Videos Showcase Apple Watch Launch Lines, Teardown and More

[rovolo]

What he said. Ever since the EOD, I've gone from being disappointed, to diplomatic, to just plain hacked off.

No better words to be found to describe my state of mind, distant friend. Addendum: I’m rationalizing. A lot. Do I really need that (let’s be honest: not so pretty) thing? Getting it now or in two months: what’s the difference? I can climb the 13 flights to my condo right now without any watch watching me, can't I? And the devil speaks: Yeeaaah, buddy, but it would be so much more fun to have it registered in your personal fitness progress app, wouldn't it?

 

[markcres]

I wouldn't mind this for any product, just for "non spoilers" I kind of wanted to be surprised by the sport box, but knew i was gonna see it on the webpage so just accepted it.

I think that is what is referred to as a "first world problem" !!

 

[Gameboy70]

NO ONE I KNOW - NO ONE - ordered Apple Watch other than myself.

I know it's a small sample, how can Apple be out of inventory and so back logged when they haven't so many?

Simple. Quanta only produced 2.3m Watches that were ready to ship, and Apple got over 2.3m orders; the ones who passed the 2.3m threshold are slated for June delivery, like mine. I believe the Apple's first order to Quanta was for 5m, and I suspect that another 2.3m should be arriving any day now (my guess is that a second shipment was slated for 4/24). If I'm right, those of us who ordered within minutes of the starting bell but got June delivery confirmations will probably be getting an update this week notifying us that we'll get it by mid-May.

I'm also the only person I know IRL who's ordered the Watch, but all you have to do is look at forums, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to see that a ton of people ordered it.

In hindsight, it's obvious that the entire development cycle of the AW has been massively behind schedule, otherwise Apple would've never provided such a broad release window like "Early 2015" (the iPhone, announced in January, always had a June launch date) in. There were a number of credible rumors that Apple had initially targeted a Fall 2014 launch for the Watch, but they kept running into development issues. The bottom line: Apple scheduled the launch date prematurely, before they had sufficient inventory.

 

[cheesyappleuser]

Is it just me or the Sport bands look really tacky for everyday use?

 

[Gameboy70]

Is it just me or the Sport bands look really tacky for everyday use?

I agree, unfortunately. I was compelled to buy a much more expensive option. Can't wait to see some good, affordable third-party alternatives.

 

[jagolden]

Is it just me or the Sport bands look really tacky for everyday use?

Casual, to be sure, but I don't think tacky.
I got the green one. While I wish the color was closer to the renders on the Apple Store/site, overall I like the splash of color.
I'm a creative, people tend to give us a little more leeway on our choices.

That said, I did order a black band also, for "dress" occasions.

Also, I think the band looks weird and old-school retro when viewed flat, yucky actually.
But when it's on the wrist it looks good.

 

[chumpy34]

I agree, unfortunately. I was compelled to buy a much more expensive option. Can't wait to see some good, affordable third-party alternatives.

It's just you two. I have the blue sports and it looks great and matches my iPhone 6 as well. Wearing the Watch today and got a lot of notices and people loved the quality of the Watch and band. I have worn a silicone wristband for my non-profit film festival I host for years and the Apple Watch feels the same, very soft and just awesome on my wrist.

And first case of my Watch functioning in a very convenient way. I was filming a volunteer group/client at a food bank this morning and had my phone in my bag in another room. About an hour into filming, got an alert on my wrist/watch that was a text from client asking for still images for their FB page asap. Never would have known that until it was too late so my Watch saved the day!

 

[jagolden]

Maybe it is your monitor that's not rendering the correct color ;-).

Nope. Looked at the Watch site on 3 different desktops, 2 differnt tablets and 3 different phones. The renders across all these devices were consistent (within reason). The band online looks a lot more yellow-green than the actual lime green it is in person.
Surprisingly poor rendering values from Apple.

Not exactly a big problem, though.

There should be after-market bands popping up soon.

 

[jagolden]

It does just that when you set it up on. So, not sure what your talking about. Its in one of the unboxing video on this site.

No it's the physical placement of the buttons. It is clearly designed to be worn on the left wrist by right-handed people.
This way you can easily operate the crown and button with your right index finger without having to "reach around" or obscure the screen with your hand.

When it's worn on the right wrist, the crown and button are now on the inside and need to be operated with your thumb, or by a somewhat awkward manouver (spelling on that?:confused) to get your left index finger on the crown, that also partially obscures the screen.

Much easier to use when on left wrist.
Even though I'm predominantly left-handed, I wear my watch on my left hand, luckily I feel.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Is it just me or the Sport bands look really tacky for everyday use?

IMO, the Sport bands are well suited to their intended use. They are a casual band.

