They have but rushing to market on the rumor that Apple was coming out with a watch is not an accomplishment.
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Tim Cook: Our Objective With Apple Watch Is to Change the Way People Live Their Lives
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I hope you realize when I said "Before Anybody got a mobile phone" I was referring long before the 90's.
In the early 70's the president, rich men and even pimps had a car phone. That's what I was referring to. It wasn't heard of for the average joe to have one.
BTW, we had cellular phones back in the 80's sold to the masses in the USA.
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Watch ~= Newton?
I have been an off and on Apple developer for over a decade going back to the mid-90's seeing a lot of turnover come Cupertino way. I still miss the back lounge of the Peppermill right outside the Loop. The trendy BJ's brew-pub is a shadow to the glory days of that location.
At least the Donut Wheel is still around. Both spots are great for "off sites" where many with Loop badges could get together with outsiders to discuss what they cannot or do not want to discuss in the Loop.
From these experiences, I'm seeing a dangerous parallel between Tim Cook / Apple Watch and Vince Scully / Apple Newton. Both are major product designs without Steve's magic insight and revelations. Both are pushed out hard as a "next big thing" by following outside trends.
IMO, the Ive / Cook combination has done their best to prop up the Steve institute but they desperately need a maverick outsider at the top.
I'm sure picking up an Apple Watch for, if anything, a collector item going next to my collection of other tech and one or two wildside projects for at least consulting fees.
However, I don't see this sticking. Watches have been phased out of the mass market going on twenty years now with the growth of smartphones. Your phone has the time. Is that casual wrist to face motion good enough to replace the smartphone grab move now that more information is on your wrist?
Sure WWDC will be full of Apple Watches and the obligatory WatchKit breakout session.
Just don't know how this will play out after the first run is sold out.
I have been an off and on Apple developer for over a decade going back to the mid-90's seeing a lot of turnover come Cupertino way. I still miss the back lounge of the Peppermill right outside the Loop. The trendy BJ's brew-pub is a shadow to the glory days of that location.
At least the Donut Wheel is still around. Both spots are great for "off sites" where many with Loop badges could get together with outsiders to discuss what they cannot or do not want to discuss in the Loop.
From these experiences, I'm seeing a dangerous parallel between Tim Cook / Apple Watch and Vince Scully / Apple Newton. Both are major product designs without Steve's magic insight and revelations. Both are pushed out hard as a "next big thing" by following outside trends.
IMO, the Ive / Cook combination has done their best to prop up the Steve institute but they desperately need a maverick outsider at the top.
I'm sure picking up an Apple Watch for, if anything, a collector item going next to my collection of other tech and one or two wildside projects for at least consulting fees.
However, I don't see this sticking. Watches have been phased out of the mass market going on twenty years now with the growth of smartphones. Your phone has the time. Is that casual wrist to face motion good enough to replace the smartphone grab move now that more information is on your wrist?
Sure WWDC will be full of Apple Watches and the obligatory WatchKit breakout session.
Just don't know how this will play out after the first run is sold out.
Why does not seeing the value in the product = irate in your mind? What I see is a lot of people (many of whom are long-time Apple customers) expressing a lack of interest in the product. Some aren't interested in wearables in general (I put myself in this category). Some have reservations about the price, rumored battery life, etc. Some aren't interested in a device that requires the iPhone to be fully operational. Some aren't interested in narcissistic "fitness tracking" features (I put myself in this category too...yeah, more useless data to sift through! No thanks...). Some don't see the advantage to wearing the watch when they can just pull their phones out of their pockets.
I don't see a lot of "irate" people. I see people expressing real reasons why the product doesn't interest them. And then I see a handful of fanboys falling all over themselves telling everyone they are wrong and getting upset because those of us who disagree (you know, the "irate" people) aren't oooooohing and aaaaaahing over the latest Apple gadget.
