones and iPads. At one point I thought they'd peter out, but this year my 80 year old mother bought one (and loves it) and my sister is looking to dump her 3rd Fitbit for an Apple Watch, it made me start to wonder if they were starting to reach the average consumer.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago> $6B in sales the first year is huge for any watch or consumer product, That doesn't prove much. Most of them are collecting dust.
- jacquesm 9y agoApple may not care too much about that. As long as they get sold.
- malnourish 9y agoThere care as much as how it affects the sales of their next ones
- djrogers 9y agoThey’re selling more this year than last, so either there not collecting dust or it doesn’t matter that they are. I’d lean towards the former.
- natch 9y agoCitation needed. I find mine useful enough I would never let it just collect dust. Just the ability to have all sounds and vibrations on my phone turned off at all times, yet still know instantly when I'm getting an incoming phone call or FaceTime call, is worth the price of the device.
- wepple 9y agoSame here. And haven't seen android on a wrist for many months.
- bdcravens 9y agoI replaced my wife's Fitbit soon after the Watch came out (dog at the Fitbit), soon after bought myself one. We were ahead of the curve, and then last Christmas, four of the other six adults in her family all got one.
- saagarjha 9y agoPersonal anecdote: I bought an Apple Watch early and didn't really know what to do with it. It wasn't until I fell off my bike and broke it did I realize how much more exercise I was getting with it. I bought another one soon after.
- jacquesm 9y ago> It wasn't until I fell off my bike and broke it did I realize how much more exercise I was getting with it. How does that relate?
- saagarjha 9y agoI was getting a ton of exercise with the Watch, broke it, and stopped exercising because I wasn't being reminded to.
- kpwags 9y agoI got the Series 2 in January. I love it, but can also see why it might be more of a niche product. $400 for a watch isn't exactly cheap and I know many people who opt for their smartphone over any kind of watch.
- bluedino 9y agoIt's not out of the ordinary to spend $400 on something like a Seiko or Citizen watch - and those are just "dumb" watches
- CydeWeys 9y agoThem being dumb watches is the appeal though. A good "dumb" watch will last decades. An Apple Watch is obsolete after, what, two years? I wear a battery-powered analog quartz dumb watch on my wrist and I love it. I change the battery every couple years and that's it. It tells perfectly accurate time (way more accurate than a mechanical watch costing orders of magnitude more) and will never be obsolete.
- capkutay 9y agoI think an obsolete apple watch will still be able to at least mirror the functionality of any 'dumb' watch.
- xuki 9y agoNot when the battery finally dies.
- wepple 9y agoBe properly waterproof, never need a charge, and take abuse for 30 years like a $150 automatic?
- bigiain 9y agoI've got a 70 year old mechanical watch on my wrist right now. I bought it second hand from eBay, but paid significantly under $150 for it...
- eco 9y agoI hope this motivates Android Wear manufacturers to make a decent watch. Right now they are all pretty mediocre. You either get a fat sport watch with LTE or a less fat watch with very few compelling features. I just want NFC (for Android Pay), heart rate monitor, no-LTE (in exchange for being thinner) in a classic, non-sport style.
- threesixandnine 9y agoHuawei has some nice offerings...
- eco 9y agoHuawei was expected to have some (the first edition watches were well loved but growing old). Then the Huawei Watch 2 ended up being a thick sportwatch with LTE. The Huawei Watch 2 Classic, which looks marginally less sporty, is inexplicably is just as thick as the Watch 2 despite ditching all the LTE circuitry. It's also roughly $100 more expensive (figure that one out).
- ClassyJacket 9y agoOne of the big things stopping me switching to Android is that the devices - both the phones and watches - are just too big for me. I've worn my friend's Gear S3 - it's laughably gigantic on me, being wider than my wrist, and actually doing the band up is out of the question.
- gallerdude 9y agoApple Watch, or accessories in general, are something you can buy at any time that increases the utility of your device. Compare this to something like an OS update that gets released annually for free, but you can’t really control when you get it.