 

[Tech198]

kewl video

So that must means screw its of this size should be out soon...


I would have still have like dto see a tiny "shock" instead of vibrate, but that's just me personally. Hey, if you're gonna do it, u may as well also give uses a wake up call too

Disclaimer : not for persons over 50

so many cables in such a tiny package.... (well, that proves my theory then).

You always see these videos being "taken things apart" but never "put them back together" (probably cause its harder) I'd like to now see that ..

 

[D.T.]

No it's the physical placement of the buttons. It is clearly designed to be worn on the left wrist by right-handed people.
This way you can easily operate the crown and button with your right index finger without having to "reach around" or obscure the screen with your hand.

When it's worn on the right wrist, the crown and button are now on the inside and need to be operated with your thumb, or by a somewhat awkward manouver (spelling on that?:confused) to get your left index finger on the crown, that also partially obscures the screen.

Much easier to use when on left wrist.
Even though I'm predominantly left-handed, I wear my watch on my left hand, luckily I feel.

No. If you wear it on your right wrist, you _still_ wear it with the buttons towards your hand, and the handedness configuration flips the display 180º as needed. You're not reaching over the display to use controls.

The only major difference is the position of the crown/home - on the right wrist the DC is under the Home Button.

Pretty simple.

 

[CFreymarc]

Overall a very good subjective review in the quality expected from iFixIt. So it looks like the screen and battery can be serviced but the rest is a lot of work. Typicaly for such a small embedded system.

 

[warnergt]

Did they test it to see if it would survive the "Pulp Fiction hide-the-watch test"?

 

[Keirasplace]

No it's the physical placement of the buttons. It is clearly designed to be worn on the left wrist by right-handed people.
This way you can easily operate the crown and button with your right index finger without having to "reach around" or obscure the screen with your hand.

When it's worn on the right wrist, the crown and button are now on the inside and need to be operated with your thumb, or by a somewhat awkward manouver (spelling on that?:confused) to get your left index finger on the crown, that also partially obscures the screen.

Much easier to use when on left wrist.
Even though I'm predominantly left-handed, I wear my watch on my left hand, luckily I feel.

I just swear people should actually go on Apple's on own site and not assume things. Someone answered your assertions later, so I'm not going to do it.

----------

Simple. Quanta only produced 2.3m Watches that were ready to ship, and Apple got over 2.3m orders; the ones who passed the 2.3m threshold are slated for June delivery, like mine. I believe the Apple's first order to Quanta was for 5m, and I suspect that another 2.3m should be arriving any day now (my guess is that a second shipment was slated for 4/24). If I'm right, those of us who ordered within minutes of the starting bell but got June delivery confirmations will probably be getting an update this week notifying us that we'll get it by mid-May.

I'm also the only person I know IRL who's ordered the Watch, but all you have to do is look at forums, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to see that a ton of people ordered it.

In hindsight, it's obvious that the entire development cycle of the AW has been massively behind schedule, otherwise Apple would've never provided such a broad release window like "Early 2015" (the iPhone, announced in January, always had a June launch date) in. There were a number of credible rumors that Apple had initially targeted a Fall 2014 launch for the Watch, but they kept running into development issues. The bottom line: Apple scheduled the launch date prematurely, before they had sufficient inventory.

There is no doubt in my mind that the software was behind schedule, but I don't think hardware was. The problem is that you have to load the software before you ship, so they couldn't really stockpile.

 

[smorrissey]

Did they test it to see if it would survive the "Pulp Fiction hide-the-watch test"?

What is that??

 

[thirteen1031]

Apple has always found a way to turn those long lines into a positive. They recovered quickly from the crashes. They were always smooth in their explanations.

Um...not always. When Apple had their first, waiting-in-line hit with the iPod—in particular the first wave of smaller, colored iPods...well, let's just say I'm old enough to remember all kinds of mistakes and miscalculations. And anxious and unhappy customers. And what about the fiasco of the "white" iPhones? Waiting an extra week or two for your watch is nothing compared to those who waited for that first white iPhone.

Thing is, what you're talking about with current launches like the recent iPhone 6 going so smoothly—and/or recovering so quick from launch snafus--is all due to years of practice and learning from early mishaps. Apple didn't get that smooth at launches by way of magic or by just "knowing" how to do it. The company and its stores had to learn and often learned the hard way.

Now, with the watches, they're trying something different. If may look like a small difference to you, but however large or small, that difference can throw a company off it's game. It's not exactly like what they're used to. I imagine that they're probably scrambling right now to fix whatever gummed up the works and is keeping so many watches from getting to their owners. They know we all wanted them on that first day. But, however much they may have calculated for everything, they obviously didn't.

