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Apple Watch Review – A Day in the Life

58 points by mnkypete 12y ago

mnkypete 12y ago
Whatever your opinion on the watch might be, the review is just beautiful.
- bwindels 12y ago
  Interesting, the css fails to load for me.
  - bydo 12y ago
    It's the typical overly "rich" parallax-scrolling-images-behind-the-text stuff, though now some of them are videos, too, and sometimes they stay anchored for a while, and sometimes they play at the speed you are scrolling the text, for some reason. I find it incredibly distracting, personally.
    - cryodesign 12y ago
      Agree, yes it might 'wow' you at first, but when you see this used more and more on other sites, the novelty is gone. What does it really add, other than slowing down your scrolling (my laptop: i7, discrete gfx) and briefly distracting you while you focused on the text.
  - philipn 12y ago
    Yeah, same here. It was HTTPS everywhere's fault (or, rather, their fault for not supporting HTTPS correctly ;)
danso 12y ago
Seems like the Watch, whatever its ultimate potential, may be something better purchased in its second iteration: > Let’s just get this out of the way: the Apple Watch, as I reviewed it for the past week and a half, is kind of slow. There’s no getting around it, no way to talk about all of its interface ideas and obvious potential and hints of genius without noting that sometimes it stutters loading notifications. Sometimes pulling location information and data from your iPhone over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi takes a long time. Sometimes apps take forever to load, and sometimes third-party apps never really load at all. Sometimes it’s just unresponsive for a few seconds while it thinks and then it comes back. Data transfer between the phone and watch should be something that feels as seamless as magic...else, what's the point of getting the watch?
- FreakyT 12y ago
  I get the impression a lot of this is due to the lack of native apps -- since every app is just running on the phone, it's guaranteed to be slower than the speed of your phone. (And, as the author here points out, that adds a significant incentive to just pull out your phone instead of using the watch.) I wonder when Apple plans to add native support to the WatchKit SDK -- in a few months? A year? Or maybe they'll just wait for the second generation.
  - cheshire137 12y ago
    I didn't realize the apps run on the phone. So this means that unless I have an iPhone, I couldn't even use an Apple Watch?
    - FreakyT 12y ago
      > unless I have an iPhone, I couldn't even use an Apple Watch That's the case with everything the watch can do, I believe. I know it can only receive notifications from iOS devices, and I'm pretty sure that, similar the original iPhone, it won't even tell the time without first pairing to an iPhone. (The original iPhone wouldn't do anything without first being connected to iTunes).
- TillE 12y ago
  There's so much about this that reminds me of the first iPhone. Even the aesthetics are similar, and it's nearly as thick (10.5mm vs 11.6mm, as compared to the 6.9mm iPhone 6). Both the iPhone and the iPad became dramatically thinner and faster within two or three generations. They're dealing with tighter constraints here, but I fully expect a similar trajectory. The watch is going to look enormous and slow in a year or two.
morbius 12y ago
Unequivocally pretentious, bloated, and comically self-aggrandizing. Much like the watch and its makers themselves.
- arsenide 12y ago
  Can you elaborate on your reasons instead of stating non-obvious "truths?"
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  That's what makes this review great. Following the author around for the day while he uses the watch gives us a much better impression of what the watch can do and what it's useful for than a more typical technical review.
petrosh 12y ago
barely 16 hours battery? better for apple it recharge with telepathy...
jscheel 12y ago
So, brand new battery, one day of use, and he was at 10% by 7pm and was "hyper-aware" about how little battery life he had left, triggering a "wave of anxiety." According to one analysis (http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-lap...), Apple battery capacity can decay by 15% in a year. This means that by next year, his watch could be at 10% by 5pm. No. No way. Heck no. Not happening. Really regretting that I didn't get in on the Pebble Time Kickstarter now.
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  That assumes they don't improve the battery life in software over the next year, which they probably will. But it also leaves you much less slack to install new and interesting apps on your watch. My original pebble used to last a longer than it does now, even though newer versions of the software have improved life dramatically. It's just so much more useful than version 1.0 that I use it more. It's OK for the battery life to drop from 6 days to 4; it's not OK to drop from 18 to 14...
  - commandar 12y ago
    The extremely short battery life also precludes one of the best use cases I've found for my Pebble: sleep tracking.
    - gress 12y ago
      It's not extremely short. This reviewer is an exception.
      - commandar 12y ago
        Anything reasonably under a full 24 hour day precludes sleep tracking. That's extremely short compared to the Pebbles that get the better part of a week and can be used for sleep tracking without issue. Squabbling over 16 vs 18 vs 20 hours doesn't matter.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mkr-hn 12y ago
Is there some way to get rid of the background animations in this article? I'm sure it seemed real neat in the design meeting, but it's very distracting. I couldn't finish the article.
- cheshire137 12y ago
  I thought they were kinda painful, too. Please don't make my browser stutter, websites that are just trying to display an article whose whole point is the text.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mladenkovacevic 12y ago
The Apple Watch marks a new stage in consumerism in that it is effectively a gift FOR your iPhone. It doesn't work without an iPhone but it makes the iPhone's workload a little easier. It's also precious, expensive and intimate. What better way to show affection to your beloved iDevice.
TheSoftwareGuy 12y ago
>Paying for coffee at The Café Grind in Manhattan involved nothing more than double-clicking the communications button on the Watch and holding my wrist over the terminal; it beeped and the payment processed instantly. really? No authentication at all?
- bentruyman 12y ago
  A passcode you specify is required every time you put on the watch.
cheshire137 12y ago
I really hoped for a TL;DR or some kind of summary at the end. It looks like the review just has sections and then stops.

