Apple on breaking iPhone dependence...
I think my favorite thing to write about is things which amuse about others. This article for instance.
Apple needed to add cellular data to break from the need for an iPhone? No. They just need to allow the device to play nice with something other than an iPhone. This change doesn't really fix anything. The watch still won't play nice with other vendors. So, basically it is a way of keeping you tied to the Apple ecosystem while pretending they are making a meaningful improvement.
I don't know about you. But the only people I know who don't have their phones in BT range of their wrist virtually 100% of the time... are people who would never buy a smart watch in the first place.
Literally, the only thing I can think of is people who like jogging outside in clothes which afford no room for a phone. Given that this subset of people are those prone to showing off, it seems unlikely that they'd want to leave their iPhones at home. Status symbols are the hallmark of many in this group.
And seriously. Even for the ultra crazy fitness nuts. How much time do they or would they actually spend away from their phones?
Allow me to be blunt. GPS is maybe something people would have held out for. A wireless chip, but which still leaves stuck in the Apple ecosystem on the hand; not something I think that the average person still on the fence cares about.
To be frank though, I've neither seen nor heard of Apple Watch for months. Methinks the bulk of the real world has long since moved on. It isn't that there is anything inherently wrong with Apple Watch. It is more that the smart watch segment was never as large as Apple or many in the tech industry wanted to believe it was.
I'll return to an old argument. The key to the internet of things isn't one device or even one ecosystem. Beyond generalized computing and communication of the sort enabled by computers, phones and tablets, the rest is much more niche. Some people will buy smart watches, some thermostats, some lights, etc... There is unlikely to be another (intentionally created) category of devices to rival smart phones.
With this wide net of devices with smaller markets what is important is not tying people to one ecosystem. If your ecosystem doesn't have everything, it will lack the most important smart devices for someone. And, while you may not be able to please everyone, when the other markets are so small and what is important within is so "sensitive" to people you can easily lose by not playing nice.
What I meant by sensitive above was, people who bought Apple Watch probably see it as the most important smart device outside of their phones. They would switch smart lights and other devices to brings them into the same ecosystem as their watch. But, there are people for whom the smart lights, or thermostats are the deal breaker. But if the device they care about doesn't play nice with your ecosystem, you will lose them.
We need ubiquity in IoT, not proprietary. It isn't going to truly catch on until we get there. I hate to say it, but we need the HTML spec equivalent. And I mean that in cringe worthy ways. I don't see the big players in this space conceding and working together on a standard. What we need is a grass roots movement that defined a common protocol, but allows others to build their own implementation.
For HTML, the protocol would the language including the supported tags, attributes, CSS, etc... and the rendering engines/browsers would be the implementation. The IoT equivalent specifies the supported commands and expected results, but allows the individuals to build the actual smarts that present this to the user, etc...
As much as I might laugh any time I hear that HTML is cross platform or universal, the reality is that it is years ahead of IoT platforms.
And so I end this WAY off my original topic.
Apple needed to add cellular data to break from the need for an iPhone? No. They just need to allow the device to play nice with something other than an iPhone. This change doesn't really fix anything. The watch still won't play nice with other vendors. So, basically it is a way of keeping you tied to the Apple ecosystem while pretending they are making a meaningful improvement.
I don't know about you. But the only people I know who don't have their phones in BT range of their wrist virtually 100% of the time... are people who would never buy a smart watch in the first place.
Literally, the only thing I can think of is people who like jogging outside in clothes which afford no room for a phone. Given that this subset of people are those prone to showing off, it seems unlikely that they'd want to leave their iPhones at home. Status symbols are the hallmark of many in this group.
And seriously. Even for the ultra crazy fitness nuts. How much time do they or would they actually spend away from their phones?
Allow me to be blunt. GPS is maybe something people would have held out for. A wireless chip, but which still leaves stuck in the Apple ecosystem on the hand; not something I think that the average person still on the fence cares about.
To be frank though, I've neither seen nor heard of Apple Watch for months. Methinks the bulk of the real world has long since moved on. It isn't that there is anything inherently wrong with Apple Watch. It is more that the smart watch segment was never as large as Apple or many in the tech industry wanted to believe it was.
I'll return to an old argument. The key to the internet of things isn't one device or even one ecosystem. Beyond generalized computing and communication of the sort enabled by computers, phones and tablets, the rest is much more niche. Some people will buy smart watches, some thermostats, some lights, etc... There is unlikely to be another (intentionally created) category of devices to rival smart phones.
With this wide net of devices with smaller markets what is important is not tying people to one ecosystem. If your ecosystem doesn't have everything, it will lack the most important smart devices for someone. And, while you may not be able to please everyone, when the other markets are so small and what is important within is so "sensitive" to people you can easily lose by not playing nice.
What I meant by sensitive above was, people who bought Apple Watch probably see it as the most important smart device outside of their phones. They would switch smart lights and other devices to brings them into the same ecosystem as their watch. But, there are people for whom the smart lights, or thermostats are the deal breaker. But if the device they care about doesn't play nice with your ecosystem, you will lose them.
We need ubiquity in IoT, not proprietary. It isn't going to truly catch on until we get there. I hate to say it, but we need the HTML spec equivalent. And I mean that in cringe worthy ways. I don't see the big players in this space conceding and working together on a standard. What we need is a grass roots movement that defined a common protocol, but allows others to build their own implementation.
For HTML, the protocol would the language including the supported tags, attributes, CSS, etc... and the rendering engines/browsers would be the implementation. The IoT equivalent specifies the supported commands and expected results, but allows the individuals to build the actual smarts that present this to the user, etc...
As much as I might laugh any time I hear that HTML is cross platform or universal, the reality is that it is years ahead of IoT platforms.
And so I end this WAY off my original topic.
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