14 ms·

My two cents: I don't know any person who is into serious running (I'm into triathlon, so add cycling and swimming) who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch and

• zimpenfish 12y ago
  I doubt "people into serious running" run into the 10s of millions that Apple are aiming the watch at though. (I agree with your point though - I have a 910XT for the battery life - the Apple Watch would be useless as an activity tracker for me since the iPhone 5S doesn't really cope with 5h+ activities.)
  • oftenwrong 12y ago
    More significant than "people into serious running" is "people who want to be into serious running". Fitness products live and die based on their ability to hook the consumer with aspirational marketing. A well-placed fitness magazine "review" will impact sales far more than superior tech specs.
  • antr 12y ago
    I agree with you too. The Apple Watch is a mass market product, not for heavy users. However, I can imagine many people wearing this watch at gyms, where people tend to look after themselves (healthkit, etc)... but I don't see professionals using it (unless endorsed).
    • zimpenfish 12y ago
      If the battery life doesn't suck (which I fear it does given the total lack of reference to it) and the "iPhone required" isn't as onerous as it seems, I might well wear one just for the easy 24/7* heart rate tracking. Granted the optical ones aren't as good as the HRM straps (as best I remember the dcrainmaker reviews) but they're less onerous for long periods.
      • deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      • deong 12y ago
        I think it's a general limitation of the optical heart rate trackers that they aren't quite "24/7". At least on all the Android Wear devices that feature one, you have to ask it to take a reading, and it's pretty unreliable if you're moving. I didn't see it mentioned in the Apple coverage, but I assume it's probably similarly limited there?
        • gallamine 12y ago
          My Basis watch takes readings regularly (not sure the interval once a minute, maybe) of my heart rate. Battery lasts about 3-4 days.
          • zimpenfish 12y ago
            I would have bought one since that's exactly what I want but they're -still- not shipping outside the US. Think they may have missed their chance now...
  • joezydeco 12y ago
    So the heart-rate sensor is for people that sit at their desks all day?
    • Kurtz79 12y ago
      There is a probably a middle ground (and possibly a large one) between people running triathlons and couch potatoes.
    • revelation 12y ago
      It's certainly not for people exercising, because it clearly won't work for that use case. You can spot that from a mile away.
    • orbitur 12y ago
      Actually, yeah, that's pretty much the market for the fitbit and similar devices. People who sit at desks looking to get more activity in their lives.
• k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> (I won't comment the lack of info on battery life and water resistance) Did they comment on water resistance? I thought they had a photo of someone pouring water over it...
  • antr 12y ago
    There is a difference between submerging and just a sprinkle of water. I don't think the Apple Watch is submergible/usable for swimming.
    • k-mcgrady 12y ago
      Yes, waterproof is submersible and water resistant is rain/shower etc. Your comment referred to water resistance which that displays. I would hope they make it waterproof as I don't want to have to leave an expensive watch with my bag on the beach unattended. But then I already have to do that with my phone I guess.
      • antr 12y ago
        Ah yes! Waterproof vs water resistant. Yes, that was what I meant (changed). The AW appears to be water resistant, while many, if not most, sports watches are waterproof. Waterproof is a feature that I'm sure Cook would of mentioned if it were the case.
        • k-mcgrady 12y ago
          He probably would have, you're right. Maybe it will be exclusive to the sports edition. Seems like a good way to differentiate.
      • smileysteve 12y ago
        > I don't want to have to leave an expensive watch with my bag on the beach While it's sapphire, I recommend that you keep your watch and phone as far away from salt water and sand as possible. One grain gets in the crown and you could be in trouble. My sport watch is a Timex which is resistant to 100m, but the springs sometimes get sand stuck in them.
• JonLim 12y ago
  Do they have watches, sub 250, that can be used for swimming OR running? Even just the swimming would be great, cause the price point and being forced to carry an iPhone around kind of defeated the purpose of buying the Apple Watch for me.
  • JonLim 12y ago
    Nevermind, my own question got answered by looking up the Garmin Forerunner 910XT: http://sites.garmin.com/forerunner910xt/ http://sites.garmin.com/forerunner910xt/ Run, swim, AND bike. Excellent.
    • zimpenfish 12y ago
      The swim stroke tracker is hit-and-miss for me (sometimes guesses the wrong stroke and length points) but that probably says more about my swimming (which is awful) than the watch. But I can definitely vouch for the excellent battery life, resilience to water, and usefulness on a bike laden with sensors. The only gripe I have is that you can have multiple sets of bike sensors but not anything else. That and their approach to OS X software basically being "well, be grateful you're only 2 years behind the PC and that we acknowledge you at all."
      • JonLim 12y ago
        Good to know, thanks! Sadly, it might be outside of my price range. It does look like it's the perfect thing for tracking my workouts, but damn is that one hell of an investment.