- vermontdevil 9y agoI have the Series 2 and it's been great for me. 1) Vibrating alarm. Perfect as I hate these big vibrating discs for the deaf. They break frequently. 2) Message/Email notification. It vibrates when I get a text message so I can look and see if it's worth my time to reply or wait till later. Same with email. 3) Fitness - great for running and can even leave the phone at home (Strava especially).
- seanp2k2 9y agoIt's really sad to me how terrible many accessibility devices are. I get that it's a small market, but it's almost like no one even cares enough to make a really excellent product for people with disabilities. Because there is a smaller selection and because people rely on this gear in ways able-bodied persons don't need to, it's even more important to get it right and make it affordable but high-quality. It saddens me that these people are so underserved due to capitalistic forces.
- yvhhjbb 9y ago> It saddens me that these people are so underserved due to capitalistic forces. Are you serious? 99% percent of people are forced to deal with the noise pollution from self-checkout machines, every single day. How's that "underserved"?
- InclinedPlane 9y agoThe economy is weird right now in a lot of ways, especially due to excess consolidation. You see a lot of big companies who make tons of money almost too easily, which serves to drive them away from point in the effort to pursue other corners of the market. It's like the RadioShack problem writ large. Why bother selling electronics components when cell phone plans have such a huge markup?
- jiqiren 9y agoForget my Apple Watch at home = miss most meetings at work. My new dependency.
- donw 9y agoMy big question is: what do people do with theirs? Other than notifications and fitness tracking, I'm struggling to think of a use case for owning one.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoIt's a lightweight music player, ideal for fitness. That means that it would be a great replacement for the recently discontinued iPod Nano. At the moment it's a bit pricy to buy one just for that use but maybe one day it'll be cheap enough that people will feel comfortable buying it for that feature alone.
- elguyosupremo 9y agoI don't have a smart watch myself but several of my coworkers do, the killer app for them seems to be two factor authentication codes; we've got like 10 different accounts at work that need 2fa and instead of pulling out their phones they just use the watch.
- bdcravens 9y agoI use Authy instead of Google Auth; for some reason it never loads on my watch :-\
- JunkDNA 9y agoNotifications and fitness tracking are the primary use cases form me. Those alone are enough but I also use mine for Apple Pay. It's a way better user experience paying with the watch than the phone. It's also a great alarm clock if you wear it to bed since it vibrates silently. No more waking my wife up at 3:00AM when I need to catch an early morning flight. I used a Fitbit for years and was reasonably happy with it. But the reality is that the Fitbit was cheaply made and not especially attractive. If you're already spending $100+ on a fitness tracker that is going to likely break in a year, it isn't that much of a stretch to spend a little more to get a really nice Apple Watch that lasts longer and looks nice when you're dressed up.
- wvenable 9y agoNotifications and fitness tracking is more than enough. My phone hasn't had the ringer on in over 3 years now. At first I had a Pebble which is pretty much just notifications. Now I have a Gear S3 and now I'm using the fitness tracking all the time.
- inthewoods 9y agoBought mine initially as an exercise tool, but found the GPS to be pretty incorrect - goal was to be able to run without the phone. But despite this (now running with phone), I still love it - surprised how much I enjoy it.
- mortenjorck 9y agoI’ve been saying it all along: to understand the Apple Watch, look to the iPod. The first three years of iPod sales were minuscule compared to the following ten: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_qua... The two products occupy a very similar space of affordable luxury; they are not world-changing like the Mac or iPhone, but category-defining. Through gradual iteration and segmentation, Apple slowly turned its niche product into a cultural force. Just wait until the iPod Classic 5G equivalent of the Watch comes out.
- jychang 9y agoThis is not a good example. The reason the iPod sold so poorly the first few years was because you can only sync them with Macs. Very few people owned Macs, so iPod sales were poor. It took iTunes for Windows to come out before things changed.
- abc_lisper 9y agoA parallel would be to have apple watches sync with 'droids..
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoI don't think so. As was mentioned, a lot of people didn't have Macs so it took iTunes on Windows to increase sales. A lot of people have iPhones. Enough, that Apple doesn't have to care about 'droids.
