Cancelled my order: Developer Point of View and Apple FAN

[Spetsnazos]

That is interesting, I had the opposite experience. Did you get to play with real hardware for a good debugging session or just try one? (I assume you tried real hardware, or how would you know its slow I suppose?)

Yes real hardware. I used a device from a friend at work. Just as background: I don't do iOS development at work, just C# coding.

I found that the simulator did a poor job of conveying the app's lifecycle. I had a large portion of an app ready to go when I finally got hardware (i ran out of patience, and paid 100 bucks extra to get one on craigslist, to get my app done not-in-late-june heh) and once I had real hardware I had several "aha" moments with the documentation that didn't really make sense in the simulator.

I'm sort of tempted to not give too much stock to the current documentation and API's because I feel like it will be drastically changed in the near future. Either way it seemed pretty straight forward unless I overlooked something in my http calls.

So now I primarily only use real hardware to do watch dev on, and I've found that it seems a bit faster than the simulator. I know apple inserts artificial lag in the simulator so you build to expect some lag. I found moving data in advanced to the extension via app groups pretty much removes any long loading time completely.

Anyways, I hear you on the frustration. Hopefully you will still get your apps out there!

I'll bug my buddy again and do a few more tests on Monday, thanks for the feedback.

Care to share any of the "a-ha" moments that you had? I might learn a thing or two

 

[bunnicula]

Welcome to Apple.

Please wait while I connect you with an Apple Sales Specialist.

Now Chatting with charnette

I thought the watch was going to be available on April 24th? Is there something wrong with my order?

Hey there!

Happy Wednesday! I would be delighted to assist you with our Apple Watch!

I am happy to explain it to you!

That is correct that it is available April 24th! This means that you no longer have to preorder here online and that it is now available for purchase. It does not mean that it is available within the local Apple stores though. So sorry for the confusion!

Hmm. I see the advertisements saying it is here, and you say it is available April 24th, and I preordered April 11, so I am wondering if my order got missed as I do not have it yet.

I am so sorry for the confusion! On April 24th you no longer have to preorder the watch. When you ordered on April 11th you preordered it before it was available on April 24th. This was not stating that you will receive your order on April 24th. So sorry!

wow, I am confused. Is there a problem with my order?

I am happy to check for you! Would you happen to have your order number?

Wxxxxxxxx
Thanks! Give me one sec to pull your order up

Got it! May I have the name and billing address for security reasons?

xxxxxxxxxx

Thanks a bunch! I show no issues with your order at all! How it works is that as it gets closer to that time you will receive a email with the actual shipping and delivery dates.

Then, once it ships out you will receive a email confirmation along with the tracking number so that you can see the actual delivery date.

Wow, I thought it would be available on April 24th because that is what I saw on all the adds and web site. Weird. You are saying I won't get it until much later?

Yes, that is correct! The April 24th date stating available means that you no longer had to preorder the watch.

Well ok, Apple sure confused me with this one! Can I get one in stores?

I wish that you could but it has not yet been released for purchase within the local Apple stores. So sorry!

Weird...ok I guess I will go back to being confused. I have always been able to buy your products on the day of release. I thought April 24 was the date they were available. I did not see anything about it being a date of Pre-order cut offs. .

I am so sorry for the confusion! It was indeed available as of April 24th for purchase here online only without having to preorder.

Thanks for telling my order is OK. I really don't understand how Apple is working this, but that is my problem I guess. Thanks for your explanation, but I don't understand. have a good day

That's not entirely accurate. There has never been an unlimited supply of exactly what everyone wanted on launch day for any Apple product.

This watch thing is confusing people because there are so many different configurations and people stubbornly refuse to understand why they cannot have a style of watch IMMEDIATELY that was never advertised as available for immediate purchase.

As someone who has had an Apple Watch since launch day, I can assure you that if you'd ordered a watch that was available per the system, you'd have one already.

The poor chat reps cannot do a thing in the world about it, and you knew that before you contacted them.

You know there are people out there who preordered the new macbook that cannot get it yet, right?

