Apple Watch Launches

An anonymous reader writes: The Apple Watch's release date has arrived: retailers around the world have quietly begun putting them on their shelves, and customers are beginning to receive their shipments. Reviews have been out for a while, including thoughtful ones from John Gruber and Nilay Patel. Apple has published a full user guide for the software, and iFixit has put up a full teardown to take a look at the hardware. They give it a repairability score of 5 out of 10, saying that the screen and battery are easily replaced, but not much else is. Though Apple designated the watch "water-resistant" rather than "waterproof", early tests show it's able to withstand a shower and a swim in the pool without failing. Ars has an article about the difficulty of making games for the Apple Watch, and Wired has a piece detailing its creation.

Comments

This product reminds me of...

[surfdaddy]

... PT Barnum. You know the famous quote.

Solution looking for a problem?

[TWX]

I'm still not entirely clear what the Apple Watch is supposed to do for me, especially when it's still reliant on a cell phone to function.

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[Noah Haders]

I'm still not entirely clear what the Apple Watch is supposed to do for me, especially when it's still reliant on a cell phone to function.

you know, I agree with you? I ordered one and it will be delivered in mid-may (even though I placed the order 3 mins after midnight -_-). I thought the NYT review was most interesting. It said for the first three days the guy had no idea how to use it and then starting on the fourth day it was indispensable. So maybe it's just something you have to experience? There's a return policy, so I can return it if it isn't functional. Also, it's fun to do the whole "stay up until midnight, mash the order button" thing once and a while.

the funny thing is that I often find myself drowning in emails, and there are so many that I end up missing some urgent ones. Will the watch help me manage these messages or will it just be more overload??

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Try a Pebble Watch some time. It'll give you some clarity.

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a device to allow you to be so lazy you can't be arsed to pull your phone out and look at it?

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[alen]

when you grow up you will realize that life is better not being plugged in all the time

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[Dixie_Flatline]

I don't think it can solve any problems for you--if you're overwhelmed by notifications, your watch will just be a new point of contact for your frustrations.

You need to consider what's actually worth being notified about. I have a personal email account and one that I use to sign up for forums and get shipping notifications sent to. Only my personal account displays notifications, and I have a few people on my email VIP list. I switched my other mail account to sound notifications only. That way I know something happened and I can check it when I care.

At first it really feels like I'm missing things, but it actually worked out really well. Start with the assumption that nothing is worth as much as your time, and turn off every notification. Then add them back in one by one if you think it saves you more time to know that information immediately rather than once every hour or so.

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[boristdog]

Amen, brother.

I have a side business renting a cabin on my ranch for weekend visitors. The cabin has no internet access, and it's in a valley so there is no cell signal. Many people complain about this when they first arrive, but after they leave they ALL tell me how it was REALLY nice to be unplugged for a few days. Even the 20-somethings.

People forget how awesome life can be without gadgetry.

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[brantondaveperson]

This may be true of spoken language, which humans develop naturally and as a matter of instinct. But it is manifestly not true of the written language, and suggesting that your inability (or unwillingness) to correctly capitalise and punctuate simple sentences is not a form of rebellion against those who would control you.

Forms of control exercised through control of expression are, of course, very real. And were I subject to any of them I could imagine that they would also be very effective. But having grammar rules that aim to ease written expression and comprehension is not a form of control in this sense.

The rules are arbitrary, up to a point, and they evolve over time too. But they don't evolve very fast, unlike spoken language, and it is because of this that I am still able to pick up a book written a hundred years ago and read it without too much trouble. And in any case, the article you link to is not a screed aimed at dismantling grammar, rather it suggests that while grammatical rules do exist, they are not as described in the Elements of Style.

Games?

[nine-times]

Ars has an article about the difficulty of making games for the Apple Watch

Honestly, I think games are a bit of a stretch. Maybe I'm just a stupid old man, but I kind of feel like smart-watches should do very little, but everything they do, they should do in a simple, obvious, transparent manner. If you want to play games, just pull out your phone.

