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Do people really think they will add a FaceTime camera?

People give me funny looks when I use my Apple Watch to pay for things, and seeing people FaceTime-ing on them will be totally weird.
If they do add one it will be a 640x480 camera like on the latest macbook retina 12. But I don't see a real reason to have one on the watch itself. But I suppose some people will see that as a major selling point. Frankly I'll be passing on Gen 2 because Gen 1 will be able to do basically everything they toss into the next OS. If they add a camera then I'll snag Gen 3 to get it. But I've always thought the watch at best is a 2 to 3 year product cycle for me, not a yearly one. It's nice to have, makes it easier to check notifications but really that's all i've been using it for other then the heart rate monitor/workouts.
 
I can't wait to see Ive in the promo video explaining how they were able to make it thinner than the first one and somehow they couldn't do it before.
jonyivescr_001-large.jpg

Wait, you're argument is they made the first one intentionally thicker than they needed to? Utter nonsense.
 
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soon, we can enjoy looking at our wrists more often on a small display...

and here i am thinking we spend to much time on our iOS devices without paying attention to reality anymore...

This will only get worse from here on in. Not bad... but the future is here and i don't like it.

so this is my we need self driving cars ... Apple i've solved your puzzle :D
 
I can't wait to see Ive in the promo video explaining how they were able to make it thinner than the first one and somehow they couldn't do it before.

And that is relevant to this article how exactly?

Wouldn't be a Macrumors forum if some genius who thinks that just because he wants something it's automatically possible for Apple to produce it in the minute, and if not they're just playing the planned obsolescence game.

Cracks me up. If Apple comes out with a new or improved technology they get ridiculed because they're just "milking the cow." If the product doesn't change enough they get lambasted for lacking innovation.

It's mystifying to me how a bunch of armchair quarterbacks who couldn't design or build bupkis themselves like to spend their time casting judgment on the most successful industrial designer in the world, who works for the most successful company in the world.

Talk to me when you're a knight
 
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Waterproof and completely iPhone-independent, please.

I will co-sign that! The watch being independent is the natural evolution of wearables as a whole succeeding. I would say give it 10 years and the people still using handheld phones as opposed to Wearables (Googles only or ones tethered to watch) will be the new norm.
 
They have a dream team of health sensor experts. I've got big hopes for future Apple Watches. Heart Rate while running is already one of my most used features.
 
I'd never say that, don't know how legitimate it would be, but if apple ever introduce a 'permanent' soft sim on the phone to replace the card as they're pushing, who's not to say a soft sim in the watch could clone it, 1 sim card from networks, 2 devices to use it?

This is precisely what I'd like to see happen eventually. The watch will never use enough data to justify it's own data plan, but if it could piggyback off the phone's plan and maintain it's own connectivity independent of the phone, that would be killer. Soft SIM would allow them to keep the cellular parts small and it could simply clone whatever SIM (or soft SIM) is in your phone. I guess I wouldn't be surprised to see carriers try to get a $5/month access fee or something, but hopefully Apple can stop that from happening. Maybe partner with "Uncarrier" T-mobile to do for free, thus setting the bar at free for the other carriers.
 
Wait, you're argument is they made the first one intentionally thicker than they needed to? Utter nonsense.
Sure. I'm sure the tinfoil hat crowd thinks Apple intentionally made it thicker so they'd have something to brag about with gen 2. Same with the iPad Pro. To this crowd of course it could have/should have had 3D Touch but Apple intentionally left it off so they'd have something for gen 2.
 
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Real-time blood glucose monitoring is going to be a revolutionary advancement. Especially considering the growing diabetes epidemic.

I agree.. Now will Apple include it or is this something for the future. Apple married some already existing tech in a good way for the Apple watch, but it didn't break any tech barriers.
 
Doubt it. Camera takes up a lot of space and there isn't a surplus of space on the watch now. You have to have an iPhone to use the Apple Watch so just use that FaceTime camera.

Holding your one arm up the entire time you're on a FaceTime call would also suck.

Actually I can see this being quite useful - especially with the broader move to Bluetooth headphones. If I am out shopping with bluetooth headphones in then Facetime for a quick chat would be fine on the small screen.
 
Round.

Don't care if it's got heart monitors, glucose monitors, space-time-continuum monitors, and washes my car for me. If it's not round, it's no deal.
 
