"Killer App" = 3rd Party Watchfaces

[zmunkz]

Ugh. I don't understand this trend of watch faces so cluttered that you aren't sure if you are looking at the time or how fast your car is going. Ugly.

I am kind of with you on that… Some of these complications seem useless. How many people really need to know what time sunrise was that morning, so critically that it should be on the face all day? Or the pressure? However the ability to customize the watch face, for me, is more about personalization & style rather than adding bunches of complications

 

[samiznaetekto]

Which is copyright infringement unless supported by the watch makers themselves.

Huh? If it was, wouldn't the watchmakers quick to shutdown/sue such sites and developers?

Copyright infringement would be to make a physical copy of an Omega/Rolex/etc. Omega/Rolex/etc. don't make digital watches. The developers of these digital watchfaces simply take a high-res macro photo of a watch (or make artwork themselves based on physical watch) and animate it.

If anything, it's free advertisement of the brand. Some people who never even considered buying a high end watch may start with downloading an Omega watchface and then seeing it in a store and actually buying it because they loved it so much.

 

[Lloydbm41]

So you didn't like the  WATCH's fitness capabilities so you bought a Moto 360 which has even less?

Really? Please tell me one thing the AppleWatch can do fitness wise that any Android Wear watch can't? I won't even limit you to the 360. Good luck.

 

[Lloydbm41]

Which is copyright infringement unless supported by the watch makers themselves.

Reproduction of the look of a watch isn't willful infringement.

In fact, the legal definition by the US Copyright Office under subsection 505 states that evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright.

A company like Tag or Rolex has the burden to prove that willful infringment has occurred and that their business was effected as a result. Gonna be hard to prove that a person bought went out and bought a $179 Moto 360 instead of a $10,000 Rolex because there was a digital reproduction of the watch face on the 360.

 

[samiznaetekto]

Really? Please tell me one thing the AppleWatch can do fitness wise that any Android Wear watch can't? I won't even limit you to the 360. Good luck.

I can only think of the sticky crown that is an exercise in itself to rotate and take care of.

 

[solarguy17]

BTW - The watch faces I am posting here are just a small sample of the 6,000+ watch faces I have available to me.

SOME of the faces you posted were cool looking. But most of them were crap and/or would appeal to only a small subset of people.

Think about it this way, there are millions of apps in the apps store, 99% of them are pure crap. Or consider the themes for jailbroken iPhones, most complete crap and aren't complete there are gems but not many.
I expect the "badapps" app where you get those faces from (6000+) has 99% crap.

That being said. In general I agree, third party faces being available would be nice, even if the majority are crap. Because that lets us have more choice. And if someone want to put together a crappy Simpsons themed watch face, more power to them.

 

[FrisbeeK9]

Relax

People
Apple doesn't do just anything, they research everything (Jobs era).
I would like to think they are working on busier faces for those that want them.
The Watch hasn't been out for a month yet so be patient, hell I haven't received mine yet...

 

[zmunkz]

People
Apple doesn't do just anything, they research everything (Jobs era).
I would like to think they are working on busier faces for those that want them.
The Watch hasn't been out for a month yet so be patient, hell I haven't received mine yet...

Yeah but Apple is never going to release ____-themed face for every ____ someone might want, or an absurdly esoteric face, like a binary one... For most people that will never matter, but the only way to get everybody something that they can attach to personally, is to open up to third parties. Then we can get our LCARS, our GoldenEye 007's, our weird text-based faces, etc. No way apple puts their official seal one those sorts of things.

----------

Remember that this is supposed to be the most personal device ever… So far the bands are corollary to phone cases, so we actually aren't seeing any more individuality compared to their other products yet. I'm taking that as a good sign that they will have a third-party watch face development program

 

[TallManNY]

Apple is a company all about marketing and aesthetics.

I think Apple wants the watch to have a certain level of luxury and class to it. The same reason why Apple won't allow people to change the font and color of the font in iOS is partially the same reason why I don't see Apple allowing third party watch faces, unless they work hand in hand with Apple while developing them.

The watch face is what most people will see and judge the watch by, if someone chooses to use an ugly watch face, then it looks bad on Apple. Get where I'm going at?

Exactly. Apple really does not trust us to pick watch faces at this point. Not when Apple is going to rely a ton on word of mouth and real life demos to sell the watch to the non-tech and non-fanboy crowd.

