They just aren't that useful to most people and they also aren't that practical...otherwise everyone would be wearing and using them.
In the backwards, irrelevant landscape of silicon valley, many folks sport Apple Watches, and maybe 1/10 of that number use Android Wear. I wouldn't look to the technology capital of the world to get a feel for what's going to be successful in technology though.
Pretty sure they did make it. Not everything has to sell 100 million units to be successful. The fact that Apple built a version 2 says something. But hey they probably didn't do any research about potential and consumer demand or anything. Apple is known for just throwing garbage products over the fence.
Tech just hasn't advanced to the point that a smartwatch is, or will any time soon be, a crucial piece of technology for a large segment of the population.
A lot like a product you might have heard of called the iPad. Certainly not crucial, but incredibly successful.
I host all my 2FA codes from the Google Authenticator app on my watch. You can also sign in to anything Google using your watch, https://support.google.com/acc...
I just never could wrap my head around a [smart] watch, with a tiny screen, tiny battery life, and a VERY high price, given you can pick up a watch for almost nothing
Here they come. The slew of "But my Casio..." posts that always pollute any thread about smart watches.
Your problem is the inability to get past the word "watch" in the name. It's the size and form factor of a watch, but it's not a watch. It's a fairly powerful general purpose computer. My "watch" runs a 4-core SD 410 @1.6GHz, 512MB RAM, Android 6.0 OS, a 320x320 display, has bluetooth, wifi, accelerometer, heart rate monitor, barometer, GPS. The analogy is between a smart phone and an old flip phone. Is the flip phone a better "phone"? Sure it is. Why would you ever carry a smart phone then? They cost more, the battery sucks, bigger and heavier, less durable, and so on. The answer is obviously that a smart phone isn't a phone, it's a portable computer with a built in cellular modem.
Does anyone *need* a smart watch? Nope. Does anyone need a *smart* phone? Nope either. If you like gadgets a smart watch is great. If nothing else it's a watch with programmable faces of infinite variety and function. Add in that it's a fitness tracker, it can run simple apps like note taking, flashlight, google authenticator, it has media controls, it can present simple bits of information like weather, messages, emails, etc. and even allow input / responding with voice.
A word on battery life. Yes it's bad, but if you return home every night 99% of the time like everyone else it's really not an issue. You just plop it on the charger along with your laptop, phone, headphones, and whatever else needs daily charging. Smart watch battery life is more of a zombie apocalypse problem then a real, everyday problem.
Re: cost. If you bought a non-smart watch that had GPS, barometer, altimeter, and a fitness tracker you'd be paying $250+, https://www.amazon.com/Suunto-...
As much or more than a smart watch. Like just about any product, it's going to seem expensive if you don't use 90% of the features you are paying for. That doesn't make it a bad product, it makes it the wrong product for you.
So how much were you concerned with spiraling debt these last 8 years?
Very. Believe it or not, there are people in this world that are capable of having opinions based on the facts versus what their chosen party tells them. You ought to try it.
Spiraling debt? How much debt do you think was added last year? If you haven't been ranting against the last 8 years - you're full of it.
Obama isn't running this year. Also, the logic that since O increased the debt therefore T will lower the debt (since he's the anti-Obama?) doesn't make much sense now does it? Whether or not T is bad for the national debt will have little to do with the last eight years.
You know what I hate? Collusion w/ Russia. Oil execs running our government. Invitations to hack our political system. Alt-right activists advising the president. Well tell me, was it worth it? Is all of that worth to run H and have her lose?
This isn't some college campus where we push the envelope of society and learn about ourselves in the process. This may mean our dads, sons, and brothers dying in conflicts over big business interest. This may mean a global conflict war. This means loss of our national healthcare. This means spiraling to our nation debt and setting the stage for a recession 4 years from now. This means loss of respect in the world stage.
There was more at stake here than getting a woman elected and our subconscious fear of a powerful woman.
And because they were too arrogant to elect her instead of bernie who was overall ranking higher than her against trump.
^^^ This.
Electing the first woman became more important that our fucking economy and natural security. Now we have alt-rights advising our president, chairs of oil companies being appointed to office, collusion w/ Russia, and we are the laughing stock of the world. My fucking god they failed.
Also its not the electoral college that is the problem.
The problem is the fact that democrats lost every borderline state. Even if H lost by 3m votes, that's less than 1% of the population of the US. It's not like she won 90% of the popular vote here.
Democrats need to stop crying about the EC and figure out how to connect with those people. It's not going to change.