What I haven't seen from anyone - including Apple - is a killer feature. Maybe Apple hopes that all these little bits of convenience the watch promises will add up to a killer feature. I'm not convinced. Everything I've seen about the Apple Watch so far is expected. Personally I'm not interested in notifications popping up on my wrist all the time. It's bad enough that people have become so rude in the smartphone age that they sit at the dinner table and ignore the human being across the table in favor of their smartphone. I can only imagine how obnoxious it will be to be around Apple Watch owners who are constantly checking their wrists for useless information and totally unimportant notifications.
I have no doubt that the Apple Watch will be a beautiful piece of engineering. But nothing so far has remotely piqued my interest. All of the features announced so far are obvious. I think Apple is smart to build a companion device for the iPhone. After all, Apple is pretty much the iPhone these days. I think Morgan Stanley is crazy to think they'll sell 25 million in the first year, but I'm ready to be proved wrong. The Apple Watch isn't the iPhone all over again. The iPhone really did revolutionize communication. The Apple Watch, at best, will add a layer of convenience, but given it's limited form factor, there's only so much it can do. Down the road I anticipate it will add more and more sensors, thus further appealing to people who have this strange (in my opinion) need to track all aspects of their biology from calories to steps to sleep cycles to........ If you're one of these people, I can see how wearables would be an exciting category for you. But I don't think the majority of people are so into themselves that health tracking will be the killer feature.
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Ha! When I read his "change the way people live their lives" quote, it creeped me out too. I hate to say it (and I say this as a 32 year Apple customer), but the hubris is getting a little out of control in my opinion. I don't want - or need - Apple to "change" my life. Enhance it? Sure. But change? That just reeks of ego. I hope, for Tim's sake, that the watch is a huge hit.
I would argue about the correctness of your information.....because it's far from correct.
The first iPod was worth getting because all other manufacturers had crap machines due to their complicated and tiny UI and they couldn't' hold a fraction of the music the iPod could. Also there was nothing proprietary about the original iPod. While it's true for the first several months to a year it was Mac only but after that Apple opened it up to Windows machines and there was no iTunes store so you could get your music from anywhere and install it on the iPod. You can still do that today.
If you're referring to proprietary in the different formats it could play, well it was an "MP3" player.
Yes, it was possible to use the first iPod with windows, but not until the second iPod came out. Also, while the other mp3 players at the time were far form perfect, they weren't that bad (it was just compared to them, the ipod was so much better). Not too many Windows computers back then had Firewire, and the third ipod was the first to allow syncing over USB. There were also interface issues with the first ipod - the round spinny wheel would get gummed up.
Taking a step back, I didn't say the first two ipods weren't great at the time. I'm saying Apple didn't really achieve peak hardware design until the third of fourth version. The third gen and fourth gen are the peak of iPod hardware. Sure the 6th/7th gen classics are better, but the killer hardware features (click wheel, all-touch based navigation, dock connector, slim design) were first available on the 3rd or 4th gen and carried through until the end.
I think what he was alluding to a time way before the iPhone or any other phone that could easily fit into your pocket when phones cost $1000 easily. My first phone was in 1991 (Fujitsu Pocket Commander which at the time was the smallest mobile phone) and all it could do was make calls (I don't recall any analog phones being able to keep time back then).
As some others have noted, I don't quite comprehend the irritated tone of so many of the posts. Apple is not forcing anyone to buy an
Watch, nor are they disabling any function of our phones to compel us to buy a watch. They are simply introducing a new product category. I hope Apple surprises us with a commercial on Oscar night!Exactly the same. I mocked the iPad when it came out as an oversized iPod Touch. Now, I really don't want to go without my iPad. Its my primary computing device at home these days, and it is invaluable at meetings at work for me.
I don't wear a watch, and I'm currently not interested in a smart watch... but Apple has changed my mind before. One lesson learned from the iPad is that the 2nd generation device was VASTLY improved over the initial release. From this, I may be an Apple Watch buyer...but not this year.
You not seeing value for you is perfectly reasonable. But when people (I don't know if you are among them or not) suggest the watch is guaranteed to fail because they don't see value in it for THEM and then proceed to rant how Tim Cook/Apple Exec are "idiots" or "greedy" for pushing out the watch even when few details about the watch are known THAT = irate. Read this thread. Lots of people angry over a product they have no interest in and because they have no interest they presume it's a terrible, useless product.
