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Microsoft Working With Suppliers on Designs for Watch-Like Device
An anonymous reader writes with news that Microsoft may be working on a smartwatch. "The modern smartwatch market hardly even exists, and yet it's already starting to feel very crowded. Hot on the heels of plans (official and otherwise) from Apple and Samsung, the Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft has also been shopping around for parts to build a 'watch-style device.' While details are scarce as to what that would entail, unnamed supplier executives tell the newspaper that Microsoft has been asking for 1.5-inch touchscreens. We wouldn't count on seeing an ultra-small Surface anytime soon, however -- these executives say they've visited Microsoft's campus, but they don't know whether the Windows developer is fully committed to its wrist-worn endeavor or just experimenting. If the project exists at all, of course. Still, there's finally a glimmer of hope for anyone who's still mourning the loss of their beloved SPOT watches."
There was once a smartwatch called the Timex Datalink. I remember when it came out. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink for more information.
I'm wearing a very cheap digital watch right now, and you're probably going to buy two new smartphones before its battery has run out.
That's no argument for a smart watch, but it does demolish your "watches are useless" argument pretty thoroughly.
The tablet / touch laptop market hasn't been going so well for them, they need a new form factor to botch for Window Blue.
Sigger than your average
I stopped using a watch ten years ago, in favour of my phone. This winter I got myself a new wristwatch, and started wearing them again. The watch can get bumped and scratched without worry, works fine in bad weather, I never have to worry about recharging it. And, I cna check the time without having to pull out my phone, turning it on, the putting it back again.
I fully understand all the people that use a phone as their only time tevice. I did so myself for ten years and was happy with that. But after going back to a wristwatch, I do fully understand the people that prefer that too. To me it really is more convenient than the phone. I also like how it looks on me; that's pretty important too.
With that said, I don't think I'm interested in a _smart_ watch. The point of the wristwatch, to me, is the ruggedness and the simplicitly. A smartwatch seems to throw away exactly those features and become, well, a phone on the wrist. I have a phone already. Safe and secure in a pocket, not out on my wrist.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Arguably, the problem isn't so much that 'nobody wears watches anymore'(though cellphones certainly haven't done them any favors); but nobody wears watches in the market range amenable to technology companies.
You've got your $2 digitals, unexciting but pretty solid at telling time for ages on a teeny little battery, fairly durable, and cheap enough that nobody cries if 'fairly' turns out not to be durable enough. Unless your 'smart watch' plan involves almost no money and almost no power, it'd better do something really cool if it is going to sway people away from these; because these things are cheaper and longer-running than anything 'smart' is going to be.
Then you've got the watches-as-jewelry segment, which spans a wide variety of tastes and price points; but jewelry-style luxury markets are more or less the opposite of what tech companies are good at. It will be a lot easier to sneak in here on price and care-and-feeding; but interest in 'this watch looks exactly like the other 10 million we paid foxconn to stamp out; because that's how economies of scale work, m'kay?' may be a problem.
If you had a 'smart watch' concept that was compelling enough to get the cheap seats to pay more and recharge more, or the jewelry section to embrace a disposable widget instead of some ostensibly 'timeless' fashion item, you'd have something that people would wear watches for, if necessary. That, though, is the tricky bit.
Lots of people wear watches, either to tell time or for fashion, or both.
The big problem with a smart watch is that 1.5" isn't enough space to display any meaningful amount of data, and worse, the context that it's in. I can think of a few situations where reading a ticker tape on my wrist of a short email or text message might be useful, but 200x200 pixels is really only useful for animated GIFs of cats and telling the time.
moox. for a new generation.
That's silly, plenty of people still wear watches. Your hypothesis might hold for a small demographic of the younger generation who are particularly technically inclined, but even I know of multiple Microsoft and Amazon employees who would never be caught without their smartphones, yet still wear a watch; partly for the practicality and partly for style. And they need not be some gaudy Rolex to achieve that. On the note of practicality, I'm a bit behind the latest tech trends and only recently switched to a smartphone, but now I'm considering a watch for one simple pragmatic reason: watches don't have a maximum battery life of two days. Speaking of that, if this 'smart watch' has such limited battery, I imagine it'd be an instant deal-breaker for many people.
