6 ms·

I am looking forward to the outrage when the Apple Watch gold edition is priced at $5-10k. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/24/caldwell-edition http://

by gitah 12y ago

I am looking forward to the outrage when the Apple Watch gold edition is priced at $5-10k. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/24/caldwell-edition http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/24/caldwell-edition

listic 12y ago
...while lasting about 3 hours on a single charge http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-battery-life-revealed-a5-caliber-cpu-inside/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-... Really, if they will get away with that, the world has surely gone crazy.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  I love how they reason it away in the article: "Considered separately, the active use app, clock, and fitness numbers sound very low, but the reality is that people will passively wear the Apple Watch for most of the day, actively interacting with it only for short periods of time." Essentially they're saying, "People will buy an expensive watch that does all this extra fancy stuff, but really they won't bother much with the extra fancy stuff - because who actually wants to fiddle around with something on their wrist for any protracted length of time?" I think Apple has enough die-hard fans, who will buy almost anything they make, for it to be hard for them to do something that will register as a genuine complete flop... but I think the Apple Watch really could struggle to get much traction amongst the masses, and I don't just mean the expensive gold model.
  - wonderyak 12y ago
    Sounds like a typical first generation new device from Apple. Generally, 1st generation new devices have low benefit to cost ratios, are trying to enter a market with the absolute minimum requirements, and the successive generations will include some kind of hardware bit that makes the device much more useful.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    If you used your iPhone at full power all day, it would be dead in three hours. If you left it in standby, it would last for days. Most people do a combination of these things, leading to the battery life averaging out to be around one day of normal use. Is that essentially saying people bought an expensive phone that does all this fancy stuff but don't bother with it because they don't want to fiddle with something in their hand for any length of time? Try flooring the accelerator on your car and see how long the tank of gas lasts. Compare it to idling away a full tank. Do people shy away from hot-rodding their engines just because they don't want to fiddle with the throttle, or because doing the speed limit and accelerating slowly tends to suit their needs just fine?
    - bshimmin 12y ago
      The aforementioned article about the Apple Watch talks of "heavy application use" and suggests it might only last 2.5 hours. If you read, for example, http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-6-review-battery-life-and-verdict-page-6 http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-6-review-battery-life-a..., it suggests "heavy use" of the iPhone 6 (at 50% screen brightness) yields about 14 hours of battery life. That's a pretty significant difference. While it's easy to say "it's more compelling to do stuff on a phone than it is to do it on a watch, so you'll naturally use the phone more", that rather makes me wonder why I would bother buying the watch, especially when you actually need the phone as well. Time will tell how people use these devices and whether the battery really holds up to a reasonable person's usage. And, of course, it seems likely (though not certain) that later generations will have improved battery life.
      - freehunter 12y ago
        Because of the big screen, it's easier to browse the web on a tablet than on a phone. Easier than that is a laptop. A PC has an even bigger screen than that! But people still use phones, mostly for the minor convenience of having it in your pocket instead of in a bag, but also for the unique interactions it provides. I use my PC for eight hours a day straight. I use my phone for maybe 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, maybe an hour long call once or twice a day. Is there anything wrong with that? Should I be using my phone more? I mean, why would I spend all the money on having a powerful phone when I'm only using it occasionally? That's the logic you seem to be putting towards this watch. I'm not going to defend the battery life, it's totally crap. I'm just arguing against the logic. You seem to be saying if you're not using the device constantly, it's not worth having. I don't use my car constantly. I don't use my phone constantly. I don't use my Pebble constantly. But they're nice to have for their own reasons. The point of the watch is not to use it 100%, all the time. It's to use it when it makes sense to use it. Heavy application use isn't what it's designed for. Still, I agree the battery makes it useless even for the intended functionality.
  - derefr 12y ago