Exactly.. No surprise that a non-watch wearer would not be interested in an Apple watch. I do wonder why they need to be so angry that Apple releases a watch?
You don't need to wear pants to accept that some people might find them useful.
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They've had tethered Gear watches out for a while. Wouldn't call it rushed out to market. They've released several in fact testing differences to touch more than one set of users. Like the process or not, at least they've been getting real-world use and feedback vs keeping it on the shelf.
I'd rather Fail Fast, Learn and succeed vs waiting for perfect. Sure they could have spent time obsessing over every detail, but I side with the many manufacturers, not just Samsung, who thought it better to Experiment, listen and learn and continue adjusting. That's an agile approach in my book. No one manufacturer is creating this market for wearables, but let's be honest.....it's certainly not Apple leading the way; although I'm sure they'll be given credit for it.
In the end, it's helping drive competition and even helps Apple as they benefit in return by learning. Let's see if they do. For me if it's tethered only, it's useless. Add in poor battery life and meh.... YMMV. If both are the case then perhaps they are in fact the ones rushing to market with a product that's not yet ready for prime time.
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^^ Great points and like you I was a doubter too. I asked questions on various forums looking for a problem that a wearable would fix. Now that I've had one, the Gear S, for several months, I have a much better perspective on how it performs and what needs improved. It took diving in to learn it but I'm glad I did and while it's not perfect, it has changed how I do things and I see value in wearable devices now.
Fair enough. However, I think if you're waiting for some grand feature revelation when the watch ships, you're going to be disappointed. Plenty of details about the watch have been released. Developers have access to the SDK. I see a few people on these forums repeatedly suggest that few details about the watch have been released, but I think that's nothing more than wishful thinking. We might not know battery life, for example, but we do know that it isn't going to run for days without a charge. It's a watch. It relies on your iPhone. It's a companion device. There's only so much it can do.
I don't think Cook is greedy. I think he and Ive want to step out from Steve's shadow and prove to the world (and their shareholders) that they can "innovate" without Steve. They've already made a fuss about how the watch was conceived without Steve's input, thus setting up the "Apple CAN innovate without Steve" narrative. Personally, I think they've chosen the wrong area of focus. I see no evidence that wearables are anything more than a niche market. Of course that might change in the future. But today the much bigger market is the living room. And Apple is stubbornly ignoring it in favor of pushing a pricey iPhone accessory. As both a customer who would like to buy a fully-baked Apple TV and a shareholder who would like to see Apple focus on a market with greater potential, I'm dismayed to see them pursue wearables. It feels like a vanity project to me more than anything else.
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Funny, I was very excited about the iPad, but I never use mine. I ended up buying an older 11" MacBook Air to use as my travel computer, surf the web on the couch device, etc. Everything on the iPad takes longer and the apps aren't as full-featured in my opinion. Maybe it's just decades of working with mouse and keyboard...
So yeah, one never knows. I haven't worn a watch in 15 years and have no interest in the Apple Watch. But I was wrong about the iPad for me, so maybe I'm wrong about the Watch and I'll end up wearing one!
I guess not. We'll wait and see. People aren't used to charging watches daily, so it will be interesting that this perception will change over the next year.
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It depends what the battery is powering. If it was powering a MacBook it wouldn't last an hour, if it was powering an analogue watch it would last years.
Like I said before, it depends how much power the Apple Watch draws from the battery.
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That's really interesting. Maybe it charges incredibly quickly. If you plug it in for twenty minutes and it lasts 19 hours, then you could charge it while you're in the shower, driving to work, on your lunch break, etc etc.
"High end" watches are thousands of dollars. The solid gold model will be in that category, but not a $349 watch.