Also had one with an AM/FM Radio built in. I'm their target demographic. Guess what? I DON'T WEAR A FUCKING WATCH ANYMORE.
If this report is true, MS is fucking pathetic. I'm not particularly "anti-MS": I just don't care. I think in terms of, "Whatever gets the job done." But, upon hearing reports that their competitors are doing something with a "smart watch," MS now has to slut themselves to create a "me-too" product...? Have they no self-respect? They're like an old whore chasing down Johns from corner to corner, hoping someone will throw a buck their way, while everyone else looks away in embarrassment.
I wear a $25 Casio metal body watch. It has worked for 3 years (with no battery change) and it is still like new.
A few have criticized me that with my age and position it is not fit for me. I said as a CS scientist, I prefer digits to bars!
There's another market segment too: watches (like mine) that do things like compass, altitude, barometric pressure, temperature, heart rate, etc.
Sometimes the appropriate place for a "smart" device is on your wrist.
Try telling a rock climber they're better off carrying a phone in their chalk bag or whatever. Or a backpacker on a week-long hike that they're better off carrying their smartphone which only holds a charge for 3 days. (As a backpacker myself, if you told me to just carry extra batteries or portable chargers I'd laugh at you.)
Of course, that doesn't mean I think the appropriate place for a Microsoft smart device is on your wrist. I don't know the details yet but I probably won't want one.
I keep seeing articles popping up about 'smartwatches" from Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Apple, and even Google. What I never see is someone telling me where the demand for this market is. Smart watches, to me, don't seem to serve any particular specialized function. Battery conservation is a joke, unless the tech world has suddenly gotten squeamish about throwing a phone on a microUSB charger. Touchscreen, quick searching, quick clock access, easy navigation, easy access to ... the smartwatch offers only minuscule improvements on the access a smart phone already has, while giving only a third of the screen real estate. And this is on top of the cash investment for a new device that largely emulates ALREADY OWNED hardware.
Honestly, all the recent smartwatch buzz has seemed, to me, to be a response to the impending arrival of Google Glass. (With the exception of Google's own team, who I would assume is working on a watch just in case this actually IS a new thing people want.) Other tech companies know Google Glass is going to be hugely influential, and smartwatches smell like an attempt to try and offer a low-cost alternative that has the side benefit of not being stuck in the shadow of a market icon to beat (iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android, Google Glass, etc).
i hope it comes with a masturbation measuring app, so i can jerk off and count the number of reps, pressure, date, photo of the event to match up with previous attempts to judge how healthy bloodflow to my penis is.
i hope it also comes with an app for my rectum, where it can safely be inserted, take some pictures and gain some medical insights to the state of my system and safely navigate itself out, like a roomba, through my anus.
I read your post, and thought, "$25 sure isn't cheap...." then I went and looked at the prices of watches. Wow. They've gone up since the last time I looked.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I am all for the development of a proper smartwatch. None that are now on the market are really compelling in my opinion. I expect Google and Apple to come up with something much more useful. For me, Apple developing a watch is a more interesting rumour than the television set rumors. Like the Google Glass, I see a proper smart watch as the next step towards fully wearable, near invisible computing. Initially I can see it working together with a phone in your pocket, eventually I think it will not need a separate phone anymore.. If the rumour is correct that Apple plans to run a version of iOS on it, then that means that the device will be much more powerful than what is on the market today. I expect Google also to work in this vein. So what could such a watch do next to what the limited models can't do now? In the case of Apple I can imagine it working together with Siri, you could for example ask your watch the way to X and it shows a map as you go. Or do an immediate video call. Etcetera. As I wrote above, the idea of having completely wearable computing is very attractive to me. Slashdot may have many nay-sayers (then again many slashdotters ridiculised the ipad and iphone...), I think that Google Glass and proper smartwatches will start the next step in truly personal computing.