        • count 12y ago
          It's also due to be replaced any day now (it's the last piece of the Garmin series that hasn't been updated in for.ev.er.). Once the new version comes out, 910xt's should be pretty cheap to pickup.
          • zimpenfish 12y ago
• bobochan 12y ago
  Exactly. I put off buying a GPS watch because I wanted to see what Apple was going to offer. Answer: Nothing. I really cannot imagine a more useless product than this watch. It requires an iPhone and seems to essentially serve as a small, remote interface for your phone. And how do I navigate that small interface? With an even smaller "digital crown." I hate trying to set the time on my watch, and now they expect me to interact with something more complicated using a tiny, rotating nub? Imagine a typical scenario. You are walking down the street and suddenly need to navigate somewhere. How many minutes are you going to waste playing with that little nub and resizing things on the screen before finally pulling out your phone and just using that. The only argument for this watch is that it might be helpful for those times when pulling out your phone is just too onerous. I regret that I do not have the type of lifestyle where that is a serious limitation.
  • pilsetnieks 12y ago
    I'd wait and see how it actually works - for example, with the navigation scenario, it's far more likely that you'd choose your destination on your phone which will then handoff the navigation to the watch. Thus, no need to constantly look at the phone while you're walking + haptic feedback to guide you along the path.
    • bobochan 12y ago
      Siri could be the big savior here. I'm actually very happy with my iPhone's voice recognition and Siri's performance. Another gripe, the "digital crown" is on the opposite side of the watch for me. It could be an impediment of being left handed, but having it on the right hand side of the watch increments the awkward factor for me.
      • pilsetnieks 12y ago
        Yeah, I agree on the leftie thing. They most likely won't make a leftie variant but I do think that they could make it rotatable.
      • smileysteve 12y ago
• aikah 12y ago
  > I don't know any person who is into serious running ... who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch People will spend that much money on the Apple Watch. Because it's Apple.It might seem like a ripoff to you but the price was calculated to maximise Apple profit.
• eevilspock 12y ago
  This is Apple's way: Release a product at a high price initially to capture extra dollars from early adopters with the extra money while also buying time for Apple to work out kinks in there production chain and also reduce costs as efficiency increases. Six to twelve months later cheaper Apple Watches will come out.
  • pan69 12y ago
    I don't think Apple needs that handful of extra dollars from early adaptors. The reason the initial price is high is because its easier to decrease a retail price than it is to increase it.
    • alexqgb 12y ago
      Apple tends not to lower their prices. Instead, they offer newer models will with more features at stable price points. If prices do drop (e.g. the 5s) it's because an older product is still being sold alongside a newer one at the standard price.
      • joshstrange 12y ago
        This is not the case with first run products. The original iPhone's price was $599 (8GB) and $499 (4GB) when it was released in June 2007. Then in September of the same year they discontinued the 4GB model and dropped the price of the 8GB down to $400. I'm not saying that they will drop the price of the watch but there is a history of them doing this with the first run of a product. Also someone mentioned they did something similar with the MBA in this thread.
        • alexqgb 12y ago
          Good point, though I think that few people paid that directly. From what I recall, base models have been $200 with a two year contract from the word go.
          • 12y ago
• gdubs 12y ago
  They mentioned the low-end model requiring an iPhone, but unless I missed something due to the sporadic live-stream, they seemed to trail-off when it came to what the other two models would be like. I could see GPS being something built in to the higher-end model for instance.
• ajju 12y ago
  This comment reminded me of CmdrTaco's slashdot comment after the iPod launch: http://t.co/RPAX2r93kx http://t.co/RPAX2r93kx I think Garmin forerunner will be to the future of wearables what Nomad was to the future of music in 2002.
  • AJ007 12y ago
    Or consider the first iPhone which had no 3G. Building your first iteration specifically not to go up against a particular competitor can be intentional, in hardware and software. Two or three generations down the road this watch could prove interesting (or may be not, like the iPad.)
    • patrickk 12y ago
      No 3G, no app store(!!), no copy and paste, no GPS, worse call reception than the phones it replaced, the list goes on. It was still a massive success.
      • masklinn 12y ago
        A pretty big difference is most other smartphones either didn't have these, or if they did the feature was so unusable it could just as well have been left out.
      • 72deluxe 12y ago
        I remember it being fashionable here in the UK, mainly for the Carlsberg app that used the gyroscope (accelerometer?) to pretend that you were drinking a drink. And for showing that you had a lot of money compared to us pauper Nokia users. People were really disappointed with the lack of MMS, as I recall.