This isn't a new thing, not really. The Apple Watch isn't an iPhone. Hell, even the gold iPhone 5s was almost impossible to get on launch day and the 6 plus wasn't exactly easy to snag unless you wanted a 16 GB space gray one the day of launch this past year.

I remember when they launched the iPod Mini. You could not get the exact color you wanted of that baby right away, either.

The supplies were HIGHLY constrained. I had to wait a month to get a blue one.

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"The Apple Watch won't be available on April 24"

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/16/technology/apple-watch-april-24/

'Apple removed the April 24 availability date from its website, and an Apple Store employee confirmed that the Watch would not be available for sale on that day.'

Many of us that pre-ordered were expecting April 24th we would have the watch. I'm sorry if it isn't clear.

Did Apple quote you a 4/24-5/8 delivery window? If they didn't, then they didn't lie to you.

And Apple never removed that date from their site. They moved the date to the watch face. I suppose so that people wouldn't falsely assume that they could get one in the stores on launch day, because they shifted to online orders only.

Which is totally fine and doesn't mean they didn't launch on time.

 

[spotman]

Care to share any of the "a-ha" moments that you had? I might learn a thing or two

sure. the biggest one is that any requests to open parent application can be slow. so anytime you need to draw something on the UI, you should try to already have the data somewhere besides your main application, so that the watch extension when it fires up does not have to load your app initially to give the user the impression that something is happening.

so, for example, when a user launches a glance or the app, you should pull data out of something like a dictionary stored in nsuserdefaults. this doesn't require launching the parent app. then once your UI is rendered, you can open the parent application, go to and update this data in the shared location.

you can take this a step farther, and have your app write out this data when it detects a change. for example, you can send a push notification, and start a background task, that will do whatever you need to do (hit an http api, or something), and then save the data to the shared location. this way the next time the user clicks on your app, it needs almost no time to startup, the data is already local to it. (or at least, local to the extension, and doesn't need your app to start).

another one, is you don't get a feel for willActivate, didActivate, willDeactivate, didDeactivate in the simulator. Since there is no way to go back to the main watch face or home screen, you can't get a feel for going in and out of your app. the behavior is exactly as apple states in the docs, the caveat is that you can't really fully test that w/o real hardware. (or.. there is a way, and I haven't found it yet..)

 

[CooKieMoNs7eR]

Too much arguing in this thread...

 

[spiderman0616]

Honestly I still believe that a pure sport band without gimmicks but great battery and GPS and an open API for bluetooth data retrieval would still have a great potential to sell.

I would have liked if Apple would have abandoned the "Watch" concept, would not call it that at all and create something really new.

From Samsung to LG to Motorola, I believe that the Watch concept is short lived, if there's nothing interesting and new with regards to technology (sensors, interoperability)

Anonymous crowd analitics would be so much fun.

People at concerts of certain demographics, daily customers in shops, all of this including a radar with people you might meet spontaneously would be interesting.

A watch with mirrored iPhone Apps is not a concept.

Being at a movie theatre, wanting to meet 5 random 20-25 people for a drink would be fun. Click your watch, send a beacon for 3 minutes and meet new people to talk about the movie.

Twitter, Facebook and phone calls are on my phone already.

You sound like someone who hasn't used an Apple Watch. The last thing I want to do on mine is check Twitter and Facebook. That's not what it's for.

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I agree but I am really really hoping they release a new SDK or at least significantly open up the sensors and give some more API love.

The other hot topic item I hope they address is the future of Swift. I learned swift but I find myself still doing most of my work in Objc C because it just works and I'm already comfortable with it(never thought I would say that after working with C# for so long haha). I just don't see the benefit of Swift yet.

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If you read the OP, that is not why I am cancelling. I am cancelling to give myself freedom from checking my CC statement, Apple Order and this subforum 10x a day hoping to see activity with my shipment. Now that it's cancelled I can go on living my life not worrying about it and just wait until they have ample stock and allow for developers to develop more freely on the device.

Apple dropped the ball here with their lack of communication and deceitful advertising before the pre-orders kicked off. Me cancelling my order doesn't impact them one bit, but rest assured there are many die hard apple fans here who are not pleased with how it's been going.

