Apple Watch event = as expected.
I was half expecting the battery life rumours to be untrue and/or there to be someone spectacular to make me rethink my position. None of that happened. Literally everything else about the event was more impressive than the Watch portion.
Apple TV gets cheaper and is hardware exclusive partner for HBO's new streaming service. Not a huge deal, but the price cut is nice news and combined with the HBO news might make a compelling reason for many.
The new MacBook adds a lot of nifty niceness, though end up leaving me baffled. They go out and make the screen 30% more energy efficient, it is now fan-less, shrinking the motherboard to next to nothing fill up all of the new space with oodles of new batteries and on top of that they even make the batteries contoured to fit inside of the case with maximal size and the thing gets 9-10hrs of battery life? What? I don't know about you, but it looked an awful lot to me like there were 6 batteries in the thing and they took up probably 75% of the internal space.
I guess they lost a lot by reducing the thickness. If I were them, I would have shut up about all of the battery related tweaks and just told people the runtime. 9-10hrs, isn't bad, but when your device is more battery than anything else and you've just spent 10 minutes telling me all of the reasons why the thing consumes less battery than ever before, all of a sudden 9-10hrs sounds fairly mediocre. But the new touchpad and keyboard button improvements could serve them well in attracting people.
Before I get to the Watch bit, there was a ridiculous celebrity endorsement of the Watch and pointless stats. It felt like they were poaching ideas from BlackBerry and Microsoft. And it was as lame as people criticize BB and MS for being. I mean seriously, we don't all run half marathons in the middle of Africa wearing shirts endorsing mothers and the total number of all iPhone's ever sold is hardly a relevant statistic. I imagine that being Apple, many will overlook this nonsense though.
Now onto the Watch. The presentation was basically of rehash of everything Apple already officially revealed and more or less a confirmation of the rumours. All Apple would say on battery life was 18hrs on a "typical" day. This coincides rather perfectly with the first articles I read on battery life which said 2-4 hours of heavy use and a little under a day when completely idle. They arrive at 18 hours by assuming the watch will be idle some insane percentage of the time. I'm sorry, but if you actually get 18 hours out of your Apple watch that probably means you extensively use your smart watch the same as you'd use a regular watch. Thus, you've wasted $350.
The next problem is apps. Everyone wants apps, but what meaningful things can you do on a watch which you can't do more efficiently on your phone? Aside from displaying the time (which ALL watches do), and heart rate/health tracking stuff (which most fitness bands do for cheaper and with better battery life) I didn't see anything to make the argument for this product. They showed Instagram and Twitter! The only notifications I would ever action from a Watch are texts that fall under the 1 word or less category and to which I don't expect a follow up text back.
Watching the live blogs, the more disconcerting thing is even Apple fans seemed underwhelmed.
Lastly, I don't know who Apple hires to make their predictions, but their sales predictions are sheer insanity. On no planet do they make sense. Again, like Apple Pay, the watch only works with iOS devices and most functionality is best when paired with a phone (iPhone specifically). Which means that the overwhelming majority of phone users are screwed (because Android is that majority). Android wear devices haven't cracked 1 million yet, and Pebble is only just hovering around the 1 million mark. Yet Apple predicts... TWENTY FIVE MILLION IN THE FIRST YEAR ALONE
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What the actual fuck? The entire smart watch industry in the few years it has been around combined has not sold anywhere near that many. And over a quarter of this year will already be over by the time this thing hits shelves.
The Watch has a "chance" of success. That prediction however has no chance at all of coming to pass. I may often admit that the market does things that makes no sense. But on this one... I would call Apple Watch wildly successful if it sells 5 million in 2015. I would call the product a success, market standards if it sells 1 million in 2015. By all accounts, in the smart watch "market" if it sold just 500k it STILL wouldn't be a failure by any measure. If that thing sells 25 million in anything less than 3 years I may die of a heart attack.
The problem with smart watches is they are a solution looking for a problem. They are an excess of cost for the bare minimum in utility at the best of times.