- mikeash 9y agoExcept not really, because the installed base of Macs at the time was a few million, while the iPhone installed base is around a billion. Being Mac-only in the early 2000s was orders of magnitude more limiting to potential sales than being iPhone-only today.
- chaolam 9y ago
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoOverall I still regret buying my Generation 1. The hardware was just not ready (Neither was the software, but the updates have improved it quite a bit over the 1.0 disaster). I knew I'd be an early adopter, so some rough edges are to be expected. Even so I experience(d) the following: - Severe lag when triggering Siri - Slow mail updates, to the point where I pull my phone out of my pocket anyway - "This message contains elements Apple Watch cannot display". Seen way too often and it is frustrating. - The wrist band mechanism failed to lock after ~4mo. Apple sent me a replacement Watch no questions asked which was great, but it took ~1mo to do so. - The digital crown no longer rotates smoothly and instead feels like there's stuff clogging it. Washing the watch helps for a short while. - Slow location updates, meaning a quick glance for at the local high/low weather is still often cities away after I arrive somewhere. Use case: Will I need my jacket with me later, or can I leave it in my car? The heart rate monitor is great and my favorite feature, but not worth the $400 I paid for it.
- seanp2k2 9y agoI almost sprang for the v1 Watch, but waited for the Garmin Fenix 5. It's a far superior product IMO. Garmin is actually really good at designing interfaces for small screens, and t has buttons instead of touch, which I wanted. The battery lasts almost a week (long enough that I don't think about charging it, I just kinda plug it in when I notice the battery indicator below a quarter, which happens not very often). The heart rate was the big feature for me, plus the sapphire crystal (scratches on watch faces drive me crazy), plus the focus on fitness tracking, built-in GPS + GLONASS, and looking like a regular watch while being rugged enough that I don't have to worry about bumping it into stuff. The Garmin connect app works pretty well, with only occasional inabilities to sync. The Suunto Ambit 3 I have previously was much worse in this area. The app syncs with HealthKit and Gyroscope and generally works well for doing what I want with a fitness tracker. The vibration alerts also work well and remind me of meetings even when my phone is sitting in the dock on my desk and I'm working with headphones on. I think that the Apple Watch really needs some killer features and excellent usability to separate it from the rest of the pack and drive sales. I see all of these smart watches as 5-year-max lifespan products before they're hopelessly obsolete, so spending half a grand+ on any of them is not going to be appealing to the masses.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- leesalminen 9y agoI've been waiting for the Series 3 ... you know what they say about 3s :)
- whipoodle 9y agoThe two main use cases seem to be notifications and fitness. I'm not big on working out, and I actively try to receive as few notifications as possible, so I don't think I'm in the target market for these. But I could see it being compelling for anyone who is interested in either of those use cases.
- acdha 9y agoSeries 2 is decent - a great solution for notification polling but I think WatchOS 4 will be the first non-beta release. There's a lot of neat ideas but so many little “do they even have a QA department?” moments, starting with having to wipe & reset my new one when it disabled activity tracking with no explanation. Quick Siri access is great but it underscores just how limited Siri is – falling into the uncanny valley of conversational UI.
- Karupan 9y agoI swore not to by a smartwatch a couple of years back, but ended up getting the Series 2 as a gift last month. I simply love it! I need constant reminder to exercise, meditate, etc and it seems to be a perfect companion for that. What surprised me was the battery life. I was expecting to put it on charge every night, but for my limited usage pattern, it lasts a good two days easily. For me, it adds more value than a similarly priced dump watch.
- sideproject 9y agoI'm not a watch wearer, so I don't plan to buy one. However, I thought if I DID (or if I got one as a gift), I would probably want an Apple Watch. So Apple has convinced me there. Do others feel similar?
- Mahn 9y agoI wear a fitness tracker. If I'm gonna wear something on my wrist, it ought to do something that my phone doesn't, otherwise it's hard to justify the cost.
- criddell 9y agoI like to wear a watch, so I kind of wish I could get a fitness tracker (with heart rate monitor) that doesn't have a clock on it. I sometimes wear a watch and a fitbit and that just looks stupid.