Still, I don't think we're going to have to wait as long as fans did for the white iPhone (I sure hope not!). So...maybe not a failure of a launch just yet.

 

[Solomani]

Always bet on black.

"Once you go black…. you never go back!" - K. Kardashian

 

[Ramchi]

May end like iPad

This may end up like iPad with people saturated with one generation product or second and nothing much can be done beyond that....the sale volume goes down significantly after few years. But initially it can attract lots of buyers. The charger seems to be a worrying component which seems to be uncomfortable carrying everywhere.

 

[Keirasplace]

This may end up like iPad with people saturated with one generation product or second and nothing much can be done beyond that....the sale volume goes down significantly after few years. But initially it can attract lots of buyers. The charger seems to be a worrying component which seems to be uncomfortable carrying everywhere.

Yeah, "saturated" and sold 90M last year... (year 6); nice naysayer narrative though... Barely matches reality, but hey, so what right?

You do know that every piece in the Apple ecosystem helps sell other devices, entrenches users. Apple doesn't care if they only buy and Ipad ever 5 years, as long it improves its odds of selling an Iphone and them not going to the competition. If they come back in 5 years, so be it, at least they'll come back; in the meantime they'll buy and Iphone, a Mac, an Apple Tv or whatever.

 

[2457282]

Um...not always. When Apple had their first, waiting-in-line hit with the iPod—in particular the first wave of smaller, colored iPods...well, let's just say I'm old enough to remember all kinds of mistakes and miscalculations. And anxious and unhappy customers. And what about the fiasco of the "white" iPhones? Waiting an extra week or two for your watch is nothing compared to those who waited for that first white iPhone.

Thing is, what you're talking about with current launches like the recent iPhone 6 going so smoothly—and/or recovering so quick from launch snafus--is all due to years of practice and learning from early mishaps. Apple didn't get that smooth at launches by way of magic or by just "knowing" how to do it. The company and its stores had to learn and often learned the hard way.

Now, with the watches, they're trying something different. If may look like a small difference to you, but however large or small, that difference can throw a company off it's game. It's not exactly like what they're used to. I imagine that they're probably scrambling right now to fix whatever gummed up the works and is keeping so many watches from getting to their owners. They know we all wanted them on that first day. But, however much they may have calculated for everything, they obviously didn't.

Still, I don't think we're going to have to wait as long as fans did for the white iPhone (I sure hope not!). So...maybe not a failure of a launch just yet.

all good boints. I do not remember the ipod issues, but that may be because i never had an issue getting my ipod and then classic ipods. as for the white iphone, although i remember for the 4 when they released it, it was way after the black, i dont remember it being late in terms of people ordering it and it not showing of for months. As I recall they announced that they were going to sell white phones and then pushed the launch date back almost a year before it came out. That seems better to me than what they are doing now, taking orders knowing that they had zero inventory with which to fullfil it -- as in 2 seconds after pre-orders started the backlog was already two months.

 

[thekeyring]

Is it just me or the Sport bands look really tacky for everyday use?

They - like the rest of the watch - look much better in person.

My girlfriend said 'don't get the sport band, it looks cheap' until she saw one in person.

 

[Solomani]

This may end up like iPad with people saturated with one generation product or second and nothing much can be done beyond that....the sale volume goes down significantly after few years. But initially it can attract lots of buyers. The charger seems to be a worrying component which seems to be uncomfortable carrying everywhere.

I think you are totally wrong. The first-generation Apple Watch is something that many people will not buy simply because it's a 1st-generation product with inherent weaknesses like limited battery capacity. The 2nd and 3rd generation Watches will definitely have improved those features… and will be waaaaaaaay more attractive to millions who held out on 1st generation Watch.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

I think you are totally wrong. The first-generation Apple Watch is something that many people will not buy simply because it's a 1st-generation product with inherent weaknesses like limited battery capacity. The 2nd and 3rd generation Watches will definitely have improved those features… and will be waaaaaaaay more attractive to millions who held out on 1st generation Watch.

Don't bet on 2nd gen battery being way better. History with Apple has not told us this.

2nd gen will be thinner and have more stuff, the battery will be better, but Apple will choose to do more things with that better battery, rather than simply increase battery life significantly.

 

[jjhny]

I think I am not the first one, but it would be awesome if there was some kind of toggle switch to turn off the apple watch articles on the front page.

Vote this up , if you are sick of this hype.

I just want the option.

I was just thinking that exact thought the other day. They should just admit this is the watch rumor site, followed by ios.

What is funny is the the site name says 'mac' rumors, not 'apple' rumors or 'ios' rumors. Last rumor about a macintosh was a long time ago.