Phones, tablets and computers solve all problems that a watch can at the moment solve, and in almost all cases solves it better, at a lower price point and are devices most people already have.
Apple TV gets cheaper and is hardware exclusive partner for HBO's new streaming service. Not a huge deal, but the price cut is nice news and combined with the HBO news might make a compelling reason for many.
The new MacBook adds a lot of nifty niceness, though end up leaving me baffled. They go out and make the screen 30% more energy efficient, it is now fan-less, shrinking the motherboard to next to nothing fill up all of the new space with oodles of new batteries and on top of that they even make the batteries contoured to fit inside of the case with maximal size and the thing gets 9-10hrs of battery life? What? I don't know about you, but it looked an awful lot to me like there were 6 batteries in the thing and they took up probably 75% of the internal space.
I guess they lost a lot by reducing the thickness. If I were them, I would have shut up about all of the battery related tweaks and just told people the runtime. 9-10hrs, isn't bad, but when your device is more battery than anything else and you've just spent 10 minutes telling me all of the reasons why the thing consumes less battery than ever before, all of a sudden 9-10hrs sounds fairly mediocre. But the new touchpad and keyboard button improvements could serve them well in attracting people.
Before I get to the Watch bit, there was a ridiculous celebrity endorsement of the Watch and pointless stats. It felt like they were poaching ideas from BlackBerry and Microsoft. And it was as lame as people criticize BB and MS for being. I mean seriously, we don't all run half marathons in the middle of Africa wearing shirts endorsing mothers and the total number of all iPhone's ever sold is hardly a relevant statistic. I imagine that being Apple, many will overlook this nonsense though.
Now onto the Watch. The presentation was basically of rehash of everything Apple already officially revealed and more or less a confirmation of the rumours. All Apple would say on battery life was 18hrs on a "typical" day. This coincides rather perfectly with the first articles I read on battery life which said 2-4 hours of heavy use and a little under a day when completely idle. They arrive at 18 hours by assuming the watch will be idle some insane percentage of the time. I'm sorry, but if you actually get 18 hours out of your Apple watch that probably means you extensively use your smart watch the same as you'd use a regular watch. Thus, you've wasted $350.
The next problem is apps. Everyone wants apps, but what meaningful things can you do on a watch which you can't do more efficiently on your phone? Aside from displaying the time (which ALL watches do), and heart rate/health tracking stuff (which most fitness bands do for cheaper and with better battery life) I didn't see anything to make the argument for this product. They showed Instagram and Twitter! The only notifications I would ever action from a Watch are texts that fall under the 1 word or less category and to which I don't expect a follow up text back.
Watching the live blogs, the more disconcerting thing is even Apple fans seemed underwhelmed.
Lastly, I don't know who Apple hires to make their predictions, but their sales predictions are sheer insanity. On no planet do they make sense. Again, like Apple Pay, the watch only works with iOS devices and most functionality is best when paired with a phone (iPhone specifically). Which means that the overwhelming majority of phone users are screwed (because Android is that majority). Android wear devices haven't cracked 1 million yet, and Pebble is only just hovering around the 1 million mark. Yet Apple predicts... TWENTY FIVE MILLION IN THE FIRST YEAR ALONE
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What the actual fuck? The entire smart watch industry in the few years it has been around combined has not sold anywhere near that many. And over a quarter of this year will already be over by the time this thing hits shelves.
The Watch has a "chance" of success. That prediction however has no chance at all of coming to pass. I may often admit that the market does things that makes no sense. But on this one... I would call Apple Watch wildly successful if it sells 5 million in 2015. I would call the product a success, market standards if it sells 1 million in 2015. By all accounts, in the smart watch "market" if it sold just 500k it STILL wouldn't be a failure by any measure. If that thing sells 25 million in anything less than 3 years I may die of a heart attack.
The problem with smart watches is they are a solution looking for a problem. They are an excess of cost for the bare minimum in utility at the best of times.
Phones, tablets and computers solve all problems that a watch can at the moment solve, and in almost all cases solves it better, at a lower price point and are devices most people already have.
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