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Apple's 'iWatch' Said to Run Full iOS, but Battery Life an Issue in Prototypes

lilo777 said:
None. But it definitely creates one :D In my current watch, the battery lasts 8 years. Would I want to replace it with a watch that requires charging every 6 days? Highly unlikely.
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Do you use the same argument for your phone? In that case you must use a dumbphone.
 
class77 said:
I think this is going to be a big ole bomb....Improve the OS instead and that will sell many more iGadgets.

Apple's getting like it was when Steve had to come back in and take over. Too much inventory carrying costs because the range of what they are selling keeps getting wider and wider.
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They sell Macs, iPods, iPhones and iPads. That's not a huge product line. And who says they're not working on improving iOS right now?
 
I think this device would be cool if even it just acts as a 2nd "monitor" of a dual screen setup like in a normal office environment. People use the 2nd monitor to keep their twitter, email, facebook, etc. feeds on. Your phone would be your primary display, but to keep quick tabs on constant notifications it would be very useful to have it right on your wrist.
 
Carniphage said:
  • Play a game on your watch?
  • Watch a movie or TV on your watch?
  • Read an email on your watch?
  • Make a call through your watch?
  • Want to talk to your watch to issue a command to another device?
  • Take a photograph with your watch?
  • Look at a photograph on your watch?
  • Scroll through a document on your watch?

Is it just me, or are there really people who are answering "yes" to some of these questions?
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Why would you limit yourself to those poor features for a watch? Because it helps your point?

There are many, many real life advantages that an iWatch could provide. Even saying "It can provide you with an easy way to view notifications, who's calling, etc without pulling out your phone" is a very limited way of looking at what is capable with an iWatch/wearable computing.

Biometric security/password protection- Wouldn't it be great if just weaing your iWatch, it would automatically log you in to your iPhone, Mac, passwords in safari, etc. Maybe eventually even things like cars and homes
NFC- whether it be for payment or those "tags" that you can tap to change environmental settings. It is a significant improvement to simply tap your wrist (and no password required, thanks biometrics!) than to get out your phone, tap it, and enter a password.
Fitness monitoring- things like the nike fuelband are already getting popular.
Hand gestures- Apple TV is going to become a thing. Wearing the iWatch could allow you to control it through simple handgestures. They could also be used for some games
convenience- there are some times when it would be much easier to look at/interact with your watch then getting out your phone.

There are certainly much more possible, but that is only the beginning of what I can think of. Now, I wouldn't expect all of that to be in a 1.0 product, but there certainly are some real opportunities here
 
Skika said:
Do you use the same argument for your phone? In that case you must use a dumbphone.
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That would be correct if the smart phone was just a second display for, say, a laptop. But it is not. iWatch on the other hand is just that - a totally redundant piece of hardware which is supposed to bring extra convenience but with this sort of battery life it's anything but convenient.
 
Nunyabinez said:
Who needs an iPad? It's just an oversized iPod. It doesn't do as much as a laptop. It doesn't support flash. I can't put a memory card in it. It will be a fail. Not for me, no sir.

Whoa. Sorry, I just had a major deja vu. This site is really humorous to see how so many people have't learned from the past. All the "Yeah, nobody thought the iPad would sell and yet it did, but the iWatch will be different" posts make me chuckle. I'll bet you a year's salary that Apple isn't calling it an iWatch internally, because as Jony Ive said, when you name a product all kinds of baggage comes with it. This will be a wrist-worn iOS device, not a watch. And after it comes out, everyone will say "That was totally obvious!, Why didn't someone think of this before?" People really are funny.

BTW, haven't worn a watch in years, but this could be huge depending on what it is. I'll wait and see.
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I think the difference is that there was a huge pent-up demand for a tablet computer at the point the ipad was released, it was just that no one had figured out how to do it right. Apple bet that scaling an iphone up to a tablet instead of trying to scale a laptop down to a tablet was the way to go, and they were right. The other big thing that had happened was that Amazon had just released the Kindle and found that there was a huge market for ebook readers. "iBooks" was the big reveal on the iPad launch that got everyone excited.

I don't see that an iwatch has any of that going for it.
 
lol...

I really had to laugh over this one.... A Full blown OS on such a tiny screen.

I imagine when they mean "full" they actually mean full, meaning it has storage, can transfer files over, view them, surf the web... etc ...

Or rather, to the point of reality, it WILL have limitations just like a a separate IOS like the iPad and iPhone, where its restricted o what can be done (app wise too).

I can clearly see though, this ties in perfectly with the Surface Pro and the argument over over 4 hours battery life....

Although here, I though Apple were "ahead of the curve" on this one I guess not.

Apart from this, i can see more problems already ...

Who would wan to plug in their watch to charge? We wear them, .... I wear mine 24/7 except in the shower.

Since they would have coin cell battery in... These things are cheap to replace, and no doubt, by the size of the iWatch, Apple must follow suit with batteries.

