“By all accounts, Apple’s new iPhone 5 is a fine product, a line drive down the middle. It will easily sell millions and likely even break some records — the massive iPhone ecosystem alone will guarantee that,” Nilay Patel writes for The Verge. “It’s also a little boring, which has led to serious questions about Apple’s willingness or ability to innovate.”
“But the iPhone 5 isn’t the place to look for those answers. It’s been deliberately engineered to be an iterative update to the iPhone 4S with a larger screen and faster networking, and that’s what it is,” Patel writes. “People will love it, because people already love the iPhone. It might be boring, but Apple isn’t going to take any risks with its biggest and fastest-growing business.”
Patel writes, “The biggest danger sign for Apple is the iPod nano… There was a glimmer of hope a year ago, when Apple updated the previous watch-sized iPod nano with new clock displays and even began selling nano watch bands in its retail stores. The nano wasn’t a very good watch, but the potential was blindingly obvious — it was Bluetooth and a connectivity protocol away from being the ultimate iPhone accessory. It felt like a brewing revolution in wearable computing that guaranteed an extra $149 in revenue from every iPhone owner.”
“Apple could have blown the smartwatch market wide open with the first truly must-have phone accessory in years,” Patel writes. “It’s no secret that Apple’s iPod team was virtually disbanded after the success of the iPhone; many people left Apple, and the remaining high-level talent was reassigned to other projects. There’s no clear focus or investment on the iPod and what it can become next — just what appear to be committee-driven decisions on how to maintain the revenue engine of the past. It is a dangerous sign for Apple’s new leadership; Jobs was insistent that past success not forestall future innovation.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re looking at a TIKTOK with the iPod nano stuck in it sitting on the desk. Here’s the thing: We don’t wear watches. Here’s another thing: We don’t know anyone under 50 who wears a watch. Wristwatches are uncomfortable and redundant. They beg to die out, not to be reinvented. (In fact, wristwatches are dying out and have been for some time now. Wristwatch salesmen, have at it below.) If we want to know the time, we press the Home button on our iPhones or the button on our Nike+ FuelBands
. Two clocks, right there. We don’t need an anachronistic third digging into and impinging our wrists all day.
We tried – so hard – to use the TIKTOK+iPod nano conglomeration as a runner’s watch. It’s absolutely great for music and absolutely horrible as a pace watch. The screen is just too small to see when you’re bouncing around and when you lift it to your face and stop naturally swinging your arm to look at it, the pace goes wonky. Sure it tracks the time and distance semi-acurately, but there are plenty of far better solutions for that sort of thing. It’s a wonderful iPod, a needless watch, and an absolutely horrid runner’s watch – which is probably why Apple made the smart move and turned it back into an iPod with a screen that’s big enough to actually use for something more than displaying 20 watch faces at the press of a button. The 6th generation iPod nano was too much of a “Super iPod shuffle” and not enough of an iPod nano. (We were kind of hoping the iPod nano was going to become the new iPod shuffle, but the economics – that damn touchscreen! – probably didn’t work for Apple).
The new 7th generation iPod nano looks to be much better for working out, now with Bluetooth 4.0, and you can still use it to show photos to grandma, but now she can actually see them! With a larger screen and the ability to play TV shows and movies, it’s a great thing for kids and less expensive than even last year’s iPod touch which Apple has kept as the entry-level touch ($149 vs. $199). Plus, it’s really, really, really thin at just 5.4mm!
Hey, who knows? Maybe right now Apple’s hard at work reinventing the wristwatch into something we’d actually want to strap to our wrists: FaceTime, Dick Tracy, etc. If so, bring it on, but it should be its own thing, “iWatch” or whatever, not an iPod nano stuck into a third-party strap sitting on the desk, not on our wrists.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
We’ll see how the Pebble does
I bought a bunch to give away at Xmas-hope they get here by then
iPhone 5 “boring”? Somebody came up with that expression, and now every lazy journalist who sets out determined to slam the 5 is running with it.
What does it mean, really? It doesn’t do a song and dance? It doesn’t help you get an orgasm? It doesn’t have the latest hairstyle?
“The biggest danger sign for Apple is the iPod nano.” REEEAAALLLYYY!!! Wow! Let history record that Apple destroyed itself by not turning the iPod nano into a proper watch.
Sheesh. How do people like Patel end up foisting their stupidity on the public? There should be a law against that.
I was skeptical about the premise, but the author convinced me it’s not only a missed opportunity but inevitable.
Why pull out your phone to see a misses call? A text? And email. Ask a Siri a question. Twitter feed.change the channel on your TV. Answer the phone. And yes see the time. The possibilities are endless.
Lile I said, don’t see this as ridiculous anymore, its obvious and inevitable.
I was hoping that Apple would keep the Nano form factor and ad BT so that we could sync with the iPhone and have alerts and texts appear on the Nano so we would not have to pull out our iPhone as off ten. But instead it looks like Apple is using the Nano to test a new iPhone nano form factor, in the same way they used the iPod Touch to test the iPhones form before the released it.
Casio G-Shock solar-powered Wave-Ceptor wristwatch with metal band. Wears like iron, completely waterproof. Set it and forget it. Keeps perfect time. Relatively low cost.