But at some point they will allow third party faces. It might be a year though. Notice how Apple is encouraging third party bands though. And this is sooner than I thought they would. By the end of the summer there should be a rich ecosystem of third party bands. I suspect we will have a separate section of iTunes that allows buying of watch faces (and I shudder to think what the Freemium version of those faces will be, maybe brand sponsored or sports team logos, but don't rule out add supported faces (yuck)).

 

[Oppressed]

Really? Please tell me one thing the AppleWatch can do fitness wise that any Android Wear watch can't? I won't even limit you to the 360. Good luck.

He was saying he specifically bought the Moto 360 which had a a heart rate monitor that is not as accurate as the AW. People complain that it only works if you stand perfectly still and even then it is hit or miss. Meanwhile the most recent Consumer Reports review put the AW as the top wearable including fitness.

 

[VFC]

SOME of the faces you posted were cool looking. But most of them were crap and/or would appeal to only a small subset of people.

Think about it this way, there are millions of apps in the apps store, 99% of them are pure crap. Or consider the themes for jailbroken iPhones, most complete crap and aren't complete there are gems but not many.
I expect the "badapps" app where you get those faces from (6000+) has 99% crap.

That being said. In general I agree, third party faces being available would be nice, even if the majority are crap. Because that lets us have more choice. And if someone want to put together a crappy Simpsons themed watch face, more power to them.

That's the fun part; scrolling through all the various themes (e.g., dogs, cats, fish, country flags, sports teams, cars, classic mechanical, old fashion digital, high-tech digital, video game characters, movie characters, etc.) looking for that "gem" of a watch face. I have over 50 now on my Moto 360. The themes all vary, and depending on my mood, I can switch them in a second.

The BadApps site only has about 200; but seems like everyday they release a couple new ones. I like them largely because of the over-the-top animations.

The majority of my choices (6000+) are from the user community I have access to with Intellicom WatchFace. Yeah there are lots of boring ones. How many Mickey Mouse faces does one person need to choose from (I downloaded the version that has the watch and phone battery percent in the ears).

Of coarse the Moto 360 (Android Ware) includes some very good faces. I like the one face where you can use a photo for the background. (see picture below)

BTW - The Moto 360 use an IPS screen (not OLED) so I don't have to worry about battery drain when I'm using watch faces with lots of white. When I turn on Airplane Mode to use just the watch function, I get over 4 days of battery life.

 

[iamasmith]

Copyright infringement would be to make a physical copy of an Omega/Rolex/etc. Omega/Rolex/etc. don't make digital watches. The developers of these digital watchfaces simply take a high-res macro photo of a watch (or make artwork themselves based on physical watch) and animate it.

Google 'Apple and Mondaine' for the story about Apple making a design that looked too much like theirs. In that case a deal had to be cut.

Having a company logo is even dodgier, you are leveraging their corporate branding to promote your product.

 

[DynaFXD]

Huh? If it was, wouldn't the watchmakers quick to shutdown/sue such sites and developers?

They are. Google watch face and copyright to see what is going on.. Takedown notices, mostly Besides, didn't Apple get themselves in hot water when they included the Swiss Federal Railways face with the iPad update? I think they ended paying buckets of money for that.

 

[VFC]

He was saying he specifically bought the Moto 360 which had a a heart rate monitor that is not as accurate as the AW. People complain that it only works if you stand perfectly still and even then it is hit or miss. Meanwhile the most recent Consumer Reports review put the AW as the top wearable including fitness.

The AW is far from replacing my FitBit Surge as a full-featured fitness tracker (can't give up the 24 hour continuous HR monitoring, sleep tracking, Dashboard, and 6 day battery life). I bought the Moto 360 mainly for the stylish watch capability. Both the Surge and Moto 360 provide notifications, control music player, etc.; the usual smart watch stuff. I wear the Moto360 at the office. I keep the Surge in my pocket as it still can track steps, how many stairs I go up, and calculate calories burned while in the office. When I get home, I take off the Moto360 and put on the Surge. Then I get to track my workouts and sleep patterns.

I'm looking forward to the "AW killer" that Samsung is going to release in September. If they can enhance the fitness capability of a Moto 360 like design, I'm in.

 

[iamasmith]

Additionally, to what we're both just said, watch makers will take action if and when the perceive a threat but they do have grounds to go after folks doing this on a copyright basis.

Forget licensing either, Apple wants the watch to be iconic and not a facsimile of another brand. They want their own brand to stand on its own merits and not be viewed as a copycat.