Yes, only in America can you win by 3 million votes and still somehow lose. Thanks, Electoral College!
As much as it makes me sick to my stomach that things turned out the way they did, I see the value in the electoral college. We are a republic. What allows us to remain a republic and keep states from seceding is the fact that regardless of their population or economic output, they still get a say. Not an equal say, but their votes do matter.
The fact that democrats couldn't win ANY borderline states just shows how out of touch they are with regular americans. Democrats fucked up. They ran a woman that was so hated that even someone that invites hacking by foreign governments and talks publicly about grabbing p*ssies could get elected. They were all caught up in running a woman they lost site of what was at stake. It doesn't matter that she was the best candidate. What matters is what's going to happen to the US and the world over the next 4 years because of their decision to run one of the most hated politicians that I'm old enough to recall. This matters much, MUCH more than electing the first woman, or not electing "another white guy".
Chromebooks have a high "it just works" factor also. I'd argue better than iOS. You just hook them to the Google Apps account and rely on standard web firewalling. My son's iPad is "managed" by a server at school that decides what apps get installed, among other things. I don't know the details but it seems like quite an operation.
How about you post some pictures from your personal library of people using MBPs? I assert that people don't use them. Prove me wrong. If you don't have pictures, go out and spend your evening taking pictures of strangers using MBPs. They won't mind, I promise. You probably won't get your ass kicked. I'm also sure your family won't mind if you abandon them this evening to prove a bunch of 'tards on./ that you are right.
Maybe, just maybe, but probably not, this will give you a glimpse into how much of an idiot you are making of yourself.
You think a tablet with no keyboard or mouse is a better productivity device for a student than one with a keyboard?
My son's class got iPads this year. He's tasked with putting together presentations and (small) documents on it, with no keyboard. I told him to use the computer (they use Google docs) and I was told they are supposed to be doing it on their iPad.
A Chromebook really would have been the best choice. Not sexy enough I guess.
But Pebble was an actual product, sold as an actual product outside Kickstarter.
Yes, but in the end, Pebble closed up shop like a Kickstarter project. The problem is the culture. A solid company would have found *some* buyer at some price point before it came to this, so if nothing else the lights could be kept on for a few years. In the end they walked away from all of their customers leaving them with a piece of cheap plastic.
They can buzz and show you text messages or phone calls, but they have to be within Bluetooth range of your phone anyway, so you will have your phone on your person and it can buzz you too. I don't see the advantage of this feature
No they don't. They have wifi.
I hear you can use your apple watch to originate a text, but for the life of me I cannot imagine it being worth the extra effort to text with an obviously clunky user interface over using that phone in your pocket.
You can speak into it.
dubious accuracy
All pedometers are inaccurate. The important thing is that it consistent from day to day (which they are).
limited application
I guess you need to ask all of the people that bought fitbits and other fitness trackers and use fitness tracking apps on their other non-dedicated fitness tracker devices if it's limited application.
However, some of us are not impressed
Some of us at least understand the features and limitations which help us make decisions.
2) This is a dick move by FitBit, since they're basically going out of their way to make sure they're not spending a penny on any Pebble customers. 3) If, from today onward, you ever buy a FitBit product - you're telling FitBit "I'm okay with the way you treated Pebble's existing customers".
Ridiculous.
Why should they? Those people are Pebble's customers, not Fitbits. Fitbit has zero connection to those people. They never sold them a product.
Look at it this way. If Fitbit had bought the office chairs from Pebble's offices, would you feel the same way? It's no different. They aren't taking over Pebble's products, or continuing them in any way. As for the employees, they are only interviewing some of Pebble's old, now unemployed workers. Those people have no obligation to Fitbit, and ANY company can interview those same employees if they can attract them.
Word of mouth is the only power we have; but, being tech-oriented folks, the people around us tend to look to us for advice in areas like this.
I would have loved to have what I paid for. And shame on Fitbit for not honoring support or warranty for the company they are buying. The worst of it is there are users with BRAND NEW Pebble 2 devices, only days old, that now have no warranty and no support period.
Most people don't know what they want, how can they communicate it to market researchers?
It sure seems like most of the posts in this thread have people communicating what they want. It's sure fun to think one is smarter than everyone else though.
If companies were so good at doing this, why did it take Steve Jobs to make the iPhone and shake up the smartphone industry?