This is one tough watch:http://www.amazon.com/Casio-MTG900DA-8V-G-Shock-Atomic-Tough/dp/B00134L8XU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347719272&sr=8-1&keywords=MTG900DA-8V
Not as pretty as a Nano watch, but highly recommended.
Most of today’s kids would say “What’s a watch?”
MDN makes an interesting point about the demographics that wear watches, and if true it beckons the question “what do people under 50 wear if they are not wearing watches.
Well, seems to me that tattoos and piercings are quite popular to wear these days and they certainly provide a whole new market for Apple to tap into.
One of the biggest of drawbacks of tattoos is their permanent nature. Johnny Depp for example changed his tattoo from “Wiona Forever” to “Wino Forever.” in a painful and long process.
The itatt would change all that by allowing regular tattoo changes to be programmed on a regular basis. Just think off all those useful applications, not to mention advertising space.
Same thing for the piercings, expecially the ones around the ear, it’s a perfect match for Apple’s earphones.
And yeah, I’d want earplug cords running to my wrist when I’m jogging. Brilliant idea Milay Patel (not). Guess that’s why you don’t work for Apple.
Ding dong the watch is dead!
Seriously though, I have worn watches at various times, but generally find them uncomfortable. Lacking any “emergency” need to know the time in half a second versus the 3 or 4 it takes me to pull out and look at a phone, I haven’t worn a watch in at Lear 10 years.
That the nano no longer addresses the watch market, but instead better addresses the media player market it is designed for just strikes me as smart. The design of the nano as a device no longer capable of video, but in a more compact square design never say right with me. It is far more important that an iPod be watchable than “watchable”.
Watches will always have a place for many people. They are a fashion accessory, a tradition, a (slight) convenience, etc. for most people though, the cell phone long ago replaced the watch as the preferred way to tell time on the go.
Apple was smart to go back to a more traditional design for the nano. Period.
Once you get used to being able to do something in half a second, 3 or 4 seconds seems like an eternity. Trust me.
Just today, I pulled my car into a parking space to wait for someone. When they didn’t show up in a few minutes, I needed to check the time. There were no clocks within sight. So I could…
a) Turn on the car to read the dashboard clock…
b) Wriggle around and go through the process of extricating my iPhone from my pocket while seated behind a steering wheel, or…
c) Lift my wrist and read the time.
I don’t know why anyone would choose a or b when you can do c.
——RM
There is no smartwatch market. And like Patel said, the Nano didn’t make a very good watch anyway.
Maybe that’s why Apple didn’t persue it?
But hey, if you totally have your heart set on it the new Nano is narrow enough to fit on your wrist. I’m sure somebody will make a strap for it.
Took my watch off the day I got out of the Army and haven’t worn one since.
Everything these days has a clock on it- what is the purpose?
god MacDailyNews you are just the worst kind of sycophantic idiots. Why must you speak in such broadly sweeping generalities? no one under 50 wears a watch? have you ever been in an Apple store, or a club or ANYWHERE there are young, cool people? THEY WEAR WATCHES. they are a fashionable statement. they are blogged about, talked about, coveted, purchased. this site which I used to like frankly makes me sick.
As usual the MDN take on this story is totally wrong, pathetic rhetoric and very short sighted. The iWatch has tremendous potential. Everyone knows that. The fact that Apple decided to play it safe and go backwards with the Nano is sad reflection on Apple post-Steve. They lack the balls to innovate any more, instead always looking to play it safe. That was not the Steve Jobs way and will ultimately spell disaster for Apple. Just look at all the companies who stopped innovating: Sony, HP, Dell, etc, etc. It’s a long and very sad list.
The last version of the nano was cute, but without bluetooth, the concept of using it as a watch was limited.
The new model reminds me of the first nano, which I loved.
Apple makes great gear, but Omega they are not, nor should they be. I want a watch, I’ll get an Omega, I want a tablet, smartphone, laptop or desktop computer, I’ll get something from Apple.
Meh. If you’re going to wear a watch these days get a decent Tag, Breitling or Rolex and wear it as jewellery. The ubiquitous nature of mobile phones have made wrist watches redundant to most people. I haven’t worn one in nearly a decade now. Don’t miss it.
Whoever thinks nobody under 50 wears a watch need to look around more. While I agree that the 20-somethings may not, there are still many, MANY people who can’t use anything else to tell the time.
Examples:
1. Students who aren’t allowed phones in school (and don’t say wall clocks, because they often don’t work).
2. Anyone working in a secure environment (government, contractor, military, corporate research) where most personal electronics aren’t allowed. That includes hundreds of thousands of employees of companies like Raytheon, CSC, and other defense contractors.
3. Anyone in an environment that’s tough on personal accessories, such as machine shops, auto repair shops, construction sites…
That doesn’t begin to cover the numbers… Sometimes there’s just no replacement for a simple device that does one thing well.
Many people still wear watches. But I think the number is dwindling. For many they are just not necessary. I have probably ten nice watches in my drawer, but don’t really see the need to wear one, and I’m over 50.If they make a nano watch, people will buy it, but I think it will be a niche offering.
I am interested in sound quality of the new nano. The watch component is not a key aspect, just a cool feature.
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