    It does fancy stuff, but the fancy stuff it does consists of things that either alert you to something (and thus are over after a second), or that let you do some simple (and quickly done-with) interaction without having to pull out your phone. Despite "smartwatch" sounding like "smartphone", there's really nothing you'd want to do with its UX that could last an hour. Remember Windows SideShow[1]? It was a technology to allow OEMs to do things like putting an extra display on the lid of a laptop, that would indicate things when the laptop was closed and mostly asleep. That's what the watch is for: indicating things when your phone is closed and mostly asleep. If it indicates something interesting, you don't continue interacting with it; you take out your phone. I'm not saying this to defend Apple's product in particular; it's probably far too expensive to get the right adoption in its market, and is more like an initial market-testing experiment in the same way Google Glass was. But passive/reactive UX is a great idea, generally. The constant complaints about being stuck in a cubicle staring at a screen, or teenagers staring at their phones all day, are precisely because that's where our alerts are, and we don't want to miss them... but it's also where a bunch of engaging+distracting stuff is, so in the process of trying to stay on top of our alerts, we get constantly pulled back into engaging with the engaging stuff. Imagine if, to check your email, you had to log into World of Warcraft or Second Life and wander over to your virtual mailbox on your virtual driveway. Lots of potential for distraction during that, right? But waking up your phone or your laptop, with its manifold social apps and games and media to consume, is nearly as bad. Technologies with passive or reactive UXes allow us to treat technology as something poking its head into your door and asking a question, rather than something you need to "submerge into" like some sort of virtual reality. I look forward to the day when every $5 Swatch watch gives you your phone's alerts. At that point, the glowing rectangle will become only a productivity device: something for creation, live collaboration, or media consumption; something you intentionally engage with for defined periods. But not something you need to context-switch back to every three minutes to see if you got an email, and end up reading HN while you've got it open. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow
  - robotresearcher 12y ago
    Watches are things you use in brief bursts. They are no less valuable for that. Like fire extinguishers, the value lies in being available and responsive whenever. I don't rate my bottle opener by how much time I spend using it. Just the opposite in fact.
    - bshimmin 12y ago
      How much money did you spend on your bottle opener, may I ask?
      - eclipxe 12y ago
        $10,000
      - robotresearcher 12y ago
        I'm not sure what point you're making there. But in an attempt to end the thread in a fun way, here's a watch that opens bottles. If it's good at both those things, it will take but a few seconds a day to get good use out of it. http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/happy-hour-watch http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/happy-hour-watch
- IBM 12y ago
  They will get away with it because they're targeting 19 hours according to that article.
  - listic 12y ago
    That's "19 hours of combined active/passive use" (that is, mostly idle) e.g. I will have to remember to charge it at the end of every single day, and goodness forbid that my day will last 24+ hours, as it just might once in a while. I find this inexcusable for a $300-class watch, but to charge four figures for a watch before bringing battery life firmly into "several days" territory, at the very least? I find it completely ridiculous. And how stupid will these 'luxury' watches look in a few years, when Apple (or their competitors, anyway) will eventually bring battery life into more sane range? That's what I was trying to say: I find the abysmal battery life kinda-accepted in this class of products, so far, to be inadequate, but even more so - I think it's completely preposterous there to be 'luxury' editions of the product. Later, when technology will mature and provide it with more usability and when incremental changes each year will diminish - sure, but right now - aren't Apple seeing that they are going to just make fools of themselves? If I'm wrong - well, then I'm seriously not understanding something in life.
    - eclipxe 12y ago
      Yes, you don't understand the luxury market, or the people that participate in the luxury goods market, at all.
      - listic 12y ago
        Do you? Please explain.
        eclipxe 12y ago
        Yes. To put it simply, there is a non-empty set of people that will pay a large sum of money for something, simply because it requires a large sum of money. To this market, the lack of features or battery life, etc is not a concern. The price of the good itself, and therefore it's perceived exclusivity, is the paramount feature of the product. This non-empty set of people have no qualms about upgrading every few years to a new, more exclusive model. Nothing is worst than having something "old" or out of fashion. This non-empty set of people, will pay $10k, $15k, $20k+ for something just because they can. Example: http://financesonline.com/top-10-most-expensive-champagne-bottles-in-the-world/ http://financesonline.com/top-10-most-expensive-champagne-bo... Fashion, watches, etc is even more extravagant because the element of "freshness" and being "in style" plays into a constant need to invest in the latest.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  The lessons of the "I Am Rich" app can't have been lost on Apple...
joezydeco 12y ago
Outrage, followed by long lines of people at the stores trying to get one and flip it on eBay for a couple thousand in profit.

