If/when it won't be the same MagSafe 'puck' connector so you will still need another type.
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Why no inductive charging?
- Thread starter mcdj
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If/when it won't be the same MagSafe 'puck' connector so you will still need another type.
I actually wasn't pointing that comment at you, for the record. I am just commenting on the general complaint from the OP.
I'm always amazed at how quickly people jump to conclusions here and make snark, unjustified comments. As far as I'm concerned, the OP is more qualified than anyone here when it comes to discussing watch design.
To those that quickly and incorrectly judged this person, slow down and be a part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Just get one dude. Mine works perfect and I use it constantly every day for many things. you sound like you would enjoy it being a watch and apple fanatic like myself. Get a stainless model. They absolutely feel like a quality watch.
I've wondered about this. With the phone, you still need to be able to connect it to a computer, so it's not possible to replace the lighting cable with an inductive cable unless they wanted to switch entirely to wireless syncing, which probably not be a great experience.
Does not work. My roommate has several QI and PMA chargers, both of which did not work on my Watch.
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That is a great point. Perhaps they will only allow WiFi syncing if they push their devices towards wireless charging?
All the current devices that support wireless charging (aside from a wearable) all still have some sort of port. Mainly USB.
Agree on the Moto360 stand
Having used a Moto 360 since last year (mostly for development work), I initially was disappointed that Apple went with the magnetic puck arrangement. The Moto 360 "night stand" with automatic bedside clock was really a thoughtful touch.
The downside was that was the only officially recommended method to charge the '360. Traveling with that charger dock was slightly annoying. At least it used a detachable micro-USB cable.
Yes, you could use other Qi-compliant chargers with the Moto 360, but placement was finicky and if you didn't get the Moto 360 lined up precisely, it either would stop charging, or it would charge so inefficiently that the watch would heat up significantly from the poor inductive coupling.
So far, my Apple Watch charges much cooler than the Moto 360. I suspect that magnet helps with not just alignment, but pulling the charging puck much closer than simple gravity would allow.
As to whether Apple used Qi technology, it seems they have chosen a high transmission frequency. My Moto 360 will charge off the Apple puck, but the Apple Watch will not charge off the Moto 360 dock. Apple Lock-in? I doubt it. Apple seems to be distancing themselves from the late-Jobsian "make it sticky" approach. Apple does have a history of doing things themselves it if makes for a better customer experience. I wonder if the higher frequency was dictated by a smaller diameter charging coil, improved efficiency, or the case materials? There was likely a strong engineering reason for it.
In any case, I'm looking forward to plenty of third-party options for charging Apple Watch. The puck is a simple approach that will work for everyone and all straps, and is easy enough to travel with. I would, however, liked to see a Lightning connector on it instead of a permanently attached cord.
Having used a Moto 360 since last year (mostly for development work), I initially was disappointed that Apple went with the magnetic puck arrangement. The Moto 360 "night stand" with automatic bedside clock was really a thoughtful touch.
The downside was that was the only officially recommended method to charge the '360. Traveling with that charger dock was slightly annoying. At least it used a detachable micro-USB cable.
Yes, you could use other Qi-compliant chargers with the Moto 360, but placement was finicky and if you didn't get the Moto 360 lined up precisely, it either would stop charging, or it would charge so inefficiently that the watch would heat up significantly from the poor inductive coupling.
So far, my Apple Watch charges much cooler than the Moto 360. I suspect that magnet helps with not just alignment, but pulling the charging puck much closer than simple gravity would allow.
As to whether Apple used Qi technology, it seems they have chosen a high transmission frequency. My Moto 360 will charge off the Apple puck, but the Apple Watch will not charge off the Moto 360 dock. Apple Lock-in? I doubt it. Apple seems to be distancing themselves from the late-Jobsian "make it sticky" approach. Apple does have a history of doing things themselves it if makes for a better customer experience. I wonder if the higher frequency was dictated by a smaller diameter charging coil, improved efficiency, or the case materials? There was likely a strong engineering reason for it.
In any case, I'm looking forward to plenty of third-party options for charging Apple Watch. The puck is a simple approach that will work for everyone and all straps, and is easy enough to travel with. I would, however, liked to see a Lightning connector on it instead of a permanently attached cord.
Looking at their patent, it suggests they are using around 150kHz. As for why the Apple Watch won't charge from the Moto charger, I suspect they are being very particular (as always) to what they consider compatible. The Qi spec includes passing data between the transmitter and receiver; iirc, it also can include device id metadata (even if Qi didn't specify it, Apple would have included it in their implementation). The data includes charge rate, battery capacity, charge level, etc. basically anything related to charger and battery performance.