"High end" watch buyers aren't going to make or break the Apple Watch. Apple has to convince iPhone owners they need the watch. It's not about selling the Apple Watch to watch buyers. It's about selling it to iPhone users (many of whom are probably also watch buyers). But the iPhone is heavily subsidized. Look at how many people one sees who are clearly not well off, but find a way to afford an iPhone. These people aren't going to spend $350+ on an accessory. I also don't think anyone in the market for a Rolex is going to consider an Apple Watch. If you want a Rolex, you want a Rolex. If you want an Apple Watch, you're more interested in the technology and features, not the timeless classic style, etc. that sells a Rolex.
Though I felt that the iPod was over priced at $399 in 2001 at least it was one of the first HDD storage mp3 players at the time. It had a very innovative navigation system in the scroll wheel and it was a beautiful and elegant device for the time.
The Apple Watch is NOT a 14 year equivalent product. Design wise it's "fine" but nothing that blows the competition out of the water. Everything they've revealed for the watch so far are features that has been around for well over a year if not 2.
If there is anything "life changing" about the Apple Watch it hasn't been announced as of yet and generally it's an underwhelming device for the money until/if they do. But I have a feeling that everything special about this watch has already been announced, don't get me wrong it's not a BAD device. But I also don't think it's deserving of the $349 STARTING price... which they have yet to announce if it's only for the smaller watch or for both entry level sizes. If the larger faced (perceivable the "men's" watch) isn't at the $349 mark I just don't see this being the hit that the iPod/iPad was.
And that's a fine timetable.
But people were writing off the iPod from the start... and saying it was a mistake for Apple to attempt it.
Imagine if Apple had listed to these MacRumors users and decided NOT to even enter the MP3 player market.
Yeah, because after you buy it, you'll be living on Cup o' Noodles for a few years!
They only need to convince 0.2% of compatible Iphone owners at the end of 2015 (750K) to sell more Apple Watches than ALL their competitors combined in 2014 (that's how pathetic they were). Selling to 1% would beat not just the watches, but also the fitness bands. You're telling that this will be hard to reach? I'm pretty sure they'll get 1% (4M) within the first the first 3 days (counting preorders).
To get 1%, they don't need to go to their mid-range market; from all the data we've seen of their users, they only need to sell to the high end of their demo this year to have a rousing success.
Considering they sold 20M tablets, which are not subsidized, las quarter. Not sure why you think something that costs less would be such an imposition on even the high middle market (were most of their buyers reside).
BTW, what you call subsidy is in fact.. a loan with a decent interest rate for the telecoms. That's exactly what it is. In the case of T-Mobile it is made explicit.
Read the comments, most complained about firewire, osx only, battery life, size,... All that got improved over the generations.
I really dont know who those "people" always are as if any product ever has been without anyone complaining about it.
I actually agree with everything you said. I also expect sales of a few million in the first weekend. But what then? They have a large iPhone installed base and a certain percentage will definitely buy the watch no matter what. But once that percentage has theirs, can Apple convince the rest to buy it too? I think it's too expensive at $350+ to be a casual purchase. Once it's under $200, I see it having a much broader appeal.
I don't think you can compare tablet sales to the watch either. Tablets are full featured, stand alone products. Some people buy iPads instead of computers. Plus there are endless specific use cases from deploying a custom app in the field to kids watching movies in the car. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, is an accessory. It requires the iPhone. And it does not offer nearly the breadth of features and functions that one finds on a tablet. It's not even remotely the same thing.
I also don't see the price as an "imposition". I see it as too high to be a casual purchase. I have no problem affording a $350+ item. But at that price point, I really think about whether or not I want to spend the money. I imagine I'm not alone there. It's not about people not being able to afford it. It's about seeing enough value in the product to spend the money.
And you're right, it's more like a loan. But that's not the point. An iPhone costs anywhere from $0 to a few hundred dollars up front. It enhances one's life in countless ways. It's a must-have device (smart phones, in general) these days. By not requiring people to pay the full price up front, more people can afford the technology. Look at how many low income people sport iPhones. They couldn't buy smart phones if the cost was $350+ up front. They aren't going to buy Apple Watches.
I'm simply not sold on the idea of wearables, period. I do believe the Apple Watch has the potential to add a few percentage points to the "Other" category in their revenue breakdown (once the price comes down), but I don't see it as "the next big thing", not even close.