by gitah 12y ago

listic 12y ago

...while lasting about 3 hours on a single charge http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-battery-life-revealed-a5-caliber-cpu-inside/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-... Really, if they will get away with that, the world has surely gone crazy.

bshimmin 12y ago
I love how they reason it away in the article: "Considered separately, the active use app, clock, and fitness numbers sound very low, but the reality is that people will passively wear the Apple Watch for most of the day, actively interacting with it only for short periods of time." Essentially they're saying, "People will buy an expensive watch that does all this extra fancy stuff, but really they won't bother much with the extra fancy stuff - because who actually wants to fiddle around with something on their wrist for any protracted length of time?" I think Apple has enough die-hard fans, who will buy almost anything they make, for it to be hard for them to do something that will register as a genuine complete flop... but I think the Apple Watch really could struggle to get much traction amongst the masses, and I don't just mean the expensive gold model.
- wonderyak 12y ago
  Sounds like a typical first generation new device from Apple. Generally, 1st generation new devices have low benefit to cost ratios, are trying to enter a market with the absolute minimum requirements, and the successive generations will include some kind of hardware bit that makes the device much more useful.
- freehunter 12y ago
  If you used your iPhone at full power all day, it would be dead in three hours. If you left it in standby, it would last for days. Most people do a combination of these things, leading to the battery life averaging out to be around one day of normal use. Is that essentially saying people bought an expensive phone that does all this fancy stuff but don't bother with it because they don't want to fiddle with something in their hand for any length of time? Try flooring the accelerator on your car and see how long the tank of gas lasts. Compare it to idling away a full tank. Do people shy away from hot-rodding their engines just because they don't want to fiddle with the throttle, or because doing the speed limit and accelerating slowly tends to suit their needs just fine?
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    The aforementioned article about the Apple Watch talks of "heavy application use" and suggests it might only last 2.5 hours. If you read, for example, http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-6-review-battery-life-and-verdict-page-6 http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-6-review-battery-life-a..., it suggests "heavy use" of the iPhone 6 (at 50% screen brightness) yields about 14 hours of battery life. That's a pretty significant difference. While it's easy to say "it's more compelling to do stuff on a phone than it is to do it on a watch, so you'll naturally use the phone more", that rather makes me wonder why I would bother buying the watch, especially when you actually need the phone as well. Time will tell how people use these devices and whether the battery really holds up to a reasonable person's usage. And, of course, it seems likely (though not certain) that later generations will have improved battery life.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      Because of the big screen, it's easier to browse the web on a tablet than on a phone. Easier than that is a laptop. A PC has an even bigger screen than that! But people still use phones, mostly for the minor convenience of having it in your pocket instead of in a bag, but also for the unique interactions it provides. I use my PC for eight hours a day straight. I use my phone for maybe 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, maybe an hour long call once or twice a day. Is there anything wrong with that? Should I be using my phone more? I mean, why would I spend all the money on having a powerful phone when I'm only using it occasionally? That's the logic you seem to be putting towards this watch. I'm not going to defend the battery life, it's totally crap. I'm just arguing against the logic. You seem to be saying if you're not using the device constantly, it's not worth having. I don't use my car constantly. I don't use my phone constantly. I don't use my Pebble constantly. But they're nice to have for their own reasons. The point of the watch is not to use it 100%, all the time. It's to use it when it makes sense to use it. Heavy application use isn't what it's designed for. Still, I agree the battery makes it useless even for the intended functionality.
- derefr 12y ago
