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Ok, you're stuck in an airport and bored. You flip out your 4.7" or 5.5" phone. Can you spend an hour or more playing with it, consuming content, even doing wor

Ok, you're stuck in an airport and bored. You flip out your 4.7" or 5.5" phone. Can you spend an hour or more playing with it, consuming content, even doing work? Yes you can. Now, you're stuck in an airpot and bored. You keep your phone in your pocket and stare at your watch with a 38mm screen. Can you imagine spending an hour or two interacting with and consuming content on this thing? These watches deliver the information density of WAP feature phones with interactive models that are not much different (scroll wheel), plus panning and zooming on a tiny screen. The people projecting the launch of the 2007 era iPhone as an industry defining moment that's going to kick off whole new app business models I think are extrapolating without thinking about it. These devices are primarily best suited for sensors, and for information radiation tasks: notifying you of information and allowing quick response or dismissal. But a 300Mah "smart" device with a 38mm screen being something you're going to spend a lot of time downloading apps and using "on the device itself" (and not on the iPhone) I think is too far of an extrapolation. Maybe I'm wrong and this will be claim chowder thrown in my face in a few years, but to me, the trend towards bigger screens on phones is a perfectly example of why these watches will always be limited. Humans are visual creatures, and a device that has the screen size and interactivity of a virtual tamagotchi is a fashion accessory toy, not something we will build our whole life around like mobile phones and tablets.

arrrg 12y ago
Best case scenario I can see this becoming an iPod sized business. That certainly wouldn’t be bad and I could well imagine that’s exactly what Apple expects this to be. (The margins might be better, so they might be able to make more money.) Anything beyond that seems a fantasy to me.
spudlyo 12y ago
The watch isn't meant to compete with your phone for content consumption, it's for subtle notifications and alerts. Who is calling me? What meeting am I going to in 10 minutes? Who just texted me? I see myself getting a completely silent alert and then discretely glancing at my wrist during a meal or some other time it would be inappropriate to be fiddling with my phone. I can politely excuse myself if it's important. I don't expect to watch a movie on it, I just want it to look stylish and help me stay connected in a less douchey way. The fact that it may replace my Polar heart strap and watch when I'm working out (Hopefully it's more reliable than the Basis watch) is just icing on the cake. I have a feeling there will be some interesting third party applications, off the top of my head it might be nice to know when my boss is nearby, perhaps based on strength of his phone's bluetooth signal.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  The one I always think about is maps on my wrist. Ever since I saw the promotional photo of a guy on a bike with a Moto360 & maps, it pops into my head as I am biking and my phone is hollering directions from inside my pocket.
- bane 12y ago
  But I think that's kind of the point isn't it? Out of the box, the watch will more or less do all the thing anybody really wants it to do. It's going to be very hard to build a large viable app ecosystem for these things. At best I think Smartwatch apps will just be secondary notification displays for apps you're already buying and putting on your phone.
  - aaronbrethorst 12y ago
    At best I think Smartwatch apps will just be secondary notification displays for apps you're already buying and putting on your phone. My expectation is that the only way an app will get on your Apple Watch is if it comes bundled inside of an app you have installed on your iPhone, a la iOS 8 extensions.
    - cromwellian 12y ago
      Which is how Android Wear apps work. But this is not the kind of story presented at the keynote. What they presented was intensive interaction with apps: dragging, panning, zooming, etc. I think any usable watch app is going to have to be pretty simple and lightweight on the interactivity side.
      - aaronbrethorst 12y ago
        I think you may be responding to a different point than the one I was making. I was speaking only to the deployment mechanism for Apple Watch apps.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    Isn't that how it is though? Anyone expecting anything more is going to be sorely disappointed. I don't recall Apple pitching this as something you watch to play around with for a couple of hours at an airport with.
wpietri 12y ago
As somebody who has been wearing a Pebble for a year or so, I agree that this won't be as dramatic as the iPhone. But I do think wearables are going to be a major market. The modern smartphone is a huge compromise. It has to do everything but it has to fit in our pocket and run all day. It's basically a Swiss Army knife: sure, it does everything. But it doesn't do anything very well. I think the trend toward larger phones is exactly why wearables will be big: If you can have the little and low-interaction things on your wrist, then that lets the phone change to be better for the tasks that remain for it. A bigger screen and a bigger battery are more appealing if the phone only comes out when you actually need a big screen, rather than just to check the time or to acknowledge a text.
- npinguy 12y ago
  Interesting idea. Certainly a large percentage of our smartphone usage is turning on the screen to glance at a notification, then dismiss it. Smartwatches allow you to not have to do that. But the notification still comes to your phone, and still needs to be beamed to your wrist. So you don't save on any network usage battery. It's basically only the screen. Now the screen is expensive, no doubt. But even so, how much additional battery life would you get out of a phone from turning the screen on 50 times less over the course of a day?
  - bane 12y ago
    well now you have another (smaller) screen that's going to get turned on and off 50 times a day instead.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    I don't think it's really about getting more life out of the existing battery. I think it's more about better integration with people's lives. E.g., I don't want to have a fit of beepilepsy every time I get a text or a calendar notification. Glancing at the watch is way better. But as a side effect, I think moving a bunch of watch-friendly things to a watch will let you make the phone bigger. That won't reduce total power usage, but it will increase power availability.
lxmorj 12y ago
I think that they have the potential to dramatically change the app environment and allow for some very interesting interactions, but I agree that they will primarily be an extension of the iPhone. What that means for Apple's bottom line is unclear - if it makes iPhones incredibly more useful such that a significant percentage of iPhone owners buy the watch, it may move the needle quite a bit.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Apple TV is billed as an iPhone accessory, and look how large that is. That said, Apple didn't compare Watch to the TV. They compared it to the original Mac.