That is extremely nice! Something Apple should have built AND included with all of their watches (for the price they charge). But, good ole Spigen to the rescue. Love Spigen!
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PMA chargers won't work with anything that Duracell doesn't profit from. Duracell owns the PMA charging standard and that has been the main reason you haven't seen PMA take-off.
Apple would never yield to a consortium led by one company, able to pull the plug on a wireless charging cable/connector.
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That charging dock is way too big for people that travel a lot. Motorola have still a long way to go when it comes to design and function.
I don't think you have seen one in person to make this comment. The Moto 360 charging dock is both a very cool concept to give users a bedside clock and wireless charging combo (something 3rd party Apple Watch accessory makers are copying) and it is very small. I can easily stuff it in my front pocket if needed. And I would much prefer to travel with the Moto 360 dock that can take a beating and survive compared to the plastic Apple Watch sport charger that doesn't look like it would survive travelling in a backpack on a trip very well.
Ok, here goes, and yes, price is part of the issue.
1. The crown seems like a gimmick. Sure, it's a cool idea, and seems to work well enough (though apparently more smoothly on the more expensive steel version), but I feel it's a more of a skeumorphic anachronism than an innovative approach. I was expecting some kind of touch sensitive area on the side of the case, if they insisted on keeping the screen as clear from interaction as possible, or better still, to just use the screen to its full potential. The need to distribute interactivity into different physical areas of the watch feels more like some kind of pandering to people's archaic ideas of what a watch should be and less of a problem solving solution.
2. The friend button is dumb. I don't have or want enough contacts to warrant an entire dedicated button on my watch. Where's my Uber button? My Seamless button? My eBay button? Gimme a button I can use (read customize) or none at all. SJ had wanted no buttons on the iPhone and succumbed to allowing just one. The watch could use a dose of that mentality. A dedicated button that does only one thing amounts to Apple telling me how to live, and I'm not interested in their facebooking-twittering-sms-speed dialing recipe for life. It reminds me of the camera on the Nano..."Here's something we're doing because people should want that!" (they didn't).
3. Make all the watches steel and sapphire, and lower the price to that of the aluminum model, or make an all steel model at the aluminum price, and add a plastic model with the crappy crystal for much less. You can buy an automatic Swiss 316L steel watch with a sapphire crystal and an ETA automatic movement on a steel bracelet for $500. Why should a digital watches' guts cost more than an automatic movement, with hundreds of hand assembled precision parts?
4. The strap/bracelets seem like they were designed in another department.
The rubber strap is too fussy. It seems to have layers of some kind of satin coating that people are reporting peeling off or wearing. The strap should be pure caoutchouc rubber. It doesn't peel. It lasts for ages. Supremely comfortable. And worthy of the price Apple is charging for its layered chemical based strap.
The wire lug attachment for the leather strap makes the watch look flimsy and unbalanced.
The Milanese bracelet looks too thin for the watch head. An nice thick Omega mesh bracelet would look much more integrated. And the Milanese looks like a hair puller; the mesh could be much more tightly woven to prevent hair from entering the links.
The link bracelet is entirely brushed. There is no brushed finish on the steel watch, and no polished areas of the bracelet. The bracelet looks like it was made for a completely different watch. Simply polishing the link edges would have solved that and made the watch look much more integrated with the bracelet.
5. Charging seems fussy as discussed. Some kind of solar or kinetic power augmentation would have felt much more Apple-esque and provided much more of a wow factor. As it stands, here's yet another device I'd better not forget the cable for. With billions sitting in their R&D coffers, a magnetic disc is the best they could come up with? Ugh.
6. Few interesting watch faces and scant options. Of course they *could* add more faces; doesn't mean they will. Maybe they'll add a dial store to iTunes, like a ringtone store. But for now, the selection is dry and uninspiring.
7. The reports of lift-to-activate working intermittently remind me of the frustration of a Casio's auto-light feature from 15 years ago. Really? In 15 years the world's greatest company couldn't make such a basic feature work 100% reliably? Highly off-putting. Those Casios drove me nuts.
I could probably think of more things, but those are enough for now.
The crown works well, and saves you from having to obscure what you're interacting with, which is not a big deal on an iPhone or iPad, but is on a tiny watch. Would a touch-sensitive strip work better? I don't really think so, and I don't have a problem with it being an homage to traditional watches. Plus, it kind of makes the watch seem more iconic than it would if it were just a rectangle on a strap.