I believe the problem with the coming crop of "smart watches" is that they all need a phone to connect to. They're really more of an extra terminal to your phone rather than a standalone device.
So if you're a rock climber or hiker, all the negative aspects of bringing a phone apply to these terminals too. You really need to get an actua watch with the appropriate functions.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Link to a 2003 article about MS & watches
http://www.pcworld.com/article/111035/article.html
I am quite sure if Apple, Google and Samsung are working on developing a flying turd, Microsoft also wants one. I don't see a lot of innovative development lately. These tech giants only want to keep on par with eachother without really developing their own identity. So much for progress.
A few have criticized me that with my age and position it is not fit for me.
Have you noted that those people should not be trusted with anything important?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Does anyone get the feeling that if Apple was rumoured to be working on a shoe phone, Microsoft would immediately start doing the same?
The Beast has 80,000 people working for them and they encourage them to be active in social media like /. They are, however, cautioned against replying to or moderating me specifically. Downmodding me can lose you moderation privileges here if the metamods don't agree with your modding - which they usually don't when the downmods are corporate biased.
Oh man that is the most hilariously self-absorbed thing i have *ever* read on this site! :D The fact that you think microsoft would give 2 shits about the opinions in the comments on the stories on slashdot is funny enough but that you actually believe they give a shit about your comments specifically is absolute gold!
The fact is this site started out as a pro-linux and pro-OSS site - and we all know how microsoft is regarded in those circles - so any positive ms comments were met with a barrage of abuse, even legitimate ones. Then trolls started to realize how easy it is to get a massive response by trolling /. with pro-ms comments.
I know you actually believe it is some big conspiracy and you're near the center of it, that's cute and i'm sure the fantasy that microsoft employs an army of astroturfers that fear you must feel pretty cool for you.
Sounds good, until you work out that you can't wear them walking through the city on a Friday night without a risk of going down for ten years for recording child porn after a scantily clad girl bends over. It will get treated just like deliberately putting a camera in a high school shower.
Make it pink and you'll sell millions.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Didn't the phrase "thumbprint-sized touch screen" set off any warning bells in the designers' heads?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Woohoo, I cannot wait to run Norton or McAffee AV on my watch and do weekly patch Tuesdays...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
No-one wear watches anymore? I have a mechanical self winding Seiko on my arm. This way, I am always early for meetings, since it gains about 3 minutes per day. It is way more cool than an electronic watch.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
MS Watch: (in an electronic voice) Hi there, I see you are trying to tell the time. How can I help you?
1. Would you like me to display the time?
2. Is there a time you prefer?
3. Why don't you tell me the time?
A friend of mine must have had an insecure upbringing, because he's constantly susceptible to status symbol purchases: flashy luxury cars, high-falootin' watches, etc. He's a smart guy, but not an engineer. One time he shows me his new watch, and says, "It's made from tungsten. It's unscratchable!" I told him, that, first off, it's bluish, so it's not tungsten but probably tungsten carbide. Second, if he'll let me demonstrate, I'll scratch it with some sandpaper - since SiC is harder than tungsten carbide. He declined :) I then say something like, "It must weigh a fucking ton..." and he smiles and tells me that it's the heaviest watch they make. Unreal. No idea what it cost, but I certainly hope someone was impressed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's true. I wore a watch in public and a criminal stole me. He left the watch, though.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Windows 9, scales your 4k desktop so its effectively 320x200, and changes the user interface so the only buttons that work on your keyboard are the up/down/enter buttons.
Microsoft, of course, claims huge improvements in users ability to learn the interface because everything including typing is done by selecting options with the up/down buttons.
All the PC manufactures run by overpaid CEO's that don't know shit about technology promptly release laptops with 320x200 resolution 15" screens claiming that the PC will regain marketshare against the tablets now.
Dude ... put down the crack pipe. I've been here much longer than you and I've never even heard of you. I guarantee that M$ has no idea who you are either. I do agree with you that there are a lot of M$ shills here, but if you think they know who you are, or care, then you are delusional.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun