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Can Even Apple Make a Watch Insanely Smart?
theodp writes "Throwing some cold water on the buzz surrounding the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch launch, The New Yorker's Matt Buchanan questions how smart a watch can really be. Calling offerings like the Galaxy Gear useful but not the stuff of dreams and revolutions, Buchanan writes, 'So there remains a strange undercurrent of hope that somebody-Apple-will figure out, soon, some grander vision for wearable technology, transforming it from something that people have vaguely imagined into something people intensely desire. It did it for smartphones, once, and again, for tablets. The question that Apple has been charged with, since nobody has definitively answered it yet, is whether the lack of an invention that truly carries us beyond the last five hundred years of wrist-mounted technology is the result of a failure of imagination or simply a fact of nature-that a watch will always just be a watch, no matter how smart it might think it is.' So, will you be an early adopter and drink Samsung's or Sony's smartwatch Kool-Aid, wait to see what Apple comes up with, or hold out for a Windows Forearm Pad 8?"
It doesn't have to be "incredibly smart". It just has to be smart in the right places.
The original iPhone didn't really do anything that wasn't available elsewhere already. But it bundled the proper things together in the proper way and had the proper design to make it all work well. I had owned several PDAs before, but the iPhone was the PDA I had always wanted.
Same for the watch. My bet is that while everyone else is working on cramming as much crap into the watch as possible. Apple is busy making sure there is no crap on it, only the right mix of the right stuff you really want on your wrist.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The trouble everyone is grappling with here is that they want a smart watch to be some kind of smartphone-like thing. We've seen it work in comics, right? Dick Tracey and all. The only trouble is that the size of things people want to put on their wrists isn't big enough for much of a display, isn't big enough for much of a data entry device and isn't big enough for much of a battery. You just can't pack a lot of function on there, much less do it attractively, much less do it in a form factor where it becomes a fashion accessory, particularly for ladies since ladies are used to tiny watches.
I'm not so quick in discounting them, even though the effect of Steve's passing has been quite obvious.
But Apple never was a one-man show, even though he took the spotlight. From all I know, Steve's strength was not in designing or creating anything, but in inspiring others and, most importantly, his ability to cut through the crap to the core issues and to kill anything that sucked. Where other companies spend time and resources on bad products (and sometimes even bring them to market), Steve would just kill it brutally with a few words and everyone could go back to making something good.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think there are genuine use cases for it. Rather than keeping your phone in a pocket close to your body it can stay in your jacket or bag because you will definitely feel the watch vibrating. The watch will be audible in almost any clothing too, where as a phone in your bag can go unnoticed unless it's really, really loud.
A watch would also be nice for doing things like contactless payments. I see a lot of people travelling on public transport paying with their phones, but I'd prefer to have a cheap watch I can brush against the payment pad instead of having to take my expensive phone out.
For Google Now type notifications it might be nice as well. Kind of like how Glass shows you stuff all the time, but less intrusive and maybe more socially acceptable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Most of those things you mentioned fail for the watch use case though.
Contact-less payments are a nightmare - the possibility of an unintentional scan is pretty damn high. Ah you say, but you'll require you to authenticate - well ok, but now you've turned a one-handed action (remove phone from pocket, press "allow" and swipe) into a two-handed action (hold hand against scanner, use other hand to press "allow" on the watch face").
The Watch is a really terrible form factor for pretty much anything that's not passive, because there is no possible way to control it with the hand of the arm it's worn on - it takes things which only need one hand on your smart phone to implicitly involving two.
Shame its crap :( Ive got one too - http://uxxv.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/the-pebble-watch-geek-curiosity-not-for-public-consumption/
Japanese phones with contactless payment allows you to pre-authorize certain services. For example you could pre-authorize Japan Rail, then when you want to use the train you just brush against the payment pad as you go through the barrier. No danger of accidentally paying for anything else.
In any case I don't think the accidental payment issue is a major one. There have been incidents of it happening but only because the payment machines have had too much range. Once the banks get on top of that an make sure the machines only work up to about 10mm it will be fine. The banks are obviously keen to prevent accidental payments and improve the customer's experience, and so are the retailers because it costs them money when it happens. The system has been in use in Japan for a decade now and works just fine, the teething problems having long since been worked out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wrist watches is a technology only about 100 years old
Patek Philippe created the first wristwatch in 1868 for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary., so 145 years.