- brlewis 9y agoWhich Fitbit? Seems like the Flex 2 wouldn't look bad next to a watch.
- criddell 9y agoI have a Fitbit Charge 2. I wear the Fitbit on my right arm and my watch on my left, but I think it looks pretty stupid.
- theGimp 9y agoIf you don't mind wearing a big fitness tracker, the Fitbit Blaze has been great in my experience. It's a bit old now, and the new bigger fitbits are the Surge and the Charge 2, but I still love my Blaze.
- brlewis 9y agoBlaze is actually newer than Surge and has more features than Charge 2. It's the Fitbit that most competes with Apple Watch at present.
- icanhackit 9y agoI've said it a few times when the topic comes up but one of the best features is the magnetic milanese loop. For a watch that typically needs to be taken off once a day for charging (arguably every two days) the ease of taking off and putting on a magnetic milanese loop makes the pain disappear. It's no more effort than yanking your phone out of your pocket to stick it on the charger. Other things that makes the watch great - vibration alarm wakes me without fail while allowing my partner remain asleep, remotely turn off my phone alarm without getting out of bed (though that does lead to more snoozing...), remotely ping my phone when I've left it somewhere, remotely control my music without my phone including pushing the audio to Airplay, messaging via dictation which seems more accurate than my phone. One that I miss but can't use any more because I switched banks - Apple Pay. You look like a bell-end doing it but it felt like the future. The sapphire screen seems legit because I've belted the watch face into stone and steel surfaces without a single mark showing up. The stainless steel casing also seems more durable than I expected - not a single permanent mark that I can see...perhaps some micro abrasions. The heart rate monitor casing seems to be the weak point - it has quite a few scratches.
- pivo 9y agoI purchased a 3rd party milanese loop from amazon for $15. As far as I can tell it's indistinguishable from the Apple product. In any case, I agree, it's a great watch band.
- ClassyJacket 9y agoI did this too - ebay for 20$. I love it. My only issue is that it's too big for me, but I assume the official Apple band would be too, and that my only choice is to buy the 38mm watch.
- AceJohnny2 9y ago> I've said it a few times when the topic comes up but one of the best features is the magnetic milanese loop. I can't stand it, because I keep mistaking the tiny rubs as the band shifts against itself for notification vibrations. I reverted to the silicon band because of this.
- msluyter 9y agoAfter tiring of squinting at my Pebble, I bought the Series 2 a couple of months ago. My expectations were fairly modest given some of the early negative reviews of the series 1. But thus far I've been quite happy with it. I generally keep it muted and find the vibrating notifications to be an improvement over those on the iPhone. The apps I find myself using more than any others are the timer/chronograph, which I use constantly when cooking/grilling. And the ability to take voice calls with it is occasionally quite helpful. The Pebble's silicone wristband caused a rash on my wrist, but I've had no problems with the Nike Apple watch wristband (perhaps that's simply due to the holes that provide better ventilation.)
- vlozko 9y agoFrom my own experience and reading that of others, it's the device that no one can justify until they get one. Then it becomes the device that the vast majority love and some can't live without.
- archvile 9y agoCan confirm, feel like I lost my left arm if I don't have my watch on.
- colordrops 9y agoThat sounds horrible.
- bigiain 9y agoSo I've been a serial Pebble smartwatch rather than Apple Watch owner - my original motivation was I thought it's be neat to be able to glance at my wrist while riding the bike and see who was calling/texting so I would know if I wanted to pull over and answer right then, or wait till I'd got to my destination. Turns out the answer was _always_ "No." whoever it was, it could always wait. I was either going to be at home/work in 5-10 minutes and I could call back then, or I was on a trip and wasn't going to stop till the bike needed more fuel in an hour or two and it could wait till then. (Or I could ignore it completely...) When Pebble sold out to Garmin* and refunded my pledge/order for the last version, I spent some of that money on a second hand mechanical watch - I really don't miss much from the "smart" features I'd gotten used to... (Probably the only thing I miss is the "silent vibration on my wrist when I've left my phone on my desk but am still nearby"...) Edit: * It was FitBit not Garmin, as pointed out in replies by dugfin and spike021. Thanks.
