This is exactly why the Apple Watch requires an appointment! *Video*

[flappple]

You can change links easily with a <$10 watch link remover from Amazon.

are we literally comparing purchasing equipment, waiting for the shipment, and learning how to use a link-removing tool to actually being able to remove links yourself within seconds with this SS band?

Why would anybody complain about having this feature? I don't understand; this is made entirely for convenience and will be an amazing feature regardless of how many times you adjust it after the initial fit.

 

[kdarling]

are we literally comparing purchasing equipment, waiting for the shipment, and learning how to use a link-removing tool to actually being able to remove links yourself within seconds with this SS band?

Nope.

If you follow the context of my response, it was to the claim that adjusting links in a traditional bracelet was so difficult to do that it required a trip to the jewelers. It's not.

Most bracelets have micro adjustment in the clasp which can give a similar adjustment as adding or removing a link. I often wear mine one adjustment hole looser during hot weather.

Good point. Those clasp adjustments are smaller than a link size, too, which can be important.

Does the Apple link bracelet include such small adjustments?

 

[chris975d]

Says the person intentionally wearing a mechanical watch full of completely unnecessary design complication and moving parts when it could just be a quartz "movement."

Isn't the idea of complex mechanical design working elegantly for a long time part of the appeal of a mechanical watch in the first place? Or maybe it was just a fashion purchase... which is fine, but, one must at least be consistent with their concern over mechanical complexity, I'd say.

Lol. I appreciate Rolex for the durability of their design, when considering how delicate a case full of tiny gears, springs and screws COULD be. It's the hardiness and robustness of the design I appreciate, while still being purely mechanical. I can beat the crap out of them, and they still work. And yet are still luxury. That's always been what the heart of Rolex was (except for the luxury part...they started off as pure tool watches). That's why they don't decorate their movements or show them off with sapphire case backs. They originally were, and still to some degree, not designed to be "jewelry" (talking about the stainless steel lineup). Each model is purpose built. It's just that they've gotten so expensive that many users now care for them ad view them as jewelry. I don't feel I can wear a Patek, ALS or AP as "carefree" as I can a Rolex.

That being said, I'm not a huge fan of mechanical complexity where it's not necessarily needed. That goes back to my slight criticism of Rolex's Glidelock clasp. But, I DID buy a watch that's built for diving, and I don't do a lot of that.

 

[OllyW]

Good point. Those clasp adjustments are smaller than a link size, too, which can be important.

Does the Apple link bracelet include such small adjustments?

I don't think so.

 

[Piggie]

Maybe you've never owned a link bracelet before? This is a huge selling feature and convenience. Traditional link bracelets are a PITA to remove links and not something the owner can easily do. You have to take it back to the store. Apple's method allows anyone to add or remove a link at home.

Take is back to the store?

Does your wrist keep growing and shrinking?

OMG, do you turn green when this happens !!!!

----------

Why would anybody complain about having this feature? I don't understand; this is made entirely for convenience and will be an amazing feature regardless of how many times you adjust it after the initial fit.

Amazing vs Pointless

And perhaps even worse than a normal one?

Taking out or adding a whole link is a large amount of size change.
Normal metal straps have pin positions in the clasp to allow you to do sub-link size adjustments.

Don't tell me Jony No-Ive'dea had actually designed a new product that's functionally worse for the wearer than what has already been on the market for decades?

As I say, it's a fun concept, in a show off but basically pointless kinda way.

If it was something else, you were always adjusting, then fine, spend the time and money on the problem. But buy a watch, adjust strap, then never ever touch it again for the entire life of the product.?

 

[Brian Y]

Take is back to the store?

Does your wrist keep growing and shrinking?

OMG, do you turn green when this happens !!!!

----------



Amazing vs Pointless

And perhaps even worse than a normal one?

Taking out or adding a whole link is a large amount of size change.
Normal metal straps have pin positions in the clasp to allow you to do sub-link size adjustments.

Don't tell me Jony No-Ive'dea had actually designed a new product that's functionally worse for the wearer than what has already been on the market for decades?

As I say, it's a fun concept, in a show off but basically pointless kinda way.

If it was something else, you were always adjusting, then fine, spend the time and money on the problem. But buy a watch, adjust strap, then never ever touch it again for the entire life of the product.?

Newsflash: people change. People gain and lose weight.

You might sell the watch or give it to a friend. Or you and a friend might swap bands. It all saves a trip to the jewellers.

Don't tell me Jony No-Ive'dea

I guess I should've stopped reading there.

 

[Piggie]

Newsflash: people change. People gain and lose weight.

You might sell the watch or give it to a friend. Or you and a friend might swap bands. It all saves a trip to the jewellers.