  It does fancy stuff, but the fancy stuff it does consists of things that either alert you to something (and thus are over after a second), or that let you do some simple (and quickly done-with) interaction without having to pull out your phone. Despite "smartwatch" sounding like "smartphone", there's really nothing you'd want to do with its UX that could last an hour. Remember Windows SideShow[1]? It was a technology to allow OEMs to do things like putting an extra display on the lid of a laptop, that would indicate things when the laptop was closed and mostly asleep. That's what the watch is for: indicating things when your phone is closed and mostly asleep. If it indicates something interesting, you don't continue interacting with it; you take out your phone. I'm not saying this to defend Apple's product in particular; it's probably far too expensive to get the right adoption in its market, and is more like an initial market-testing experiment in the same way Google Glass was. But passive/reactive UX is a great idea, generally. The constant complaints about being stuck in a cubicle staring at a screen, or teenagers staring at their phones all day, are precisely because that's where our alerts are, and we don't want to miss them... but it's also where a bunch of engaging+distracting stuff is, so in the process of trying to stay on top of our alerts, we get constantly pulled back into engaging with the engaging stuff. Imagine if, to check your email, you had to log into World of Warcraft or Second Life and wander over to your virtual mailbox on your virtual driveway. Lots of potential for distraction during that, right? But waking up your phone or your laptop, with its manifold social apps and games and media to consume, is nearly as bad. Technologies with passive or reactive UXes allow us to treat technology as something poking its head into your door and asking a question, rather than something you need to "submerge into" like some sort of virtual reality. I look forward to the day when every $5 Swatch watch gives you your phone's alerts. At that point, the glowing rectangle will become only a productivity device: something for creation, live collaboration, or media consumption; something you intentionally engage with for defined periods. But not something you need to context-switch back to every three minutes to see if you got an email, and end up reading HN while you've got it open. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  Watches are things you use in brief bursts. They are no less valuable for that. Like fire extinguishers, the value lies in being available and responsive whenever. I don't rate my bottle opener by how much time I spend using it. Just the opposite in fact.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    How much money did you spend on your bottle opener, may I ask?
    - eclipxe 12y ago
      $10,000
    - robotresearcher 12y ago
      I'm not sure what point you're making there. But in an attempt to end the thread in a fun way, here's a watch that opens bottles. If it's good at both those things, it will take but a few seconds a day to get good use out of it. http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/happy-hour-watch http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/happy-hour-watch
IBM 12y ago
They will get away with it because they're targeting 19 hours according to that article.
- listic 12y ago
  That's "19 hours of combined active/passive use" (that is, mostly idle) e.g. I will have to remember to charge it at the end of every single day, and goodness forbid that my day will last 24+ hours, as it just might once in a while. I find this inexcusable for a $300-class watch, but to charge four figures for a watch before bringing battery life firmly into "several days" territory, at the very least? I find it completely ridiculous. And how stupid will these 'luxury' watches look in a few years, when Apple (or their competitors, anyway) will eventually bring battery life into more sane range? That's what I was trying to say: I find the abysmal battery life kinda-accepted in this class of products, so far, to be inadequate, but even more so - I think it's completely preposterous there to be 'luxury' editions of the product. Later, when technology will mature and provide it with more usability and when incremental changes each year will diminish - sure, but right now - aren't Apple seeing that they are going to just make fools of themselves? If I'm wrong - well, then I'm seriously not understanding something in life.
  - eclipxe 12y ago
    Yes, you don't understand the luxury market, or the people that participate in the luxury goods market, at all.
    - listic 12y ago
      Do you? Please explain.
      - eclipxe 12y ago
        Yes. To put it simply, there is a non-empty set of people that will pay a large sum of money for something, simply because it requires a large sum of money. To this market, the lack of features or battery life, etc is not a concern. The price of the good itself, and therefore it's perceived exclusivity, is the paramount feature of the product. This non-empty set of people have no qualms about upgrading every few years to a new, more exclusive model. Nothing is worst than having something "old" or out of fashion. This non-empty set of people, will pay $10k, $15k, $20k+ for something just because they can. Example: http://financesonline.com/top-10-most-expensive-champagne-bottles-in-the-world/ http://financesonline.com/top-10-most-expensive-champagne-bo... Fashion, watches, etc is even more extravagant because the element of "freshness" and being "in style" plays into a constant need to invest in the latest.
CamperBob2 12y ago
The lessons of the "I Am Rich" app can't have been lost on Apple...

joezydeco 12y ago

Outrage, followed by long lines of people at the stores trying to get one and flip it on eBay for a couple thousand in profit.