- spike021 9y ago>When Pebble sold out to Garmin They were acquired by Fitbit, not Garmin
- DugFin 9y ago>Turns out the answer was _always_ "No." My experience has been the opposite. I bought a Pebble so I could know whether I had to put down my tools, pull out my phone, and answer a call from my boss; or if I could just ignore yet another call from an idiot coworker. >When Pebble sold out to Garmin I wish. Garmin might have done something with it. They sold out to FitBit, whose major motivation was the elimination of a competitor.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- intrasight 9y agoI'll may get myself the next Apple Watch - assuming that it can be used without an iPhone. My decision will depend on how good are the health features they implement.
- MBCook 9y agoBen Bajarin, whose tweet is quoted in the article, put out another tweet saying he now believes Apple has sold 30 million watches.
- synicalx 9y agoI unconsciously love my Watch. The battery life has improved MASSIVELY since Gen1, the fitness stuff is groovy, being able to control music is handy, alarms and notifications are brilliant. Just being able to not take my phone with me when I go for a (admittedly half-arsed) run, is worth the price of admission.
- alaskamiller 9y agoBy next year the watch will be the controller for AR Kit apps on A10x devices.
- 0xbear 9y agoIt's been years and people still don't understand what Watch is. Meanwhile, it says what it is directly in the name. It's a watch first, and everything else distant second. By the standards of wristwatches $300 is not that much money.
- konschubert 9y agoJust because wristwatches are overpriced doesn't mean that anything that takes their name isn't.
- 0xbear 9y ago"Overpriced" is a subjective term. 50% growth in sales suggests very competitive pricing. Think of it this way: Apple Watch isn't really competing with "wearable computers" everyone else is making. It plays a completely different ball game, and competes with wristwatches. I can't think of a better watch in $300 price range even though I don't wear one myself (my wife does). My main problem with it is the need to charge it daily. Once they get battery to 3-4 days, I'll buy one. Until then, my solar powered titanium Seiko diver will have to do.
- kalleboo 9y agoFor a piece of jewelry, $300 is not that much money. For a watch, $12 will do fine https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GAWSDG/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GAWSDG/ The Apple Watch is neither a piece of jewelry, nor something that will just show you the time (something people stopped caring about wearing nearing 2 decades ago). Is that something worth it or not? Is that something a mass-market item? That's the question to ask.
- princetman 9y agoI've been using my Apple Watch for 2 years now. It has proven to be an extremely useful for me just for the Apple Pay and Notifications alone. It causes a strange social issue though. If you're in a middle of conversation, glancing at your watch every now and again is a rude gesture. I have had to explain my habit several times and forced my self not look at it for every odd notification.
- Vinnl 9y agoFunny, that's why I stopped wearing regular watches. I don't think I'll ever be able to go for a smartwatch. But then again, it might become accepted behaviour just like glancing at your phone during a conversation appears to have become.
- barsonme 9y agoLove my iWatch, but it tanks my iPhone's battery to the point where i had to buy a battery case :/
- gehsty 9y agoI own a series 2 watch, the one with GPS and I really like it. I bought it not really knowing what I'd use it for but now I've got it setup for what I want I find myself really missing it when I'm not wearing it. My main uses are telling the time, notifications from whatsapp & being able to see which meeting room my next meeting is in by glancing at my wrist. I don't use any actual app on the watch itself. Its still to slow to really do anything, even if it was quicker I'm not sure reading twitter feeds / emails would be that great on it anyway.
- aetherson 9y agoI don't have a lot of use for the Apple watch myself, but it's been great for my wife. She, like a lot of women, regularly wears clothing without pockets that can hold her phone, and puts her phone in her purse. Having your phone in your purse radically changes the value of the watch. She used to often miss notifications, and sometimes calls, that she couldn't hear or feel. And even if she did notice them, digging your phone out of your purse is considerably less convenient than taking it out of your pocket.
- m_st 9y agoSame use case here with my wife. She loves her original Apple Watch and the different bands and I can finally reach her by phone.