100% correct.
Cheaper would've been nice, but it is what it is.
I think the jury is out about durability, but the peeling is not a widespread issue. The sport bands are comfortable and cleverly designed in my opinion.
It works perfectly for me (which was why I was really confused by your original post). My only complaint is that you need a special cable. I'd prefer that the disk attach to a standard lightning cable or something.
I tend to agree, but I will eat my hat if they don't add more. It would go down in history as one of the greatest missed opportunities ever. Create a magical watch capable of imitating any kind of watch face with millions of combinations of complications, etc. and then never go beyond the initial 10 it shipped with? I don't see it.
It's not 100%, but in practice it's probably 95% or so (once you become accustomed to the way it works).
I'm not sure I see anything here that would keep someone who's a diehard Apple fan AND a watch fan from at least picking up the low-end version to play with. Maybe you've spent too much time here on the forum reading all of the complaints? It's a good product. Not a fantastic one yet, perhaps, but it's useful as it is and I see a lot of potential for future updates.
Fair enough. Yes, maybe I have been reading too much. I briefly considered getting one to play with, but I'm spoiled by steel and sapphire. I won't buy a $500 Casio G-Shock, which are much more robustly built than any aluminum watch, so I am baseline opposed to an aluminum
Watch. $700 for the steel model isn't exactly toy money for me. And even if I wanted one to play with, there's none to be had, making the decision that much easier. Another issue is that I'm getting older. Over the past 5 years, I've sold off most of my watches, except for my "Trolex", an MKII Quad pilot, and a few Seikos and Casios I can't part with. The Trolex is my every day watch, and I'm just not sold on the
Watch enough to consider leaving my beloved daily wearer in a drawer (in an NYC apartment where anything could happen to it).And if I did make room in the watch box for the
Watch, it's back to the days of having an automatic watch that needs setting and winding if I decide to wear it, because I haven't worn it in a few days/weeks/months, and on the flip side, having to charge/update/sync/whatever a watch I haven't worn in a few days/weeks/months. Ever since I got the Trolex Sub Ceramic, I have been all but blissfully devoid of such first world problems, after decades of agonizing over what watch to wear on a given day. And if I did get the
Watch and fell in love with it, and the Trollex didn't get worn for a year, wouldn't it be smarter to sell it? I can't bear that thought. So the
Watch brings with it a little anxiety for someone who's had a life long love affair with watches, and thought he had finally settled on one watch, something which many watch addicts will tell you is the ultimate goal of the wristwatch obsession, which many never reach. If Apple had truly blown me away with their watch, I probably would have bitten. And I may one day, perhaps at V2 or V3.
You know what makes this type of comment worse than anything some reviewer from tech gadget blah blah .com could write?
You are an Apple fan. Spent hard earned money on a product that should be giving you the same satisfaction as an iPhone/iPad/MBP/etc. Yet, you have taken the time to spell out why the Apple Watch doesn't live up to what 'should' be expected from an Apple product. This is what is going to truly damn the Apple Watch (1st gen). Bad word of mouth from the average user is worse than any tech blog/writeup.
And while I never would have bought an Apple Watch, your post cements my misgivings about it.
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lol. You do know one side is concave'd, right? Shouldn't that be the dead give away?
Wow, isn't a month of macrumors membership a little soon to be a rampant unofficial Apple apologist? Not that they don't desperately need every JoeRandomInternetMuscleman they can get, out here on the front lines, defending them from evil naysaying, nonsense spewing mauraders...
Apple surely treasures your anonymous unsolicited service in protecting their delicate position as a trillion dollar hegemony.
Probably.
As I have said some where before its most likely my fault. Just something that has bothered me slightly. Not the end of the world or anything.I posted too soon. My Moto 360 does not charge from the Apple Watch charging disc. While it does indeed detect the presence of the energy field, it either only pulls enough power to maintain charge and keep up with the bedside clock display power requirements, or none at all. The battery percentage remained constant while attached to the Apple charger, finally dropping one point after about ten minutes. If I unplug the Apple charger at the USB end, the Moto 360 drops out of charging mode, so it doesn't seem to be just a magnet sensor in the 360.
This brings up an interesting thought... So while I like the bedside clock mode in the 360 and kind of wish Apple had offered that as well, I realize now it in itself consumes power and would, in theory, slow down the charge rate. The 360 charges reasonable fast even with the display being lit. So I wonder if Apple Watch simply charges at a lower power output. After all, the Apple Watch has 66% of the battery capacity that the 360 has.
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