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What Apple's iWatch Can Learn From Pebble
redletterdave (2493036) writes "Many believe Apple's iWatch will marry the looks of a luxury wristwatch with the powerful sensors found in today's fitness wristbands, and, of course, familiar elements from the iPhone and iPad shrunken down and reconfigured to work from your wrist. Apple is undoubtedly full of its own ideas. But it would also benefit from looking at the progenitor of the modern smartwatch—or rather, its steely successor—both as inspiration and as a model to surpass."
Anyone knows if Pebble sells their e-ink displays to hobbyists?
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Nothing. Pebble clearly copied the iWatch and violates several of Apple's patents. :)
What Apple's iWatch Can Learn From Pebble
You mean like, the entire idea of a bluetooth watch connected to your cellphone? I find it the hight of irony that Apple would be so blatant in their copying of hardware and calling it "inspiration" given their attitude towards any one who even makes icons a similar shape to theirs. Also ironic, the shackle like feel of apple hardware clamped to your wrist.
I cannot believe I wasted my time reading TFA.
More than one year before the Pebble there was Metawatch (which uses exactly the same display type), and ages before the Pebble there were much, much more advanced "smartwatches".
I find it the hight of irony that Apple would be so blatant in their copying of hardware and calling it "inspiration"
Do you find nothing rather silly about your remark given that Apple is not selling a smart-watch nor has said they are going to?
I mean, Apple-Haters have kind of ignored reality before, but never have stopped to the depths of complaint that something that doesn't even exist is not innovative.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's really funny is that Apple is likely not even working on a watch and the rest of you are going to seem rather silly going on at such lengths about something that does not and will not exist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've said this in the past in regards to Glass, but I feel the watch is the ultimate form factor for wearable electronics. I feel that it should be the core of the mobile computing paradigm, once the technology has matured enough for that kind of miniaturization (mainly battery and WLAN). Then devices like Google Glass, and even the cell phone / tablet form factor, would all just be display and input / sensor peripherals for the core system (the watch). So in other words, I hope Apple gets it right (but most likely they won't - they'll probably go the same route as Samsung and make the device dependent upon an iPhone to do anything non-trivial).
Better known as 318230.
.... means stupid ignorant comments.
#1- Apple is NOT selling anything even remotely similar to the Pebble. The only people talking about a smartwatch (a product in a market that has being DEAD for over 30 years now) are just talent-less bloggers.
#2- Pebble didn't invent anything new. There were multiple other Bluetooth enabled watch-like devices in the market years before the Pebble was introduced. They were just an over hyped kickstart product. A product that is a failure, not a success.
There are three keys to a successful smart watch.
First is that it must focus on doing things that watches can do well. So the time, the date, alarms, etc.
Second is that it should not try to do anything that a watch is terrible at. Such as no making notes, text messaging, complicated mapping, etc.
But the last and more important thing is that it do something very phone friendly that way too cool. This would be something like having a navigation system where you enter your destination on some other device or by voice and then the phone shows very simple navigation cues such as vibrate when you should turn and simple arrows and other numbers. A map would just be stupid. The same with almost every other app. They must be extra simple. Focus on the quick check of the wrist vs any input.
This is very important. Data basically can not be input into this tiny device. It must be for quick data consumption only. The rule should be that if the data needs more than a glance then it shouldn't be coming from the watch.
Personally, at this point, I can't see the watch being much use as a stand alone device. It needs to be tied to a phone. But as batteries and electronics get better then an LTE version might be feasible. One of the most important things is that this thing not be a big bulky hassle.
One last ask of Apple; please don't put that stupid carousel interface in.
I will be curious how one will go about buying things for the watch. It almost certainly will have to be on a separate device. But maybe you could tell iCloud what you want sent to the watch and then it will go. But if it is paired to a device that must accompany it then it will be easy.
If Apple is good at anything it's copying the success that came before. At what point would they just ignore the Pebble, when that's probably the exact product that made them say "we can do this but better" to begin with?
I feel the watch is the ultimate form factor for wearable electronics.
Why though?
My feeling about the smart watch is pretty much summarized by this image of the ultimate smart watch.
I think of wearables in two senses - primarily sensor packages and quick but very limited information.
The watch is not in a great position for either of those things. For one thing it's often covered by sleeves, so the sensors to outside conditions get obscured and any visible notifications get booked too. Yes it can vibrate - but so can your phone. It's also moving pretty wildly compared to the rest of your body, so motion tracking on it is not going to be very good.