The idea that every idea out of Apple, a company of tens of thousands, came from Jobs is ridiculous. It does make a good movie though. The iPhone is a culmination of the ideas and engineering of many, many people. Moreover, Apple doesn't have unique ideas. They take existing ideas and execute them well. Jobs even admits that. There were many, MANY smartphones prior to the iPhone. Many, many mediocre semi-successful products and many flops. That iPhone benefited from all of those to know what worked and what didn't.
The _really_ poor value that most urbanites get on Internet access is a strong indicator that population density is a _tiny_ part of the Internet access quality problem in the US.
Poor value and access are different issues. The US may (does) have a problem with choice and value in most markets, but the fact that ~2% of the US populace either can't or doesn't want to pay for dual HD video streaming capability isn't a societal problem as far as I'm concerned (or a problem at all). Consumers will always want more for less, but no one is denied opportunity in life because they can't stream HD video.
If people in the US choose to live in rural areas... that's it. It's a choice. You get the good with the bad. I have reasonably fast internet in an urban neighborhood but I also pay ridiculous property taxes, the price of my home was outrageous and I hear the freeway at night. If home owners in rural areas had access to the same services that I do their home would cost more, they'd have more neighbors, and their property and local taxes would be higher. That's how it works.
Wouldn't one of the gadget vendors have to try to sell one for us to know if they would sell well or not??
Businesses spend millions on market research and user testing. They know what people want and will buy and in what quantities and how much they'll pay. Shockingly, they don't spend billions in product development based on the feedback of a few C-level lackies.
If I know anything, I know that businesses like money. If there was money to be had by producing flip phones they'd do it. Remember there's a cutoff where it just doesn't pay to develop a product. Maybe they could sell 500k flip phones? And maybe, that's not enough. They target the market where they can (potentially) sell 50 million units.
...and where did I say he needs to do it for free?
You didn't. I just observed that when he did it before it was for no pay, and you didn't (and I can't think of) anyway he's going to get paid unless it's via a proper business relationship with the device manufacturer.
Slashdot Mirror
The entire point of Wikileaks is that it will get harder and harder to have government corruption the easier it is to expose it.
And unfortunately it's having the opposite effect. We get barraged by so much we don't know what to believe, and we get numb to corruption.
They just aren't that useful to most people and they also aren't that practical...otherwise everyone would be wearing and using them.
In the backwards, irrelevant landscape of silicon valley, many folks sport Apple Watches, and maybe 1/10 of that number use Android Wear. I wouldn't look to the technology capital of the world to get a feel for what's going to be successful in technology though.
Apple couldn't make it.
Pretty sure they did make it. Not everything has to sell 100 million units to be successful. The fact that Apple built a version 2 says something. But hey they probably didn't do any research about potential and consumer demand or anything. Apple is known for just throwing garbage products over the fence.
Tech just hasn't advanced to the point that a smartwatch is, or will any time soon be, a crucial piece of technology for a large segment of the population.
A lot like a product you might have heard of called the iPad. Certainly not crucial, but incredibly successful.
If it could do passwords
I host all my 2FA codes from the Google Authenticator app on my watch. You can also sign in to anything Google using your watch,
https://support.google.com/acc...
I just never could wrap my head around a [smart] watch, with a tiny screen, tiny battery life, and a VERY high price, given you can pick up a watch for almost nothing
Here they come. The slew of "But my Casio ..." posts that always pollute any thread about smart watches.
Your problem is the inability to get past the word "watch" in the name. It's the size and form factor of a watch, but it's not a watch. It's a fairly powerful general purpose computer. My "watch" runs a 4-core SD 410 @1.6GHz, 512MB RAM, Android 6.0 OS, a 320x320 display, has bluetooth, wifi, accelerometer, heart rate monitor, barometer, GPS. The analogy is between a smart phone and an old flip phone. Is the flip phone a better "phone"? Sure it is. Why would you ever carry a smart phone then? They cost more, the battery sucks, bigger and heavier, less durable, and so on. The answer is obviously that a smart phone isn't a phone, it's a portable computer with a built in cellular modem.
Does anyone *need* a smart watch? Nope. Does anyone need a *smart* phone? Nope either. If you like gadgets a smart watch is great. If nothing else it's a watch with programmable faces of infinite variety and function. Add in that it's a fitness tracker, it can run simple apps like note taking, flashlight, google authenticator, it has media controls, it can present simple bits of information like weather, messages, emails, etc. and even allow input / responding with voice.