Of course if you got your watch on the launch day, then it's a different story, right

I did read the OP, and if you weren't being such a head case about it, you could have freedom from doing all those things WITHOUT checking the forums and your cc statement every two seconds. How about maybe just having some balance in your life and not worrying so much about it. You can have peace of mind AND still have your watch order in place.

 

[pmau]

You sound like someone who hasn't used an Apple Watch. The last thing I want to do on mine is check Twitter and Facebook. That's not what it's for.

That's what I meant, but never mind. I have those on my phone.
I want useful watch applications that are specific to my immediate surroundings.

Not smaller version of iPhone Apps that have worse usability.

 

[roland.g]

13 watches total. We know that isn't right. And I could have ordered any sport or classic buckle and received it launch day or early the next week at the latest. So your argument is really just whining. As for the SDK and performance, I could argue with you and you'd be wrong on all points, but you do just want to complain so it really isn't worth my time.

 

[Apfpilot]

Imagine you waited in line for 3 hours at the movie theater with about 100 people ahead of you for what was advertised as a 3,000 seat theater before you even GOT in line. As soon as it hit midnight, they walked up and down the line and said that only the first 10 people could watch the movie right now and the rest of us had to wait until the next day. What? I'm already here, okay let me have a ticket and maybe they'll find more seats because we were all told it was a 3,000 person theater so there must be some mistake. Fast forward to 5 hours later, only 10 people are watching the movie and they are letting in 1 person every hour.

And the people who already saw the movie are wondering why the rest of the people that are waiting in line are sour?

Apples biggest failure is ZERO communication . Auto-generated emails saying they're still working on your order is not communication I would expect from a multi billion dollar corporation.

Cheers to all!

I'll be back when the SDK is improved and there is more supply. Please expand the API and allow for native apps!!

Except that apple didn't advertise any specific amount of units that would be available on launch day. Your movie theater analogy fails.

 

[spiderman0616]

That's what I meant, but never mind. I have those on my phone.
I want useful watch applications that are specific to my immediate surroundings.

Not smaller version of iPhone Apps that have worse usability.

That will come with time. Developers haven't had enough time to "get it" yet. The apps I have put on my watch that have proven to be INSANELY useful on my wrist: MLB, Dark Sky, Deliveries, Amazon, My Fitness Pal, Uber, Calcbot, Shazam. All 3rd party apps, all super useful and functional as Watch apps.

 

[Spetsnazos]

That will come with time. Developers haven't had enough time to "get it" yet. The apps I have put on my watch that have proven to be INSANELY useful on my wrist: MLB, Dark Sky, Deliveries, Amazon, My Fitness Pal, Uber, Calcbot, Shazam. All 3rd party apps, all super useful and functional as Watch apps.

I'm sure we will be able to figure out how to make the apps run smoother and faster but I was hoping for a little more API access. Right now the whole way it's setup is to improve battery life and not user experience.

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I did read the OP, and if you weren't being such a head case about it, you could have freedom from doing all those things WITHOUT checking the forums and your cc statement every two seconds. How about maybe just having some balance in your life and not worrying so much about it. You can have peace of mind AND still have your watch order in place.

interesting, I consider myself a tech nerd, but if that means I am a headcase then i'm good with that.

I guess when I was 11 I cared what people thought of me, not so much anymore You can go back to watching baseball and sunday morning football, I'll go back to nerding out

 

[TouchMint.com]

I feel the same way as a developer and user. I have some great things I want to do on the watch but I'm still waiting for it even after ordering on launch day. What really hurts is these watches that pop up and ship day of while I've been waiting for over a month.

I wish there would have been an option for developers to get whatever style as soon as it's ready to ship. I could care less what the watch looks like I just need something to test on. :/

 

[eelpout]

Mission accomplished--I don't think anyone bought a Microsoft Band.

they're selling more than you'd think. they were constantly selling out stock direct from MS. even now that it's more generally available, the most popular size, medium, commands a ~$50 premium on Amazon over L & S.