When Apple begins taking Apple Watch “pre-orders tomorrow, diehard Apple fans will clamor for Cupertino’s latest signature product,” Julia Greenberg writes for Wired. “They will harbor grand hopes for its possibilities. That’s the power Apple has. The Apple II changed how we use computers forever. The iPod (and iTunes) revolutionized music. The iPhone is ubiquitous and essential. Because this is Apple, we can’t help but measure the Watch against those immense successes. To triumph, it must be more than a normal, expensive accessory, like well-crafted headphones.”
“But what if the non-diehards decide that’s all the Apple Watch is? If lukewarm early reviews keep consumers out of stores, or if major glitches alienate early adopters, the Apple Watch could be a bust, at least by Apple standards,” Greenberg writes. “Even with record revenues and a gilded image, such a hit would hurt Apple. The funny thing is, it could end up hurting us even more.”
“A flop could bring us more of the same,” Greenberg writes. “A big win could encourage Apple to be even bolder.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Watch will not “flop.” Quite the contrary. Watch and see.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Daring Fireball’s Gruber on a week with Apple Watch – April 8, 2015
Tech.pinions’ Ben Bajarin reviews Apple Watch: ‘Powerful’ and ‘completely new’ – April 8, 2015
WSJ’s Stern reviews Apple Watch: ‘Good looks and coolness’ – April 8, 2015
The Verge’s Patel reviews Apple Watch: ‘A masterpiece of engineering’ – April 8, 2015
WSJ’s Fowler reviews Apple Watch: ‘The first smartwatch worth buying’ – April 8, 2015
Yahoo Tech’s Pogue reviews Apple Watch: ‘Magical’
New York Times’ Manjoo reviews Apple Watch: ‘A power you can’t live without’ – April 8, 2015
Bloomberg’s Topolsky reviews Apple Watch: ‘The world’s best smartwatch’ – April 8, 2015
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple Watch: ‘Second to none; I want one’ – April 8, 2015
MDN could help us out by eliminating troll ratings that downgrade comments by those of us who actually like Apple products. Start out by filtering out anything from Korea.
Anything bloody asia full stop I say..
Think negatively about the watch if you want, just means one person less in the line for me to wait before I get mine
To say the Apple watch is a completely STUPID idea is an understatement.
Let’s shell out $350 to $17,000 for a tiny, square watch, when the battery lasts less than your phone. I’m glad I mentioned your phone, because this watch is also USELESS without it.
It doesn’t do anything your phone and a cheap Fitbit device can’t do.It will be obsolete by the tenth charge. Anyone who buys one is branding themselves as an IDIOT for life!
ok, I paid $110 for my fitbit in Sept of 2013. It’s now being held together with duck tape and some crazy glue. I wear it every day. I’m happy to pay $400 for a piece of quality gear that I want to have and use – that I don’t have to glue and tape together. And, of course, the Apple watch will do much more that my Fitbit. You got the cheap part right.
Hmmmm,it seems to do more than you do…lol
I’m not from Korea. I use apple products. I would be happy to see watch fail (and expect it to fail). A fail might force apple to refocus on software/hardware quality. I dont care if apple makes more money. Their only value to me is the investments they make in building reliable, good performing operating systems and applications. We’ve mostly learned not to rely on apple applications for anything that actually matters. We’ve come to expect disappointment with every new os release. Perhaps a watch failure will wake them up. Probably not though.
huh?
Apple is not perfect but so far my mac pros , my laptops etc have worked near flawlessly. Way better than any PC I’ve ever used.
I think that the star ratings for posts on MDN has probably lost its usefulness. It used to be a rough gauge of support or lack thereof by engaged forum members. But it gradually became a polarized mix of fives and ones averaging to three stars, and also attracted trolls who either sought to collect massive one star vote totals by goading Apple fans, or manipulated voting on pro-Apple posts (again to goad Apple fans. Either way, the voting has become rather meaningless. The content f the posts was always far more important, anyway.
Julia is trying to psycho analyze the Apple consumer as if they buy only on image or what’s in.
Apple’s buyers buy because they get something they want out of the products.
The early reviews are already in, and all are 10000% positive.
So much for doom and gloom.
We haven’t seen the Korean Times or Googles employee newsletter reviews yet.
Or Samsung… 😝
One in the same I believe.
Not this one:
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/apple-watch-sleek-stylish-not-everyone-reviewers-141208800–finance.html
Personally, I’m taking a “wait and see” approach.
No they aren’t. They’re all generally positive – which is great – but are in no way stellar and all point out shortcomings and flaws. The not-as-intuitive AI. Occasional slowness. And of course, the lack of a truly compelling reason to own a smartwatch right now. Most of them say waiting for gen 2 is probably best, and talk about potential.