Put GPS in the damn thing will you!

Right... Who cares if the battery lasts 50% less or the watch needs to be twice the size... That doesn't matter...

Even though, GPS has a +- 8m margin of error, even worse when moving, which makes it not really better for exercises than using a well calibrated accelerometer, unless going cross country, in the brush (which most people don't do).

Mapping is the only real use and it's most time your doing that, you got your phone with you.
 
Non-invasive glucose monitoring is still a dream, but there's more that can be done with the heart rate monitor. Blood oxygen levels, for example, and cardia dysrhythmia alerts. It doesn't have to monitor constantly - the current intervals would be adequate.
 
Actually I can see this being quite useful - especially with the broader move to Bluetooth headphones. If I am out shopping with bluetooth headphones in then Facetime for a quick chat would be fine on the small screen.

Those rocking Bluetooth headphones while they're out and about are few and far between. Apple knows that most don't take FaceTime calls in public. Most of us don't want to be that guy.
 
Non-invasive glucose monitoring is still a dream, but there's more that can be done with the heart rate monitor. Blood oxygen levels, for example, and cardia dysrhythmia alerts. It doesn't have to monitor constantly - the current intervals would be adequate.

Glucose testing is definitely POSSIBLE. It's also further away than people think.
Here's the state of the art:
http://www.darkdaily.com/princeton-...hat-uses-imaging-technology-119#axzz3xAPNRUa1

The essential component is the quantum cascade laser and, right now, those cost about $1000 each. This could (in PRINCIPLE) change, but getting from here to their requires a whole bunch of tricky business issues to be negotiated. (Essentially you have to convert from making these lasers as specialized devices, using general purpose fab techniques and lots of human input to fully-automated manufacturing. That means someone taking a gamble on building a $50 million or more facility on the promise that if you build it, they will come. [ie there will now exist a market for the 10 million a year QCLs you fabricate as opposed to the current market of maybe 10,000 a year. That's a hell of a gamble.])

Of course, even apart from cost issues there are other challenges. There is packaging for example. QCLs are small, but the standard packaging schemes in use today are not small compared to the size of something like a watch. There are basic mounting issues --- the work I described tests against the palm, not the top of the wrist, and are there unexpected challenges to using the top of the wrist (like hair, or body motion)?

Before we see this in watches, look for it in hospital equipment (it's not there yet...) then in dedicated home equipment, and at that point it might make sense to consider shrinking it into a watch.
 
Glucose testing is definitely POSSIBLE. It's also further away than people think.
Here's the state of the art:
http://www.darkdaily.com/princeton-...hat-uses-imaging-technology-119#axzz3xAPNRUa1

The essential component is the quantum cascade laser and, right now, those cost about $1000 each. This could (in PRINCIPLE) change, but getting from here to their requires a whole bunch of tricky business issues to be negotiated. (Essentially you have to convert from making these lasers as specialized devices, using general purpose fab techniques and lots of human input to fully-automated manufacturing. That means someone taking a gamble on building a $50 million or more facility on the promise that if you build it, they will come. [ie there will now exist a market for the 10 million a year QCLs you fabricate as opposed to the current market of maybe 10,000 a year. That's a hell of a gamble.])

Of course, even apart from cost issues there are other challenges. There is packaging for example. QCLs are small, but the standard packaging schemes in use today are not small compared to the size of something like a watch. There are basic mounting issues --- the work I described tests against the palm, not the top of the wrist, and are there unexpected challenges to using the top of the wrist (like hair, or body motion)?

Before we see this in watches, look for it in hospital equipment (it's not there yet...) then in dedicated home equipment, and at that point it might make sense to consider shrinking it into a watch.

Thank you for that. I knew it was being worked on, I wasn't aware they were so far along. Still, it's hard to imagine this technology in a watch in less than a decade, probably longer. Ask Richard Bernstein how hard it was to get a glucometer back in the early seventies. (He was the first patient to buy one.) It's taken a long time for the current generation of glucometers to become cheap, easy, and ubiquitous.
 
I could be proven wrong, but round screens have fewer practically usable pixels. So you end up lighting and rendering a much larger display for the same amount of content. As long as battery and processing are a concern at all, I can't see a reason to have a round display.
 
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