- Pxtl 9y agoThat comes back to my core opinion on smart watches: notifications are the core. Everything else is feature creep. Imagine shopping for Bluetooth headsets - do you want one with biometrics and a backup radio antenna and a microSD slot for playing music without its phone, and a one-day battery? Or do you want a good quality mic and earphones with a solid Bluetooth connection, and a week-long battery for light use? I want the latter. Apple's take on smart watches is the former. I don't want a "smart" watch. I want a Bluetooth notification watch. Very specific purpose. That's what Pebble made. It's a shame it didn't work out.
- JunkDNA 9y ago
- calvinbhai 9y agothe Series 0 (first gen) watch was my first watch ever (never felt the need for a watch until then) Been using it for over 2 years and I'm super happy with it. Watch OS 3 made a huge difference in terms of usability for the watch. The background updates and swiping to change watch faces means I have my most used watch Complications in the 3 watchfaces I use. Weather, podcast, music and timer apps (from complications) are so useful! I feel if you don't make use of multiple complications with watch faces, you are not using your watch to the fullest :) Haven't used it much for Siri nor have I tried testing its water resistance. And I'll probably for in for a series 3 or series 4 based on my needs. Watch sales up 50%: I think the Apple Watch and the AirPods are peripherals for the iPhone that are so well priced (is Apple making any profit on these sales?) that I doubt if they have a huge margin. Having the highest margin phone and low margin peripherals like Watch, AirPods (probably glasses soon?) means once you go iPhone you don't look back. In the years when an iPhone owner chooses not to upgrade iPhone, he/she may choose to upgrade one of the peripherals. Which means higher LTV customer for Apple!
- twoodfin 9y agoFWIW Siri on the Watch (even my Series 0) has gotten at least an order of magnitude better, both in what it understands and how quickly and reliably it executes commands and queries. Still a lot of room for improvement, but not the dumpster fire it was with watchOS 1.0.
- calvinbhai 9y agoTrue. For my use case though, I don't use Siri much except when I'm driving, which works great with Hey Siri on the phone itself.
- jrs95 9y agoFor what it's worth, the Apple Watch is something I haven't bought yet but have intended to buy since it was announced. There might be a lot of people who have been waiting a couple generations, or who just didn't think the existing ones were compelling enough to buy them over some other thing.
- arcticbull 9y agoI had the first generation (Series 0) watch, got it when it first came out. Overall, I found it useless and frustrating. The big conveniences for me, though were: (1) Tracking exercise. (2) Telling me where and when my next meeting was: timeliness improved dramatically. Big downsides for me: (1) Charging it was annoying and frustrating, and traveling with it was worse. Turned into a giant spaghetti ball of lightning, inductive and laptop, to the point where I just stopped bringing it with me. It can't be better with Type-C can it? I generally use my laptop to charge the other things I have on my so another adapter? (2) Leaving my job for a gap year meant no meetings. (3) I had to take my phone anyways to listen to music, so I just used RunKeeper there, so another thing that didn't have to get sweaty. Apple's headphones just aren't very good. There's no seal, they fall out, the audio quality is mediocre. A $100 pair of Shure headphones is life changing and cannot be attached to a watch. (4) Input is awful. Siri is the only way to input text and when you use it, if it gets a word wrong, god help you if you want to try and correct it. After a few failed substitution attempts I would just get my phone out due to sheer frustration. (5) I had to take it off to type, the feel of it digging into my laptop and propping up my wrist drove my crazy. (6) Staring at your wrist every time it taps on you tells the person you're with I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE. "Oh, sorry, no, my watch keeps tapping my wrist" gets old, fast. The social cues you send off just suck. I just didn't see the value. Used it for 4 months, threw it into a drawer for 6, then sold if for 33% of its value. Didn't even hold value like an Apple product. This is no iPod, it's an iPad -- a category leader, maybe, but a small category. It doesn't do anything particularly well, just a bunch of stuff, kinda poorly.