Now of course someone is going to say, "What's wrong with extra functionality? If you don't want it, just don't use it." All I would say is, if I had my say in the design, I'd make the UI as simple as possible, and make the battery last as long as possible. Adding a bunch of unnecessary features and games that require a bunch of processing power are likely to run contrary to both of those goals. If you gave me the choice of being able to play Angry Birds on my watch, or shaving off a couple of ounces while extending battery life for 5 hours, I'd definitely choose the latter.

Re:OMG who the hell cares?!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

...who even wears watches anymore?

At least a million people.

Yes I want a tiny screen, inferior battery and all around crap experience please!

So... all you want is a desktop computer and everybody else in the world should, too. You know what's funny is I remember this reaction to tablets, smartphones, and cameras with cell phones. Nerd hipsterism is strange.

Many small solutions through a day

[SuperKendall]

It extends the battery life of your phone because you are not powering it on as often.

It allows you to filter notifications more than the phone does, so you can know quicker if you should pay attention to an alert.

It allows you to silence a call without even reaching into your pocket doing the Vibration Reaction Dance.

It gives you status on important things happening currently with fewer actions than a phone.

It's like a fitness band you wear all the time but without the single minded pointlessness.

And yes, it also tells the time without having to reach into a pocket...

If you aren't clear what it can do for you, then you may not need or want a smart watch. And that is fine. But there are many small uses which aggregate to form a model, different for each person, of how a smart watch can be useful to them.

Re:Many small solutions through a day

[Dixie_Flatline]

Separate money from wallets? Bring smiles to Apple fanbois faces? Usher in a new wave of corporate privacy invasion?

Christ, this is so obnoxious. Look, just because you don't have a use for this watch, it doesn't mean NOBODY does. Your implication is that this watch is literally useless except for making people that buy Apple products feel good.

First of all, it actually has functions that people theoretically feel useful. There are certainly Android Wear and Pebble owners that have similar functionality that feel that those devices fill this need. So as long as the Apple Watch does at least as much as those watches do, there's utility to some people. Even if all it does for someone is tell the time, $300 is not even close to the high end of what watches cost.

But it's also jewellery. People wear that stuff for lots of reasons. Do you understand how insanely dumb it is to buy a mechanical watch except as jewellery? They're not terribly accurate timekeeping devices. But they look good, and there's a aesthetic value to knowing that what you're wearing is mechanical and hand crafted. It's over $5000 for a Rolex STEEL wrist band. But you're not here criticising the idea of all luxury watches in general, or even all Smartwatches, just the Apple Watch.

You finish by saying that it's about the lock-in, but that's a ridiculous complaint. You think someone buying the first-gen Apple watch is the kind of person that is normally so capricious about their tech decisions?

What you don't like is that Apple made it and that other people like it. Just say that out loud and move on. Or don't comment at all. I think we can all safely assume by now that when Apple makes something there are a bunch of people that don't like it, so let's all pretend that you've said your piece and not use up the space from now on, hmm?

Re:Many small solutions through a day

[TWX]

I wear my watch all the time, including in the shower. I like it because it does one thing well, tell me the time and date.

Because if there's one activity in my life that I cannot do without knowing the time and date while doing it, it's showering!

"Can't stop masturbating!"

[NotDrWho]

said every writer at Wired.

Yes, BTLE is very low power.

[SuperKendall]

So constantly communicating wirelessly with a device on my wrist is more battery efficient than turning the screen on once in a while?

The OCCASIONAL communication the watch does over BTLE (it's not continuous unless needed by an app) is in fact WAY lower power than turning on a very large high DPI screen and backlight that most smartphones have now.

Except that you can't wear it all the time because it's not waterproof. You even have to take it off in the shower.

Didn't even bother to read the article summary all the way through, did you.

No it's not waterproof. But it's got a pretty standard level of water resistance, which means you COULD wear it in a shower, and I plan to wear it for visits to the pool (since most of my pool time is technically more "standing in water" than swimming).

Also, it only gets around 18 hours of use on the battery

Hint: That's around as much "battery" as most PEOPLE have also. :-)

which means it can't track your sleep like a lot of other fitness devices.

Then you can switch to a device that doesn't suck at monitoring sleep the way something on your wrist meant to mostly measure heart-rate does.