  • antr 12y ago
    I'll ignore your slightly pedantic tone. I'm not calling this a failure or lame. Don't read between the lines. I'm just saying that at $350, for people who take sports seriously (a very very very small niche), there are better alternatives. This is Apple Watch 1.0, I'm sure there are better things down the line. Thinking otherwise is just a mistake. I said it before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8292596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8292596
• eli 12y ago
  My wife runs long distances with an iPhone AND a watch. My impression is that Forerunners have fallen out of favor. The GPS doesn't work all that well compared to a phone (I'm guessing because it lacks the AGPS data a phone has access to). Plus if you're running a marathon you probably want some music to listen to, and it sure is nice to have a phone with you even though it's perhaps a bit heavy.
  • zimpenfish 12y ago
    I've got 18 months of Moves data logged against corresponding tracks from my 910XT and the difference in consistency, accuracy, etc., is telling - the iPhone is frequently off by 10s (if not 100s) of metres and especially coming round the Millennium Dome is a joke - it has me jumping from the south to the north of the Thames every few hundred metres. Moves iPhone 5S - http://imgur.com/kjYf8Tj http://imgur.com/kjYf8Tj Garmin 910XT - http://imgur.com/jnXuaQC http://imgur.com/jnXuaQC
    • cstuder 12y ago
      Did you disable WLAN on the iPhone during the run? That's what RunKeeper recommends, because the AGPS using WLAN-SSIDs lowers the accuracy of the tracking.
    • bane 12y ago
      I bet your iphone is trying to use cell tower locations or wifi hotspots it's picking up around there and borking up the location. The area around there is kind of open and flat so I wouldn't be surprised if it's picking up location information from across the river.
      • zimpenfish 12y ago
        It does seem to be WiFi related. But if I have to remember to disable the WiFi whenever I want to do some GPS tracking - and if I forget, I basically get random garbage - that pushes it well into "no bloody use" for me.
        • 12y ago
• mbesto 12y ago
  Fellow triathlete here! 100% agree. It looks nice though...
• coldtea 12y ago
  >My two cents: I don't know any person who is into serious running (I'm into triathlon, so add cycling and swimming) who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch and additionally you are required to have your iPhone with you to use the GPS. Yeah, it's for the sligltly LESS serious runners, of which there are millions...
  • DannyBee 12y ago
    I was happy to use my Pebble and now, my android wear devices to track my running pace. I run about 4 miles a day. Honestly, the iWatch is just too pricey for what I would use it for.
    • coldtea 12y ago
      If $300 sounds to much for a fashion item, it's probably not for you. Heck, I don't think I'll buy one either. But then again, consider that people buy $300+ headphones (Dre's) because of how they look, fashion etc. And they are not even the best headphones out there, whereas this is probably the best smartwatch. Or that people bought iPods for $300 or more just 6 years ago. Without video or phone or camera. Heck, I bought my first iPod for ~$800 10 years ago (complete with a black and white LCD display). And that's the 1st gen. In a year, it will be like $200 or $100 for the same thing or the new model. So, yeah, it might flop or it might sell, but it won't be due to its price.
      • DannyBee 12y ago
        "If $300 sounds to much for a fashion item, it's probably not for you." Fair enough, but i have to say, I feel like i'm taking crazy pills here. So apple releases it and suddenly it's a fashion item to have a clunky, square watch. Just a few short months ago, i was reading nytimes articles about the current crop of smartwatches saying "'They’re just not that attractive,' said Mr. Dawson, 'they are all clunky and square'" But now suddenly it's a fashion item to have a clunky, square watch? (I understand fashion is fickle, but this is really really fickle :P)
        • 12y ago
• DominikR 12y ago
  Well, that's just marketing. Of course it isn't the ultimate device for serious athletes, but it has useful health related features for the broad audience. No matter how Apple markets its products, it's always intended for a broad spectrum of users, which almost excludes the possibility that you'll ever see a Apple product that is specialized for some kind of niche
• Shivetya 12y ago
  Maybe during the event but every other day while your out working out and such? I don't know about you, but I don't know any cyclist that leaves home without his phone. Heck it comes down to what not to take beyond a few certain requirements. // 2 tubes, pump, money, id, phone, water, energy gels (yuck), rain cover // If I am short riding, as in I could walk home, the phone still goes with me. However I see no use for the watch. I have a simple comp on the handlebars, maybe I could stick the watch there? While I disagree with your premise as the phone is there anyway, I see the watch more as Starbucks wear than anything else.
• aioprisan 12y ago
  Whoa, a Garmin Forerunner 910xt for $300? Hardly. My triathlon bundle cost $500, $400 for just the watch itself. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/prod90671.html https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/prod90671.html
• akfanta 12y ago
  This is pretty ridiculous comparison. The Apple watch is clearly not targeted to any serious runners/triathletes. I don't recall anyone claim it's a "sports watch".