- mwexler 9y agoI'm somewhat surprised that one of the touted features of smart watches never materialized, and doesn't seem to matter... early prognosticators proposed lots of custom faces: ones that emulated famous watches, ones that allowed a wide variety of placement of "complications", and ones that intermingled various ways of displaying time. While the big brands did release customized versions of their famous faces (Tag Heuer) and Apple got sued for making a clock that looked like a Swiss Railway Clock (licensed by Mondaine), the idea of downloadable faces or themes, made by users or junior devs, never really became a thing. I miss it; I think the apple watch face options are really lacking (though Mickey makes me laugh even now). But I seem to be in the minority of wanting more...
- Eric_WVGG 9y agoEvery nerd I know (including the ones who own Apple Watches) mirrors the comments in this thread — poor text entry, slow, half baked. Every non-nerd I know who has one absolutely loves them. Last month, my parents came to visit and... - boarded their flights with the Delta app - paid for taxis with Apple Pay on their wrists - laughed at how much higher their “steps” were here than back at home - when my mother wound up in an accident, used Hey Siri to call us from her hospital bed when she couldn’t reach her phone. We’ve been watching this industry for decades, unsure why it’s so hard for nerds to grasp that Apple doesn’t make products for “us”. But hey enjoy your Creative Labs Nomad...
- dsacco 9y agoThat's such a generalization that I can't believe I'm bothering to refute it, but: 1. I consider myself pretty nerdy and I love the Apple Watch. You now know me, at least through Hacker News. I made another comment in this thread extolling the Apple Watch, and there are others. It feels like you cherrypicked the negativity, because I actually see a lot of balanced feedback that is both positive and negative about the watch, many of which comes from fellow "nerds". 2. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you're using your in-group as a signaling heuristic rather than for an empirical analysis here. What constitutes a "nerd" if you haven't found any nerds who like it and if you didn't notice the comments from fellow nerds who really enjoy it? 3. I haven't personally found any of the issues you're talking about, but I do believe you've had them if you say you have. I'd chalk that up to an "underspecified complaint", because I don't know what the context was that resulted in poor behavior from the device. In my daily usage I don't find those issues emerge. However, I'd also gently suggest your expectations might be miscalibrated here and that you could be nitpicking. The device is absolutely not perfect, but I'm surprised if you disagree that it's not empowering, even for your in-group. It may be that you don't want to take advantage of those features, but if that's the case it's really not fair to generalize to a blanket claim that Apple doesn't develop for nerds. Again, speaking as a nerd, I feel Apple develops products that target me very well. I use Linux on a workstation as a daily driver, but I enjoy my MacBook Pro more than I enjoy any other machine. I had an Android phone for about a year and switched back to the latest iPhone because it's both more secure and has better integration. And being that I develop software, I can appreciate that Apple has developed very solid software and hardware even if it can't meet all expectations.
- dlevine 9y agoI've been wearing a Garmin or Polar watch for the past several years (run 30+ miles a week), and just recently got an Apple Watch. For a serious runner, the Garmin watches are a lot better, but the truth is that I'm not really a "serious" runner, and Apple Watch is more pleasurable to use in a lot of ways. I thought I would mind having to charge it every day coming from a device that needed to be charged about every 6 days (and that's including 24-hour HR tracking and 4-6 runs a week), but the truth is that I don't. I also thought I would mind not having all of the metrics or customizability that the Garmin offers, but the truth is that I'm not a competitive runner, and my V02Max isn't anything more than a curiosity. And, sure it's nice to be able to choose from a million different data fields to display while I'm working out, but the default ones on the Nike Running app are pretty close to what I chose in the first place. In the end, a lot of the things I thought were non-negotiables ended up not really being a big deal. Apple has really nailed the Watch user experience in lots of little ways. I intentionally held out when all of my friends bought the original Apple watch (and most subsequently sold it), but I'm noticing that an increasing number of people have adopted the watch a hardware revision and a few OS iterations later.
- manbearpigg 9y agoI got one for my birthday. It's not a small computer, it's a great watch. If you want a watch, not a computer, you will like it.
- atemerev 9y agoHeavy discounts help a lot in achieving this worthy goal!