A word on battery life. Yes it's bad, but if you return home every night 99% of the time like everyone else it's really not an issue. You just plop it on the charger along with your laptop, phone, headphones, and whatever else needs daily charging. Smart watch battery life is more of a zombie apocalypse problem then a real, everyday problem.
Re: cost. If you bought a non-smart watch that had GPS, barometer, altimeter, and a fitness tracker you'd be paying $250+,
https://www.amazon.com/Suunto-...
As much or more than a smart watch. Like just about any product, it's going to seem expensive if you don't use 90% of the features you are paying for. That doesn't make it a bad product, it makes it the wrong product for you.
So how much were you concerned with spiraling debt these last 8 years?
Very. Believe it or not, there are people in this world that are capable of having opinions based on the facts versus what their chosen party tells them. You ought to try it.
Spiraling debt? How much debt do you think was added last year? If you haven't been ranting against the last 8 years - you're full of it.
Obama isn't running this year. Also, the logic that since O increased the debt therefore T will lower the debt (since he's the anti-Obama?) doesn't make much sense now does it? Whether or not T is bad for the national debt will have little to do with the last eight years.
White males hate a powerful women.
You know what I hate? Collusion w/ Russia. Oil execs running our government. Invitations to hack our political system. Alt-right activists advising the president. Well tell me, was it worth it? Is all of that worth to run H and have her lose?
This isn't some college campus where we push the envelope of society and learn about ourselves in the process. This may mean our dads, sons, and brothers dying in conflicts over big business interest. This may mean a global conflict war. This means loss of our national healthcare. This means spiraling to our nation debt and setting the stage for a recession 4 years from now. This means loss of respect in the world stage.
There was more at stake here than getting a woman elected and our subconscious fear of a powerful woman.
And because they were too arrogant to elect her instead of bernie who was overall ranking higher than her against trump.
^^^ This.
Electing the first woman became more important that our fucking economy and natural security. Now we have alt-rights advising our president, chairs of oil companies being appointed to office, collusion w/ Russia, and we are the laughing stock of the world. My fucking god they failed.
Also its not the electoral college that is the problem.
The problem is the fact that democrats lost every borderline state. Even if H lost by 3m votes, that's less than 1% of the population of the US. It's not like she won 90% of the popular vote here.
Democrats need to stop crying about the EC and figure out how to connect with those people. It's not going to change.
Yes, only in America can you win by 3 million votes and still somehow lose. Thanks, Electoral College!
As much as it makes me sick to my stomach that things turned out the way they did, I see the value in the electoral college. We are a republic. What allows us to remain a republic and keep states from seceding is the fact that regardless of their population or economic output, they still get a say. Not an equal say, but their votes do matter.
The fact that democrats couldn't win ANY borderline states just shows how out of touch they are with regular americans. Democrats fucked up. They ran a woman that was so hated that even someone that invites hacking by foreign governments and talks publicly about grabbing p*ssies could get elected. They were all caught up in running a woman they lost site of what was at stake. It doesn't matter that she was the best candidate. What matters is what's going to happen to the US and the world over the next 4 years because of their decision to run one of the most hated politicians that I'm old enough to recall. This matters much, MUCH more than electing the first woman, or not electing "another white guy".
Chromebooks have a high "it just works" factor also. I'd argue better than iOS. You just hook them to the Google Apps account and rely on standard web firewalling. My son's iPad is "managed" by a server at school that decides what apps get installed, among other things. I don't know the details but it seems like quite an operation.
How about you post some pictures from your personal library of people using MBPs? I assert that people don't use them. Prove me wrong. If you don't have pictures, go out and spend your evening taking pictures of strangers using MBPs. They won't mind, I promise. You probably won't get your ass kicked. I'm also sure your family won't mind if you abandon them this evening to prove a bunch of 'tards on ./ that you are right.
Maybe, just maybe, but probably not, this will give you a glimpse into how much of an idiot you are making of yourself.
Good luck to them. They're gonna need it.
You think a tablet with no keyboard or mouse is a better productivity device for a student than one with a keyboard?
My son's class got iPads this year. He's tasked with putting together presentations and (small) documents on it, with no keyboard. I told him to use the computer (they use Google docs) and I was told they are supposed to be doing it on their iPad.
A Chromebook really would have been the best choice. Not sexy enough I guess.
or a money-grubbing MBA
No reason to repeat yourself. I understood at "MBA".
But Pebble was an actual product, sold as an actual product outside Kickstarter.