That said, the smartass reporter did some research; Wearable watches date back about 500 years, but they appear to have been worn as necklaces (Flavor-Flav in the 16th century yo) rather than on the wrist. He just confused wearable with wrist-mounted.
That's Japan. You think American banks give a shit about improving customers' experiences? I think not.
Frankly, I don't understand why people are so enamored with their offerings.
Because they are well made, easy to use, have a well thought out interface and for the most part require very little fiddling to work. My 94 year old technologically illiterate grandmother is able to effectively utilize an iPad while at the same time I am able to get what I want out of an iPhone and I'm about big a tech geek as you are likely to run into. What makes Apple products attractive and different is the software.
They don't do anything different in my opinion.
Ahh but they do and those differences are what people are willing to pay for. What you have to understand is that Apple is fundamentally a software company. Steve Jobs himself has said so explicitly. What is different about Apple's products is the software and what it does. It's not so much about them doing tasks that no one else can do as it is how they do those tasks. Apple (usually) provides a well designed and well executed experience and software is how they tie it all together. People buy Macs for the software - the hardware is barely different from PCs from Dell or HP. People buy iPods, iPhones and iPads for the software. The hardware isn't much different from the competition and in fact some competitors have rather slavishly copies Apple's designs. What Apple does differently is found in their software.
I prefer the Android approach that "opens the innovation tent" to everyone willing to give it a shot.
Nothing wrong with that but there are positives as well as drawbacks. If you are someone (like me and probably you) who really likes to fiddle with your gear then Android might very well be a better choice. But for my non-tech savvy relatives who just want a smartphone I point them at an iPhone. Not everyone wants to endlessly mess around with arcane features of their phones. Apple's products aren't for everyone but Apple has never pretended that they were. That said they sell an awful lot of product so they clearly are doing something that appeals to a lot of people.
There is one thing that Apple could do that a conventional electronic devices or software house competitor cannot: shift the discussion from wearable tech to pieces of fashionable clothing. If we think about it, the white earbuds are a fashion item as much as an accessory for MP3 players. People made or adapted existing bracelets to wear the iPod Nano as a wristwatch. Loads of armbands were built to accommodate wearing iPods and iPhones when exercising. Nike has sensors for shoes that link up with the current generation of iPod. The tech part they've got nailed already (Sony, Samsung, Apple, Google, ... all of them). Getting people to wear it without looking silly is the challenge and has been for a long time.
What Apple can do rather than try to out-gadget the gadget makers is to design beautiful items of clothing that have the right pockets in the right places to carry the iPhone. Maybe some way to get a microphone and headphones built in to make calls and chat with Siri. There's always money for fashion items and I suspecct that Apple fanboy/girl would be happy to wear the team's colours. Pay £150 for a turtleneck? No problem. They can all wear the same model of iClothes until next year's is released. It would be a bit like Star Trek, with everyone on the planet wearing the same type of clothes.
I think that what a smartwatch needs to be is as a "companion device" to a phone, and nothing more.
It needs a screen, two buttons (or areas to tap) for "Yes" and "No" and low-bandwidth communication with the phone. The phone tells the watch what to display and what the buttons mean. The watch then needs only to reply with "Message understood, displaying screen", "Yes" and "No". That's it.
All the "killer apps" that a smartwatch could be used for require those things and nothing more.
The Samsung watch and many stand-alone smartwatches are too powerful, too feature-rich and already too bloated. The Samsung watch is already too large to wear comfortably on the wrist. Has anyone mentioned battery life yet? My Casio has a battery life measured in years.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
"Even Apple"? Apple has never been cutting edge in terms of technology. They're good at physical design and interfaces but they have never really done anything groundbreaking. While you can argue this is an interface issue, while Apple is good at improving them they aren't really good at coming up with innovative new ones.
Nothing is funnier than a Techno Hipster making fun of somebody wearing a wrist watch while he unpacks his phablet to check the time.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.