I do have to wonder how the millions of people around the entire globe, with hundreds of millions of watches, over many many decades have managed to survive till now

Oh, I'm not a great Distance from Mr Ive's roots in the UK.
Still does stop me from thinking he's now grown into a pompous fool who's obviously now blinded by his own sense of amazement in himself, and that he can do no wrong.
I'm embarrassed he comes from the UK

 

[NeutralGeek]

I am embarassed to waste time reading some useless posts like that in this board.

 

[Brian Y]

I am embarassed to waste time reading some useless posts like that in this board.

I think I have another for that special list, I don't get why people come here to post crap when it's fairly obvious they have no interest in the subject.

 

[NeutralGeek]

I think I have another for that special list, I don't get why people come here to post crap when it's fairly obvious they have no interest in the subject.

The relentless stalking to the products (they claim that they are not interested in) being designed by the people they loathe is embarrassing.

 

[mchoffa]

With current sensor technology in nearly all cases (a few rare counter-examples now exist) it is nearly impossible to do what you are suggesting. The issue is the time it takes to get data off the sensor into the buffer and compressed. The sensors in the phones can not be read all at once, they have to be read one line at a time. This takes time, per line. Second, the more data, the more work it is to compress. So the solution to both problems at once is to take fewer lines, skipping every X lines on the sensor to get something close to or exactly 1920xwhatever width. Well guess what? This is done on hardware and cannot be switched in direction. The hardware is designed with readouts in one direction only.

So no, sorry, it's not a trivial matter of engineering, it's actually a very non-trivial matter to get this working at all in the first place, especially on such low powered, low cost devices.

Now, there are some sensors that can do global shutter, full read-out and these are used in higher end dedicated devices for high quality 4k recording and such, but, the hardware isn't even remotely close to fitting in a phone.

So don't expect this kind of behavior to change any time soon.

Well, assuming Apple put a 4k sensor in the iPhone like everyone else has started doing, to crop a vertical 3840x2160 video to a horizontal 1920x1080 video is not really that hard to do. It's no different than having a 1080P video cropped to a square video (which is already done in other apps). To have that video zoomed in to fit the vertical screen (the sides would just be out of frame) is also no major engineering feat. The output isn't going to be full 4k as if you recorded native landscape, but that's ok. Anything's better than putting up with vertical videos!

 

[zacheryjensen]

Well, assuming Apple put a 4k sensor in the iPhone like everyone else has started doing, to crop a vertical 3840x2160 video to a horizontal 1920x1080 video is not really that hard to do. It's no different than having a 1080P video cropped to a square video (which is already done in other apps). To have that video zoomed in to fit the vertical screen (the sides would just be out of frame) is also no major engineering feat. The output isn't going to be full 4k as if you recorded native landscape, but that's ok. Anything's better than putting up with vertical videos!

You clearly did not understand my comment. Cropping is not the problem. Readout speed is the problem. It's solved on hardware and it only works in one direction, that is why you can't get rotated video at full resolution. It could be done at lower resolutions, but, it's not worth it, and that also assume no hardware based encoding is being done which is probably a wrong assumption. I know for a fact that at least some level of image processing is done on-chip with iPhone, but, not sure if that's used in the video pipeline or not.

Someday we might have global electronic shutters in cell phones and this will be less of a problem. Today, lineskipping is required and done on chip. That is why this problem exists.

 

[8CoreWhore]

With everyone bashing the Macbook for being an overpriced first generation product, how come the same thing isn't happening for the Apple Watch? An honest question

Not everyone is bashing the MacBook, and some are bashing the Watch.

 

[Appl3FTW]

wow that's sexy... is it worth 450 sexy? NO. but damn, why can't this be a watch link standard tech? so seamless and easy. I hate the traditional links such a pain adjusting.

 

[Lennyvalentin]

First off, the iPhone shoots video in 1920x1080. The image sensor is 3264x2448, so it would work fine locked to landscape regardless of how the camera was held.

You seem to assume that most, or even the entire sensor isn't read even in video mode, and the resulting image scaled down before compression.

Secondly, regardless of how it might be better to frame the subject, the fact remains that all monitors, TVs and movie screens are landscape, not portrait.

You also seem to assume everyone watches their videos on monitors and TV screens, and not on the device on which the video was shot (or a similar device.)

Maybe you should just stop being such a presumptious knowitall, and instead simply let people make their own decisions for themselves, hm? After all, there are far more important things for you to spend your mental energy on than the orientation of other peoples' cell phone videos.

 

[refslady]

Yes, that's YOU. But other people lose weight, gain weight, grow, shrink. Links occasionally need to be removed or added. This makes it easier. Just go with it. It's not "over engineered" it's correctly engineered for consumer ease of use -- Apple's signature.