I’m convinced now there probably is a future in smartwatches. I’m still not buying this year’s model though because that future isn’t here yet. Apple have made the best smartwatch and the best smartwatch platform. What they still haven’t made is the case for smartwatches for everyone.
The positive reviews are written, now the FUD begins 😁😐😚
> If lukewarm early reviews keep consumers out of stores…
That’s the beauty of Apple Watch. It does not target generic “consumers.” Potential Apple Watch customers are ALL existing Apple customers, who have purchased (at the very least) an iPhone (5 or later). Their collective satisfaction as Apple’s existing customers is something like 99%. They all have an Apple ID, so Apple can do some exceptionally targeted and efficient marketing to make the case for Apple Watch, directly to an audience of likely customers. Those customers are typically characterized as technically savvy mobile users with above average wealth.
And best of all, there are well in excess of 300 million such potential Apple Watch customers, at Apple Watch launch. By the end of 2015, there will be well in excess of 400 million. Those numbers are probably significantly conservative. At the very least, 1-in-10 will be “early adopters,” and I would be disappointed if “only” 10% of potential customers decided to buy. But just 10% means Apple sells 30 to 40 million Apple Watches by the end of 2015. Who thinks the adoption will be higher than 10%…? I think Apple will have 30 million sold (or on waiting list) by the end of the June quarter.
Apple has set up conditions to essentially guarantee success. The only real unknown is the magnitude of that success… 🙂
1. The Apple Watch has already been very successful. It probably has driven at least 10 percent of iPhone sales since September. This calculates to around 15 million phones or around $10.5 Billion in sales. The total number of iPhones it will help sell during this fiscal year is probably in the neighborhood of 23 million or $15.5 Billion.
2. How many sales of the actual watch will be considered a sucess? During the last new hardware rollout in 2010 Apple sold 300,000 iPads on opening day. Munster believes they sold around 600,000 that opening weekend. It seems to me that any sales above these figures should be considered a smashing success.
“It probably has driven at least 10 percent of iPhone sales since September.”
Really? What’s your foundation for this? I expect it to be successful, but I haven’t seen anything like what you’re saying. Did I miss some surveys?
“diehard Apple fans will clamor for Cupertino’s latest signature product”
Still with the stupid “Apple cult” meme – like there is some modest number of fanatics.
Let me fix that for you, Julia…
“people worldwide, of every conceivable demographic, will clamor for Cupertino’s latest signature product”
‘cept fur th’ hee-haw demographic
A “cult” of hundreds of millions is generally considered having advanced to the status of a full-fledged religion, so isn’t it time to ditch the outdated rhetoric, to abandon the Jim Jones Kool-Aid gun-control reality-distortion references? Apple has been spun variously as a religious, political, or psychological force only as a way of marginalizing it through association with negative stereotypes, when in fact it is a primarily a commercial force. This explains why these emotional antagonisms exist: they are wrought by business competitors who compete using disparagement and misdirection out of desperation, having utterly failed to seize the initiative themselves. I can’t blame business for these tactics, but I do despise the toadies in journalism that fall for it and risk whoredom for themselves. They’re supposed to report to us, the consumers.
I agree with you on the “cult” and “kool-aid” references. What happened at Jonestown was the premeditated murder of hundreds of people, and comparing buying the latest Apple gadget to what happened there is downright offensive.
I was given to understand that Jonestown was a mass suicide of delusional followers of a religious cult. and that “drinking the Kool-Aid” derived from this event. But I apologize for offending you
You didn’t offend me, I was just speaking generally about the association the media often makes between Jonestown and Apple.
The “mass suicide” aspect of it is the way it’s remembered, but not the way it actually went down. Jones had his soldiers force people to drink the Kool Aid at gunpoint, after forcing it down their childrens’ throats. Jones had brought his followers there fully intending to kill them, it was planned well in advance.
⌚️ will succeed.
Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work here. 😉
Hey, MDN, shouldn’t you be appending that classic Steve-Balmer-panning-the-iPhone interview for Julia to study and emulate?
I want AppleWatch to succeed to shut up all the anti-Apple naysayers who can’t even wait until a product is for sale before they start ripping it to shreds.
It won’t necessarily be the Google’s spreading FUD at first. There is big money at stake and they need this category to succeed. An Apple Watch flop could hurt everybody from chip makers to app developers to home automation companies. I also don’t think the traditional watch makers will put up a big stink because this category could potentially be a new revenue source for them as well. There is also health care which could see a big boost from this tech because of research and preventative medicine.
Those making a big stink are anti-tech/anti-Apple basement dwellers, companies that are net short or individuals that have been short for a long time, like from before the October earnings call. For example this occurred today when societe generale downgraded the stock. Are you f@$!ng kidding me!?! Right before a MAJOR product launch?!? I guess they’re not going to get invited to the party.
I totally want the douchebag Edition to fail. Putting a $200 movement into a $8000 shell is marketing bullshit.