Are there developers out there who would prefer developing iOS software on a relatively small screen with less powerful processing resources?
I sure wouldn't.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Quick Takes: Smartwatches to Have More Than Just 15 Minutes of Fame as GymKit Rollout Continues
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Are there developers out there who would prefer developing iOS software on a relatively small screen with less powerful processing resources?
I sure wouldn't.
Gymkit capable équipement will be fully rolled out in the US about the time I pass away from old age. I workout at a fitness center that's been around for a year and half and has brand-new equipment and the one piece of cardio equipment was shipped new with a 30 PIN Apple connector!
Last edited:
SmartWatches will have to gain utility if they are going to gain consumer base.
I couldn't imagine writing code on a pointer-less device, much less a device with constrained screen real estate. All of my developers use dual 24" displays and work in multiple virtual machines. We also are primarily Windows based, though we do have one Mac for when we have to deal with our iOS products (but even then, we use Visual Studio and Xamarin which is AWESOME, so a lot of coding can actually be done on the Windows side and then be built at the last minute on the Mac - saves a lot of money that way).
[doublepost=1521598750][/doublepost]
I was about to say... that's a pretty expensive choice for simply using it for telling time.
The same day Lego factories are made out of Lego.
A development environment is a very different beast from a using environment.
Best case scenario I think you'd be using an iPad to program for an iPhone one day (using an iPhone screen to see code would hurt a lot of people's eyesight and generally you want to have access to a bunch of debug tools while you're running your app).
You can always make a fun "Learn how to code" app, but I wouldn't expect a full fledged dev environment from anything that resembles today's iOS.
The iPod peaked at 55 million a year. This prediction would put the AW above that. Nothing is the iPhone. I don't know why you'd expect that or even bother commenting on it. Clearly a device that requires an iPhone will only have a fraction of the iPhone sales (it's unlikely that someone would buy an Apple Watch without an iPhone...).
There's no such thing as a classic mobile phone. This is recent technology with just a few decades of existence. Wristwatches have however existed for quite a bit longer, with a very well established form factor and look and feel. Sure there's square watches but aren't just as popular as the spheric. Call it aesthetics.
As for the AW, perhaps it's very popular, but I can't just get myself to buy it. I prefer to wear a watch that looks like a watch. Personal taste.
A fair and totally valid point.
Except that writing code — especially integrated applications — doesn’t lend itself well to touch interfaces with limited / cumbersome multitasking.
I’m not saying it isn’t possible. And it could be seriously groundbreaking to bring the logic of he swift playgrounds to actual coding. But as of right now, I’m not aware of an iOS environment that fits the bill.
As the current Apple Watch design stands, looks to me like a small screen slapped onto your wrist. Conceptually speaking, I see a wristwatch as the classic rounded sphere. Maybe it's because I'm getting old and just won't accept designs that go against my assumptions of what things are and are supposed to be.
Other than Apple though, seems like the majority of Android smartwatch makers keep the spherical structure.
Gotta admit, before I was quoted upper up on this thread I did not even know about the S3 frontier. Seems there's even available metal bands on amazon. I'm digging that one, quite a lot. Looks like your average Chrono watch.
Except they're not "supposed to be", there is nothing inherent that supports a circle for a smartwatch and even for watches for that matter. It's just how it turned out to be for mostly reasons of economics.
In the 1920-early 30s (art deco period) when watches emergent, rectangle watches were as frequent as round ones because they were very expensive and the buyers could afford designs that differed from simply modifying a pocket watch design (stamping out a round watch is cheaper).
Also, it's a wrist, there is nothing natural about putting a circle on it, for millions of years, people had been wearing bracelets, bangles, bands. If anything, it's wearing a rectangular thing on your wrist that's natural.
It's the necessity of the mass market that popularized round watches post WWII along with it's extensive use in the military, while rectangular shapes stayed popular in smaller watches for women.
Last edited:
I’m not really into watches, smart or no. I like very low key good battery-life fitness bands like the old Nike fuelband, though that wasn’t even smart. If Apple made something like that, but much smarter, I’d be all over that. There are some pretty good third party smart fitness bands out there, but they’re all too limited when it comes to choosing which iPhone notifications to receive.
Last edited:
Sensible but doubtful, and Apple has shown no such intent.
Come on, just look at the "computer replacement" iPad Pro's "Smart" keyboard, such a nerfed accessory that doesn't even have an Esc, F-row, fn button, Capslock indicator or support custom keyboard shortcuts on software level.
