Lynch was immediately tasked with spearheading the group in designing a wrist-worn device that would, as Wired points out, aim to be Apple's fourth major game changer following the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
For those who can be objective (meaning not the "Apple is God" or "Apple can do no wrong" crowd), can you look at this and see it on par with iPod, iPhone and iPad? I can't. I see niche product. Many of us will buy it but there's not many of us relative to the number of buyers of iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Though some believe the odds are against Apple, Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, believes the Cupertino company can, and will, pull it off. "Apple has the most profitable, high-spend customer base on the planet," he says. "That's essentially who watch companies are already trying to sell to: more affluent customers."
But is that who made the iPod, iPhone and iPad mainstream successful? I've seen all three of those products in the hands of children, of seemingly poor people, of what can look like the welfare/food stamps crowd (in fact, I just saw a lady checking text messages on a new iPhone in the grocery store line last night, paying for the groceries with a food stamp card. I can't see such people as "more affluent" as implied by Bajarin).
Personally, I think iPod was genuinely the best variation of it's functionality at the time and it hit right when the masses were ready to switch from cassettes and portable CD players to something smaller that could hold more music. Pair that with the "free unlimited music" mentality via Napster at the time and I could say iPod was probably a perfect storm/perfect timing product- probably best example of such in Apple's entire history. Gamechanger (as i define the word)? Yes!
iPhone brought huge things missing from iPod. Technology convergence ("it's an iPod and a phone and an Internet browser...") plus timing again worked well. And after Apple bent on pricing by adopting the seemingly much lower prices available within the subsidy model, the masses could move on it (and did). Gamechanger? Yes.
iPad filled some big holes with iPhone, namely by delivering a larger screen on which some of what people were trying to do on tiny iPhone screens was simply much better on an iPad screen. For some who mostly use traditional computers for (mostly) consumption of content, it could up to fully replace those traditional computers. It brought bigger screen computing to a package that weighed relatively nothing. iPad could also be a bigger iPod and has become that or is sharing that with iPhone (thus the fade of the iPod line in the last few years). Gamechanger? Yes.
What big holes does this Watch fill? As is, we're having to spin concepts like putting down aspects of one Apple product to justify this one (is it really so hard to pull the phone out of pockets? is it really inconvenient when you probably have your phone out 50+ times a day now? And if yes, where were these gripes against iPhone before there was an Apple Watch? Why do we find fault with some Apple tech only when something new from Apple has been released that needs those gripes as part of rationalizing the new?).
iPods, iPhones and iPads could be purchased by anyone and everyone, whether they owned any other product from Apple. But this iWatch is dependent on owning another product from Apple. One might say, "but everybody has an iPhone"; however that "everybody" != "everyone" in terms of real numbers.
I keep coming back to this idea of "gamechanger." As defined in this article, it implies it should be as big as iPod, iPhone and iPad. Will it be? Time will tell but from my own perspective, I just can't see it like I could easily see iPod, iPhone and iPad. It's certainly possible I've lost my (that kind of) sight but it wasn't that long ago that iPad seemed obvious for masses adoption (to me). This product seems to keep hunting for rationale, often at the expense of iPhone or in very narrow, relatively unique scenarios where it actually would be difficult to pull out the phone ("when my iPhone is inside 10 layers of clothing while I'm shoveling snow but I urgently need to receive a text" and similar sounds good... but unless you work in the arctic, how often do such atypical-to-rare scenarios really apply?).
Will it sell? Sure. Apple could launch iPoop and a bunch of us would "shut up and take my money" followed by "best iPoop ever". But I would think "gamechanger" on par with iPod, iPhone and iPad has to at least partially mean moving the masses to buy it too. And I don't perceive the masses are fashionistas or models or hollywood stars or professional sports players. Such people bought iPods, iPhones and iPads too but it was the masses that drove the bulk of the sales. And it seems "gamechanger" has to be linked to massive sales volume on some level; else one might be able to tag something popular with a slim niche market like iPod Socks as a "gamechanger" too.