  • jamesrom 12y ago
    Apple Watch Sport http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch-sport/ http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch-sport/
    • akfanta 12y ago
      There is a huge difference between a sports watch and a sports edition of a watch.
• aioprisan 12y ago
  As a serious runner, there is no way that I would run for an extended distance without my phone on me. First of all because I would rather not have to drag my injured self out somewhere to ask for help, rather than being able to call for it from my phone. Whenever I do triathlon training, I would also not think of leaving without my phone, as I tend to go for 30-40 mile bike rides into remote areas, and having a way to communicate with the outside world in case the worst happens (equipment malfunction, injury) is preferable. I don't think I have a single watch that can last more than 7 hours of continuous GPS usage, between running and biking, so I'd like to see what the battery life on the Apple Watch looks like before passing judgement.
  • sz4kerto 12y ago
    Many Garmin watches last much more than 7 hours. My old 310XT lasts around 12.
    • aioprisan 12y ago
      I've had both the 310XT and the 910XT, and neither lasts more than 6 hours now. Using the heart rate monitor strap greatly impacts my battery life, for some reason. I wish there was a way to tell how many cycles my batteries have left in them. I think it's time for an upgrade :)
• Bahamut 12y ago
  I am a serious runner (have run 3 marathons, running a fourth in a month and a half), and I'm entertaining the possibility of converting over to the iPhone + Apple Watch. For me though, it's more complicated. I always run with my phone & wallet for emergency reasons. I don't use a sports watch anymore (I do have a Garmin), but largely due to their bulk & wanting to focus less on my time/pace & more on my body. I also am getting sick of Verizon getting vendors to lock down Android phones AND forcing phone vendors to toss a bunch of crapware onto the phones. The only reason I haven't switched yet is because I am on a legacy $40/month/line family plan. I am not a huge fan of iOS - I love Google's integrations with its services with Android. A lot of what I end up doing is taking out my cellphone to check for messages or the time. It's excessive, and quite inconvenient. Why not one of the existing smartwatches? I haven't yet been convinced that they're built for my desires. I'm not really in a rush to make a decision here, and likely will wait some before jumping in (probably will try out the Moto 360 in the short term), but the cost isn't really out of the realm of reason necessarily to me.
  • hcurtiss 12y ago
    I run with an iPhone in a running belt, a BT HR monitor (Wahoo TICKR Run), and the Magellan Echo. I'm very pleased with the setup. The Echo is now compatible with several Android phones as well. Given your description, I think you'd really like it.
• Shad0w59 12y ago
  I'm a casual runner and see no value in the $350 Apple Watch as well. Heart monitoring and GPS is a nice to have for me. Seriously, all I need is my old $75 16GB iPod nano 6th generation square.
• mikestew 12y ago
  "$350!? And it can't even do the things my highly specialized device can do." It's funny you should mention the Forerunner 910, because you know what the 910 can't do? Be a watch. But that's okay because you didn't buy it to be a watch. Besides, I'm the only runner I know that doesn't bring a phone with me when I run.
  • syncsynchalt 12y ago
    It's ironic if the 910 can't tell you the time, since one of the necessary components of a GPS device is a ridiculously accurate clock.
    • mikestew 12y ago
      The 910 is capable of displaying the time of day, but it should be glaringly obvious to anyone that owns one that telling you the time is a peripheral feature that comes for free because of the nature of GPS devices. Combine that with a 20 hour battery life (probably far less if you're in an office and the GPS receiver is cranked all day), huge size, and questionable aesthetics, and it's obvious that Garmin did not intend for you to wear it to work. Not that it keeps people from trying if the Garmin forums are indicative of anything. And Captain Pedantic has swooped in to inform us that the ridiculously accurate clocks live on the GPS satellites not on the device.
      • syncsynchalt 12y ago
        While the GPS satellite has atomic clocks, the GPS device also requires an accurate oscillator that is synced with the satellites' clocks — it uses the satellite signals to approximate the actual time and uses that approximation to measure the time delay to each satellite's clock to estimate distance, using an iterative algorithm.
• euske 12y ago
  "Steve Ballmer Laughs at iPhone" in 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
• return0 12y ago
  My impression from the marketing video where Ive speaks is that this is more like a vanity jewelry item, not anything serious and definitely not something that can handle abuse. I don't think they even market it as a sports item.
• bnjs 12y ago
  I run and this is fine with me. I don't go anywhere without my phone anyway, and I imagine GPS on the Watch would mean shorter battery life or bigger battery/watch.
• jolohaga 12y ago
  The fact that the Apple Watch doesn't do everything we can conceive combined with its visual elegance (at least in the videos) suggests to me Apple's target in this first iteration is the luxury market. I expect the athletes using those "crappy" Beats headsets will be popularizing Apple Watches to adoring fans before too long. That will give Apple enough time to make improvements over time.