Hence if you do possibly get custom faces as an option as a developer they won't allow copies. That is almost certainly too hard to research and police so my bets are custom watch faces will never happen.

 

[418]

The battery levels on that first watch face reminded me immediately of Bond's watch in Goldeneye for Nintendo 64.

And that's, in a way, a good example of why I don't like the idea of completely custom watch faces, at least straight away. Apple wanted the watch to be a fashion item because the current 'gadgety' smartwatches were associated with 'nerds' and had limited sales potential in the general population. If people start walking around with nasty, colourful 'themed' faces on their watches, the Apple watch will become the next Moto 360.

I think the ideal solution would be to allow custom complications. Complications seem like they were almost designed to be opened up, so I'd be unsurprised if Apple released this at some point.
That way, if you want wind speed or the latest new story from your news app of choice or the state of your <insert your last home automation purchase here>, it's be possible. But it'd still stop developers completely violating Apple's design for the watch faces. Perhaps they could even make a face where the actual clock was a fairly large complication so that things like the binary clock (which everyone seems to talk about) would be possible, but it would still have to stick to a fixed size on the screen and wouldn't be able to avoid Apple's 'invisible bezel' design for the existing faces.

 

[Rogifan]

Android has all the classic mechanical watch faces as well. Surely some of these will meet your high standard.

Android lets you take any image of a mechanical watch and create a fully functional animated watch face.

No copywrite or trademark issues with this?

 

[Oppressed]

The AW is far from replacing my FitBit Surge as a full-featured fitness tracker (can't give up the 24 hour continuous HR monitoring, sleep tracking, Dashboard, and 6 day battery life). I bought the Moto 360 mainly for the stylish watch capability. Both the Surge and Moto 360 provide notifications, control music player, etc.; the usual smart watch stuff. I wear the Moto360 at the office. I keep the Surge in my pocket as it still can track steps, how many stairs I go up, and calculate calories burned while in the office. When I get home, I take off the Moto360 and put on the Surge. Then I get to track my workouts and sleep patterns.

I'm looking forward to the "AW killer" that Samsung is going to release in September. If they can enhance the fitness capability of a Moto 360 like design, I'm in.

AW killer from Samsung? Ah see you just out'ed yourself, but I should have known not to feed your kind. If you like these products so much why are you not on their forums?

 

[VFC]

No copywrite or trademark issues with this?

No more than the background picture I have on my PC.

 

[adammull]

Which is copyright infringement unless supported by the watch makers themselves.

People who use Android don't care about such trivial things as intellectual property.

Rooted cinnamon poptart bro!

 

[VFC]

AW killer from Samsung? Ah see you just out'ed yourself, but I should have known not to feed your kind. If you like these products so much why are you not on their forums?

What is the requirement for being on this forum? I do have an iPad 3 and cMBP 2012. Does that qualify me to post? I was on this forum to see if the AW would be able to replace my Surge and provide the stylish look of a Moto 360.

 

[418]

No more than the background picture I have on my PC.

Choosing to take an image from the internet and set it as your background image for your personal use is very different to someone finding that picture (which someone else created) and selling it to you for their own profit.

 

[VFC]

Choosing to take an image from the internet and set it as your background image for your personal use is very different to someone finding that picture (which someone else created) and selling it to you for their own profit.

I can take any picture on the web and make it a watch face for personal use. Android apps make it very easy to do.

Most all the watch faces are free to download, so no one is making money on someone else's picture.

I can take a picture of an expensive watch, make an animated watch face, and post it on an Android user community web site. I wonder if the Apple user community will be given that level of development freedom and be as willing to share their work with others?

 

[418]

I can take any picture on the web and make it a watch face for personal use. Android apps make it very easy to do.

Most all the watch faces are free to download, so no one is making money on someone else's picture.

I see. I feel like just having a picture of an existing watch face as a 'background picture' for the watch will be a considerably worse experience than if that picture were turned into a working, moving watch face.

As for not making money, giving away someone else's images without permission is still problematic.

 

[VFC]

I see. I feel like just having a picture of an existing watch face as a 'background picture' for the watch will be a considerably worse experience than if that picture were turned into a working, moving watch face.

As for not making money, giving away someone else's images without permission is still problematic.

I was editing my previous post when you posted this.

Here's what I added:

"I can take a picture of an expensive watch, make an animated watch face, and post it on an Android user community web site. I wonder if the Apple user community will be given that level of development freedom and be as willing to share their work with others? ""