Yes, but in the end, Pebble closed up shop like a Kickstarter project. The problem is the culture. A solid company would have found *some* buyer at some price point before it came to this, so if nothing else the lights could be kept on for a few years. In the end they walked away from all of their customers leaving them with a piece of cheap plastic.
They can buzz and show you text messages or phone calls, but they have to be within Bluetooth range of your phone anyway, so you will have your phone on your person and it can buzz you too. I don't see the advantage of this feature
No they don't. They have wifi.
I hear you can use your apple watch to originate a text, but for the life of me I cannot imagine it being worth the extra effort to text with an obviously clunky user interface over using that phone in your pocket.
You can speak into it.
dubious accuracy
All pedometers are inaccurate. The important thing is that it consistent from day to day (which they are).
limited application
I guess you need to ask all of the people that bought fitbits and other fitness trackers and use fitness tracking apps on their other non-dedicated fitness tracker devices if it's limited application.
However, some of us are not impressed
Some of us at least understand the features and limitations which help us make decisions.
2) This is a dick move by FitBit, since they're basically going out of their way to make sure they're not spending a penny on any Pebble customers.
3) If, from today onward, you ever buy a FitBit product - you're telling FitBit "I'm okay with the way you treated Pebble's existing customers".
Ridiculous.
Why should they? Those people are Pebble's customers, not Fitbits. Fitbit has zero connection to those people. They never sold them a product.
Look at it this way. If Fitbit had bought the office chairs from Pebble's offices, would you feel the same way? It's no different. They aren't taking over Pebble's products, or continuing them in any way. As for the employees, they are only interviewing some of Pebble's old, now unemployed workers. Those people have no obligation to Fitbit, and ANY company can interview those same employees if they can attract them.
Word of mouth is the only power we have; but, being tech-oriented folks, the people around us tend to look to us for advice in areas like this.
With your rational, I hope not.
I would have loved to have what I paid for. And shame on Fitbit for not honoring support or warranty for the company they are buying. The worst of it is there are users with BRAND NEW Pebble 2 devices, only days old, that now have no warranty and no support period.
Welcome to the KickStarter Business Model(tm).
Most people don't know what they want, how can they communicate it to market researchers?
It sure seems like most of the posts in this thread have people communicating what they want. It's sure fun to think one is smarter than everyone else though.
If companies were so good at doing this, why did it take Steve Jobs to make the iPhone and shake up the smartphone industry?
The idea that every idea out of Apple, a company of tens of thousands, came from Jobs is ridiculous. It does make a good movie though. The iPhone is a culmination of the ideas and engineering of many, many people. Moreover, Apple doesn't have unique ideas. They take existing ideas and execute them well. Jobs even admits that. There were many, MANY smartphones prior to the iPhone. Many, many mediocre semi-successful products and many flops. That iPhone benefited from all of those to know what worked and what didn't.
The _really_ poor value that most urbanites get on Internet access is a strong indicator that population density is a _tiny_ part of the Internet access quality problem in the US.
Poor value and access are different issues. The US may (does) have a problem with choice and value in most markets, but the fact that ~2% of the US populace either can't or doesn't want to pay for dual HD video streaming capability isn't a societal problem as far as I'm concerned (or a problem at all). Consumers will always want more for less, but no one is denied opportunity in life because they can't stream HD video.
If people in the US choose to live in rural areas ... that's it. It's a choice. You get the good with the bad. I have reasonably fast internet in an urban neighborhood but I also pay ridiculous property taxes, the price of my home was outrageous and I hear the freeway at night. If home owners in rural areas had access to the same services that I do their home would cost more, they'd have more neighbors, and their property and local taxes would be higher. That's how it works.
5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps
Is that surprising in a country of ~4 million square miles that ~2% of the population has to deal with 3Mbps? Sounds pretty darn reasonable to me.
Wouldn't one of the gadget vendors have to try to sell one for us to know if they would sell well or not??
Businesses spend millions on market research and user testing. They know what people want and will buy and in what quantities and how much they'll pay. Shockingly, they don't spend billions in product development based on the feedback of a few C-level lackies.
If I know anything, I know that businesses like money. If there was money to be had by producing flip phones they'd do it. Remember there's a cutoff where it just doesn't pay to develop a product. Maybe they could sell 500k flip phones? And maybe, that's not enough. They target the market where they can (potentially) sell 50 million units.
...and where did I say he needs to do it for free?
You didn't. I just observed that when he did it before it was for no pay, and you didn't (and I can't think of) anyway he's going to get paid unless it's via a proper business relationship with the device manufacturer.