Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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?