But ...... guess what .... it wouldn't be replace-able ....

Sorry guys...... the first ever watch, you cannot replace the battery. This turns me off it already from this, regardless of "weather they reckon it can run a full blown OS with 7 hours battery"

You come out with new stuff, and doesn't take long for people to catch on and say "i wish this one thing that is now small and convenient, i wish ot could do everything i always wanted, at the same battery life"

Wishful thinking .....
 
full iOS on a watch? great!

"hey what time it is?"
"ill look it up on my new iWatch from Apple! oh wait a second, nah cancel that i tried to jailbreak it and its stuck on apple logo"

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APlotdevice said:
The same problem that wrist watches solved when they were first invented: not having to dig something out of your pocket just to see it.
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because thats really the hardest thing in life, taking the phone out of the pocket and looking what time it is...
 
Carniphage said:
Either figuratively or literally.

The device that solves the problem of how to look at your phone, without all the tiresome nonsense of actually pulling out your phone is not a good enough reason to buy another device.

Especially when that means.
1) A 1" screen
2) Another device to charge.

These rumor-mills are a-churnin. But would much rather get a hint of a product which solves a more universal need.
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If I want to know the time, I'll probably just glance at the screen of my Google Glass.
 
TallManNY said:
Could the iWatch rumors just be a massive misunderstanding of the word "watch"? Could Apple really be working on a TV device that you are supposed to watch?
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No, its not a TV, but due to battery life issues they gave up making it run any thing at all, so all you can do is "watch" it, it wont DO anything. :D Just be strapped to your wrist displaying a note to go check your iPhone to see what time it is.
 
Mac32 said:
How much can be accomplished with such a small screen? Sceptical...
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A lot when you tap on the face band and can talk to it. The device is about Siri and voice commands. It is also about apps. Third party apps that have real world applications like Nest and Square. This iBand is not a watch, and it is not for checking your Facebook wall. That is the story of the last five years, and it is played out.

The future is about controlling the world around you through voice commands and not needing to hold a phone to do it. Five years from now people will wonder how they ever got by without them.

Also, for people who wear Bluetooth headsets, isn't it easier to pick up a phone call when you can just look at your oled wrist band to see who is calling? Holding a phone is more cumbersome and distracting than people think.
 
Smartass said:
because thats really the hardest thing in life, taking the phone out of the pocket and looking what time it is...
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Hard enough that wristwatches outsell pocket watches by several orders of magnitude. I see lots of guys in suits with automatic watches. Enough to make it still a multi-Billion dollar business. When was the last time you saw anybody with a wind-up pocket watch (outside of a museum or steampunk party)?
 
Deleo77 said:
The future is about controlling the world around you through voice commands and not needing to hold a phone to do it. Five years from now people will wonder how they ever got by without them.
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I hate the future already. :mad:

Whatever happened to the days where you could pick up a phone to call ..... to use a keyboard, rather than just voice.

All this is (optional) now, but just wait, Apple will push it to the point, its required. We're already seeing it in small devices like the shuffle, where it doesn't have a display.

I don't really care about all of this, just as long s whatever it is, has bluetooth so i can have the (option) to pair my physical keyboard with it.
 
Personally, I like the idea of carrying the more powerful computing device in your pocket and doing most of the every day stuff like reading texts (perhaps sending, if the screen is big enough?) from your wrist. It's quicker. It saves time. And if the design is right, it'll look very desirable, too.

The old adage of people don't know what they want until you tell them they want it always holds true on these forums. I've lurked here for about ten years, this place never changes.
 
Sky Blue said:
I remember when this site was about iPhones and iPads, not these kiddy iWatch toys. What has happened to Apple?
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This is like the first thing like this though, and I'm still incredibly skeptical Apple would make anything like this.
 
Smartass said:
full iOS on a watch? great!

"hey what time it is?"
"ill look it up on my new iWatch from Apple! oh wait a second, nah cancel that i tried to jailbreak it and its stuck on apple logo"
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Umm... Your device has to be plugged into a computer in order to jailbreak it. And if it is plugged into said computer, then it can be very easily restored to working condition with iTunes.


Smartass said:
because thats really the hardest thing in life, taking the phone out of the pocket and looking what time it is...
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Ahem...
220px-MontreGousset001.jpg


These pocket watches existed centuries before their wrist mounted counterparts. By your argument wrist watches should have never taken off at all.
 
Even sounds more ridiculous to jailbreak a watch lol.

"Sorry. my watch crashed/froze up/kernel panic. I cannot tell the time till iWatch is restored.

Does anyone have a Mac I can borrow?."
 
Its Gotta work as Jewelry

Watches are mostly jewelry and a status symbol these days. I don't wear a Rolex because it tells time better than a $75 Casio (it does not). I'm not going to replace it with a $200 plastic iWatch either.
 
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