Maybe it's good for highschool hipster twits who type nonsense while sitting on tree branches, but a post-PC world for devs is still in a galaxy far far away.
[doublepost=1521619652][/doublepost]
Just buy a watch.
A dumbwatch would’ve been cheaper, less prone to breaking, more flexible, offer way way way more battery life, and have an always-on screen.
Apple Watch only makes sense if telling time is the cherry on top. (I have one.)
Well, you know, that's your opinion, which is as valid as mine.
Rounded wristwatches are indeed what's popular and commonplace, what's "accepted" as the standard wristwatch. Apple revolutionised the phone industry with an all screen iPhone, because of its inherent advantage over physical keyboard phones with small screens.
Rounded or square wristwatches is just a matter of taste. There's no revolution nor technological breakthrough in picking one shape over the other. I'ts like getting a square pan. Sure you can find some that are square. However, what's the common pan shape like? Rounded. Same goes for watches.
Actually there's no need to be disappointed, because you can use Apple Pay in any country where bunq is available. I set it up yesterday and used it this morning to pay for my coffee, works fine! Only thing you have to do to make it work is change your country to Spain or Italy, add the card via the bunq app and that's it!
Not to mention, wrist-based monitors aren't all that accurate for intense HIIT kind of exercises. I might have splurged the cash for Apple Watch if I were confident of it's heart rate tracking during Insanity kind of workouts. As it stands, I make do with an inconvenient, yet accurate chest strap sensor.
I love my Apple Watch and they seem to be doing really well. I still feel that there are a lot of improvements that can/will be made once technology improves.
I was probably kind of the same. I just couldn't really justify it, as I wasn't sure what I'd really use it for.
But recently my third Fitbit band fell to pieces in four years, and I bit the bullet with an AW, primarily as a FitBit replacement. And I've got to say, I do love it. As much as anything I've realised its not really about how much I use it for. Maybe I was so used to using my smartphones for all sorts of things, that in order to justify an AW, I would need to think I would use it for all sorts of things too.
But really, how much does anyone use a regular watch for? Not that much, its a much more passive thing than a phone. Which isn't to say i don't use it for anything - I love it as a fitness band for tracking steps and exercise, Runmeter gives me way more data on my wrist than FB ever did, I'm using Sleep Watch to track my sleep, which I prefer over FB. It can be convenient for Apple Pay, especially on the underground where I don't have to fret about where my ticket or Oyster card is. Its been useful getting notifications on my wrist, I love being able to see day, date, time, weather, steps and exercise, and to do info all at a single glance on my wrist, and I love that it unlocks my Mac when I sit at my desk. And unlike my FitBits, it doesn't feel like its going to start falling to bits as soon as it gets a few drops of water on it.
Basically I have no buyer's regret and love it way more than I thought I might. It might be solving very first world problems, but it still seems worth it to me.
[doublepost=1521634622][/doublepost]
But its simply insane for all sorts of reasons to use the success of the iPhone as some sort of realistic barometer for the relative success or failure of other products.
The AW is cheaper than any Garmin GPS watch I've owned(dating back to 2011), so even if you are just using it as a fitness tracker, you're not going crazy overboard.
I would agree its strength is as a fitness tracker. And that £300-£400 is a lot to pay for a fitness tracker.
But coming from FitBit, the AW is around 2.5x the cost of a ChargeHR. So the question becomes is the AW 2.5x better than a ChargeHR? Given the build quality of the AW, the vastly superior screen, and all of the additional functionality the AW has over the ChargeHR, I'd say it absolutely is.
So yes, its expensive, but comparatively I would say it offers decent VFM compared to other fitness trackers. Or FitBit at least.
Why do I have to expect anything? And Apple hasn't really given us any sales expectations. It's practically silent there only releasing generic statements "Best," "Most," etc. I was only making an observation on AW growth as a cultural phenomena vis a vis some other Apple products. Before the iPhone smartphones were only a subset of all cell phones - another social marker. By comparison AW is a harder sell for Apple. That's all.
Also I didn't say anything about Apple competition, and I do think comparing to high end watches is a straw man for the reasons you state -- you don't buy/gift those regularly like you do with inexpensive fashion watches so in that regard it's like Chevy saying it sells more watches than Rolls Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bugatti combined. True, but not really a valuable metric.
Maybe one way to look at is to see the AW as a high end fitness tracker, rather than a high end watch. I still wear a my regular watch as I got a nice Mondaine Helvetica watch a couple of years ago which I love. Perverse as it sounds, its crossed my mind that it might even be nice to have the option not to include the time on some watch faces, such as the modular one.