Exactly. I have a watch that I haven't worn in months because I lost weight (yes, in my wrist) and I haven't made time to take it to the jeweler to have links removed. Previously, after I'd had surgery on the same wrist, I had to have two links added - those links were the ones that I'd had removed after I received the watch as a gift. In none of those cases is it an easy self-fix.

 

[fitshaced]

Exactly. I have a watch that I haven't worn in months because I lost weight (yes, in my wrist) and I haven't made time to take it to the jeweler to have links removed. Previously, after I'd had surgery on the same wrist, I had to have two links added - those links were the ones that I'd had removed after I received the watch as a gift. In none of those cases is it an easy self-fix.

You don't need to take it to the jewellers mate. You can do it easily with things you have at home in seconds. It's really easy. Paying premium for something you won't use maybe twice a year is silly, especially when you just don't know how do it with a regular bracelet yet.

 

[refslady]

You don't need to take it to the jewellers mate. You can do it easily with things you have at home in seconds. It's really easy. Paying premium for something you won't use maybe twice a year is silly, especially when you just don't know how do it with a regular bracelet yet.

Of course, I was just chiming into the conversation and have no plan to get a link bracelet...

 

[NewbieCanada]

Someday we might have global electronic shutters in cell phones and this will be less of a problem. Today, lineskipping is required and done on chip. That is why this problem exists.

In that case they could simply make have a warning come up when someone tries to shoot portrait video.

A little animation of Steve Jobs saying "You're holding it wrong."

----------

Maybe you should just stop being such a presumptious knowitall, and instead simply let people make their own decisions for themselves, hm? After all, there are far more important things for you to spend your mental energy on than the orientation of other peoples' cell phone videos.

I would suggest there are also more important things for you to spend your mental energy with if I believed for a minute you actually had any.

 

[zacheryjensen]

You don't need to take it to the jewellers mate. You can do it easily with things you have at home in seconds. It's really easy. Paying premium for something you won't use maybe twice a year is silly, especially when you just don't know how do it with a regular bracelet yet.

You can not change the links on my watch's link band "easily with things you have at home in seconds" unless what you have at home is a pin press specifically designed for pushing out and in these pins which are incredibly tight and basically impossible to remove otherwise.

Not every watch link band is the same. Many require special (albeit relatively cheap and findable online) tools to properly adjust.

Apple's design eliminates that issue entirely.

 

[fitshaced]

You can not change the links on my watch's link band "easily with things you have at home in seconds" unless what you have at home is a pin press specifically designed for pushing out and in these pins which are incredibly tight and basically impossible to remove otherwise.

Not every watch link band is the same. Many require special (albeit relatively cheap and findable online) tools to properly adjust.

Apple's design eliminates that issue entirely.

You can't definitely do this with stuff you have at home. You don't need something that fits the hole, just something pointy enough to push the pin out a bit. It then comes out easy from the other side. Very easy and no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[chris975d]

You can not change the links on my watch's link band "easily with things you have at home in seconds" unless what you have at home is a pin press specifically designed for pushing out and in these pins which are incredibly tight and basically impossible to remove otherwise.



Not every watch link band is the same. Many require special (albeit relatively cheap and findable online) tools to properly adjust.



Apple's design eliminates that issue entirely.

I guess I'm glad that the only bracelets I've ever had to change the fit of are Rolexes. There's one screw per link. Back that screw out, and the link comes off. All you need is an eyeglass sized screwdriver.

 

[MisterMe]

It's way over-engineered if its only purpose is to help a sales assistant remove a few links. Fitting a conventional watch is easy. You could train a competent salesperson to do it in 10 minutes and the process itself takes seconds.

...

Wow, talk about short-sighted! There are a lot of buyers like me who will receive our new SS Watches are home on April 24. There will be no sales assistant involved. Thanks to Apple's brilliant design, I will not have to visit my local jeweler to have the bracelet fitted.

 

[fitshaced]

Wow, talk about short-sighted! There are a lot of buyers like me who will receive our new SS Watches are home on April 24. There will be no sales assistant involved. Thanks to Apple's brilliant design, I will not have to visit my local jeweler to have the bracelet fitted.

I think it's short sighted of you to not try and figure it out on your own if the bracelet was a typical one. You're paying a lot more money for something you don't need. Probably true of the watch in general but the silliest excuse is because of the links being easily removable.

 

[Rogifan]

I think it's short sighted of you to not try and figure it out on your own if the bracelet was a typical one. You're paying a lot more money for something you don't need. Probably true of the watch in general but the silliest excuse is because of the links being easily removable.

Wow way to be judgmental about how somebody else spends their money (and what they choose to value).