It can monitor a few physiological aspects of the wearer somewhat reliably, but that seems about it. I'm not even sure how well it would work for that - when I used to wear a watch many years ago, it always made my arm sweat under the watch which I'm pretty sure would throw some sensors off.
To me, a few things seem like better clothing items to make wearables:
1) Hats - in a great position to measure lots of stuff, and would be just as good as Glass at photo/video work, but could have a lot more battery capacity just because of the lager form factor that distributes weight better. Can also have fold-down display from brim and visual indicators just at the edge of eyesight.
2) Necklace - Pressing against the skin on your neck can measure some things that way, also more customizable in that battery packs could be the thing you attach to the end of the necklace and thus highly customizable.
3) Ring - very small but could have very subtle visual indicators as small LED's. Also positioned in a place that gets lots of data about what you are about to touch, or the environment in general (until covered by gloves)
4) Jackets - these are more specialized but have the form factor for larger batteries and interesting environmental sensors, or just way better antenna for things like GPS.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Stand alone smartwatch without requiring a mobile phone!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...That the iWatch is really a big project by Apple to make their competitors waste their money....
Right. The Mac copied DOS. The iPhone copied Blackberry. The iPad copied Windows tablets.
Maybe watches work for desk jockeys?
I always found the strap was annoying when letting my wrists rest near a keyboard.
Watches also interfere with your sleeves when wearing a dress shirt.
Watches were fun for a while when I was young, but I never missed them after I started using my phone as a watch and it would take quite a bit of compelling reasons beyond what I see now to get me to wear a watch again.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't get all this so called "smart" watches that'll end up in some landfill few years from now. Currently have a Rolex datejust on my wrist given to me by my father upon graduation and it'll be passed down to my son along with other watches I have bought. You can't say anything like that about Pebble or iWatch. As nerds we should be embracing the mechanical complexities and the craftsmanship of fine mechanical watches.
I'd guess? It's really not a new, cool or even a good idea, so... Unless your a scuba diver, astronaut or similar occupation, I can't see any real practicality in it. Just make a wristband for your iPhone and call it a day.
The one thing which the iWatch must have is the ability to function *on it's own*. If it 'needs' to be paired up with an iPhone in order to be useful, it's completely dead in the water and useless.
The iWatch should be simple: display time, date, fitness apps and music. It shouldn't need to be fed data from an iPhone to look at messages or texts.
It should also have a headphone jack, it shouldn't rely on bluetooth audio.
How a released product can violate the patents of a rumor.
Greed is the root of all evil.
What Apple can learn is to manage expectations.
I don't think it's possible for Apple to manage expectations, as primarily expectations are created by the rumor sites. Just look at the comments here as if Apple has already shipped a watch!
Apple has never played well with third party hardware who tried to do something beyond the scope of what Apple wanted.
I don't see that as being true though, in recent years Apple has let anyone do anything they want with BTLE and in addition, added a whole notification system over BTLE expressly so that third parties can build wearable devices based on the most common kinds of events the phone is made to detect... but as noted you can add onto that with custom BTLE channels and the background app update API to also have a third party device alert on totally custom events.
We can expect that the watch will not be that great as a watch.
Which is why Apple is not shipping a watch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... not yet convinced Apple is even going to be selling a watch?
what?
Apple's lawyers are learning from Bam Bam
Table-ized A.I.
Windows Phone
Palm
What other people think.
If the Moto 360 is halfway as capable and slick-looking as has been shown thus far, any iWatch is going to have trouble keeping up.
The 360 is the first smart watch that I would not be embarrassed wearing at a client meeting or in the boardroom. With the full OLED screen, customize-able bands (metallic and non-metalic, black, silver, colored...), Moto has a winner with this product.
iWatch, right? Seriously, tell me with a straight face that "iWatch" isn't the funniest thing ever? We're going to start wearing things on our wrists that track us all day from geolocation to personal preferences? Can we cut to the chase and get to to the iCollar already or is that too soon?
To keep you connected to that company's other things. Let's face it - a smartwatch is way too small to actually do any useful work on - heck, most smartphones are a poor excuse for a full screen experience, productive work, etc. They mostly guide you to where you do the actual work. The smartwatch will be the next link further up that chain - to point you to the phone. Companies want you to have that thing on your wrist tie you to the rest of their product line. No surprise there. The only thing that may be attractive to people is that you don't need to keep looking at your phone, you just need to keep looking at your watch - which is still just about as offensive.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Apple's iWatch Can Learn From Pebble
Try to start your title correctly first based on the items confirmed existence and then appropriately use future tense in case of rumours:
Apple's Rumoured iWatch Could Learn From Pebble
Not everyone sits on Apple rumour sites.