58 points by mnkypete 12y ago

mnkypete 12y ago

Whatever your opinion on the watch might be, the review is just beautiful.

bwindels 12y ago
Interesting, the css fails to load for me.
- bydo 12y ago
  It's the typical overly "rich" parallax-scrolling-images-behind-the-text stuff, though now some of them are videos, too, and sometimes they stay anchored for a while, and sometimes they play at the speed you are scrolling the text, for some reason. I find it incredibly distracting, personally.
  - cryodesign 12y ago
    Agree, yes it might 'wow' you at first, but when you see this used more and more on other sites, the novelty is gone. What does it really add, other than slowing down your scrolling (my laptop: i7, discrete gfx) and briefly distracting you while you focused on the text.
- philipn 12y ago
  Yeah, same here. It was HTTPS everywhere's fault (or, rather, their fault for not supporting HTTPS correctly ;)

danso 12y ago

Seems like the Watch, whatever its ultimate potential, may be something better purchased in its second iteration: > Let’s just get this out of the way: the Apple Watch, as I reviewed it for the past week and a half, is kind of slow. There’s no getting around it, no way to talk about all of its interface ideas and obvious potential and hints of genius without noting that sometimes it stutters loading notifications. Sometimes pulling location information and data from your iPhone over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi takes a long time. Sometimes apps take forever to load, and sometimes third-party apps never really load at all. Sometimes it’s just unresponsive for a few seconds while it thinks and then it comes back. Data transfer between the phone and watch should be something that feels as seamless as magic...else, what's the point of getting the watch?

FreakyT 12y ago
I get the impression a lot of this is due to the lack of native apps -- since every app is just running on the phone, it's guaranteed to be slower than the speed of your phone. (And, as the author here points out, that adds a significant incentive to just pull out your phone instead of using the watch.) I wonder when Apple plans to add native support to the WatchKit SDK -- in a few months? A year? Or maybe they'll just wait for the second generation.
- cheshire137 12y ago
  I didn't realize the apps run on the phone. So this means that unless I have an iPhone, I couldn't even use an Apple Watch?
  - FreakyT 12y ago
    > unless I have an iPhone, I couldn't even use an Apple Watch That's the case with everything the watch can do, I believe. I know it can only receive notifications from iOS devices, and I'm pretty sure that, similar the original iPhone, it won't even tell the time without first pairing to an iPhone. (The original iPhone wouldn't do anything without first being connected to iTunes).
TillE 12y ago
There's so much about this that reminds me of the first iPhone. Even the aesthetics are similar, and it's nearly as thick (10.5mm vs 11.6mm, as compared to the 6.9mm iPhone 6). Both the iPhone and the iPad became dramatically thinner and faster within two or three generations. They're dealing with tighter constraints here, but I fully expect a similar trajectory. The watch is going to look enormous and slow in a year or two.

morbius 12y ago

Unequivocally pretentious, bloated, and comically self-aggrandizing. Much like the watch and its makers themselves.

arsenide 12y ago
Can you elaborate on your reasons instead of stating non-obvious "truths?"
bryanlarsen 12y ago
That's what makes this review great. Following the author around for the day while he uses the watch gives us a much better impression of what the watch can do and what it's useful for than a more typical technical review.

petrosh 12y ago

barely 16 hours battery? better for apple it recharge with telepathy...

jscheel 12y ago

So, brand new battery, one day of use, and he was at 10% by 7pm and was "hyper-aware" about how little battery life he had left, triggering a "wave of anxiety." According to one analysis (http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-lap...), Apple battery capacity can decay by 15% in a year. This means that by next year, his watch could be at 10% by 5pm. No. No way. Heck no. Not happening. Really regretting that I didn't get in on the Pebble Time Kickstarter now.

bryanlarsen 12y ago
That assumes they don't improve the battery life in software over the next year, which they probably will. But it also leaves you much less slack to install new and interesting apps on your watch. My original pebble used to last a longer than it does now, even though newer versions of the software have improved life dramatically. It's just so much more useful than version 1.0 that I use it more. It's OK for the battery life to drop from 6 days to 4; it's not OK to drop from 18 to 14...
- commandar 12y ago
  The extremely short battery life also precludes one of the best use cases I've found for my Pebble: sleep tracking.
  - gress 12y ago
    It's not extremely short. This reviewer is an exception.
    - commandar 12y ago
      Anything reasonably under a full 24 hour day precludes sleep tracking. That's extremely short compared to the Pebbles that get the better part of a week and can be used for sleep tracking without issue. Squabbling over 16 vs 18 vs 20 hours doesn't matter.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mkr-hn 12y ago

Is there some way to get rid of the background animations in this article? I'm sure it seemed real neat in the design meeting, but it's very distracting. I couldn't finish the article.

cheshire137 12y ago
I thought they were kinda painful, too. Please don't make my browser stutter, websites that are just trying to display an article whose whole point is the text.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mladenkovacevic 12y ago

The Apple Watch marks a new stage in consumerism in that it is effectively a gift FOR your iPhone. It doesn't work without an iPhone but it makes the iPhone's workload a little easier. It's also precious, expensive and intimate. What better way to show affection to your beloved iDevice.

TheSoftwareGuy 12y ago

>Paying for coffee at The Café Grind in Manhattan involved nothing more than double-clicking the communications button on the Watch and holding my wrist over the terminal; it beeped and the payment processed instantly. really? No authentication at all?

bentruyman 12y ago
A passcode you specify is required every time you put on the watch.

cheshire137 12y ago

I really hoped for a TL;DR or some kind of summary at the end. It looks like the review just has sections and then stops.