arrrg 12y ago

Best case scenario I can see this becoming an iPod sized business. That certainly wouldn’t be bad and I could well imagine that’s exactly what Apple expects this to be. (The margins might be better, so they might be able to make more money.) Anything beyond that seems a fantasy to me.

spudlyo 12y ago

The watch isn't meant to compete with your phone for content consumption, it's for subtle notifications and alerts. Who is calling me? What meeting am I going to in 10 minutes? Who just texted me? I see myself getting a completely silent alert and then discretely glancing at my wrist during a meal or some other time it would be inappropriate to be fiddling with my phone. I can politely excuse myself if it's important. I don't expect to watch a movie on it, I just want it to look stylish and help me stay connected in a less douchey way. The fact that it may replace my Polar heart strap and watch when I'm working out (Hopefully it's more reliable than the Basis watch) is just icing on the cake. I have a feeling there will be some interesting third party applications, off the top of my head it might be nice to know when my boss is nearby, perhaps based on strength of his phone's bluetooth signal.

sliverstorm 12y ago
The one I always think about is maps on my wrist. Ever since I saw the promotional photo of a guy on a bike with a Moto360 & maps, it pops into my head as I am biking and my phone is hollering directions from inside my pocket.
bane 12y ago
But I think that's kind of the point isn't it? Out of the box, the watch will more or less do all the thing anybody really wants it to do. It's going to be very hard to build a large viable app ecosystem for these things. At best I think Smartwatch apps will just be secondary notification displays for apps you're already buying and putting on your phone.
- aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  At best I think Smartwatch apps will just be secondary notification displays for apps you're already buying and putting on your phone. My expectation is that the only way an app will get on your Apple Watch is if it comes bundled inside of an app you have installed on your iPhone, a la iOS 8 extensions.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    Which is how Android Wear apps work. But this is not the kind of story presented at the keynote. What they presented was intensive interaction with apps: dragging, panning, zooming, etc. I think any usable watch app is going to have to be pretty simple and lightweight on the interactivity side.
    - aaronbrethorst 12y ago
      I think you may be responding to a different point than the one I was making. I was speaking only to the deployment mechanism for Apple Watch apps.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Isn't that how it is though? Anyone expecting anything more is going to be sorely disappointed. I don't recall Apple pitching this as something you watch to play around with for a couple of hours at an airport with.

wpietri 12y ago

As somebody who has been wearing a Pebble for a year or so, I agree that this won't be as dramatic as the iPhone. But I do think wearables are going to be a major market. The modern smartphone is a huge compromise. It has to do everything but it has to fit in our pocket and run all day. It's basically a Swiss Army knife: sure, it does everything. But it doesn't do anything very well. I think the trend toward larger phones is exactly why wearables will be big: If you can have the little and low-interaction things on your wrist, then that lets the phone change to be better for the tasks that remain for it. A bigger screen and a bigger battery are more appealing if the phone only comes out when you actually need a big screen, rather than just to check the time or to acknowledge a text.

npinguy 12y ago
Interesting idea. Certainly a large percentage of our smartphone usage is turning on the screen to glance at a notification, then dismiss it. Smartwatches allow you to not have to do that. But the notification still comes to your phone, and still needs to be beamed to your wrist. So you don't save on any network usage battery. It's basically only the screen. Now the screen is expensive, no doubt. But even so, how much additional battery life would you get out of a phone from turning the screen on 50 times less over the course of a day?
- bane 12y ago
  well now you have another (smaller) screen that's going to get turned on and off 50 times a day instead.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I don't think it's really about getting more life out of the existing battery. I think it's more about better integration with people's lives. E.g., I don't want to have a fit of beepilepsy every time I get a text or a calendar notification. Glancing at the watch is way better. But as a side effect, I think moving a bunch of watch-friendly things to a watch will let you make the phone bigger. That won't reduce total power usage, but it will increase power availability.

lxmorj 12y ago

I think that they have the potential to dramatically change the app environment and allow for some very interesting interactions, but I agree that they will primarily be an extension of the iPhone. What that means for Apple's bottom line is unclear - if it makes iPhones incredibly more useful such that a significant percentage of iPhone owners buy the watch, it may move the needle quite a bit.

madeofpalk 12y ago
Apple TV is billed as an iPhone accessory, and look how large that is. That said, Apple didn't compare Watch to the TV. They compared it to the original Mac.