“There’s no getting around it: the first-gen Apple Watch leaves a lot to be desired,” Yoni Heisler reports for BGR. ” Not only can Apple’s wearable be painfully slow at times, its user interface could stand to be much more intuitive. Whereas anyone could pick up a first-gen iPhone and intuitively figure out how it works, the Apple Watch requires a bit of a (frustrating) learning curve.”
“Additionally, Apple has been uncharacteristically quiet about cumulative iPhone sales,” Heisler reports. “Taken together, all the factors above have contributed to an increasingly popular narrative that would have you believe that the Apple Watch is a complete flop and nothing more than a failure indicative of the fact that Apple’s ability to innovate likely vanished the day Steve Jobs died.”
Heisler reports, “But if we take a step back and examine the Apple Watch’s first year from a more reasoned perspective, one would be hard pressed to call the device a flop.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We wouldn’t trade this first year with our Apple Watches for anything.
You only get one chance to experience and grow with a completely new Apple product. Always take it!
Here’s what we use our 1st gen. Apple Watches for in order of usage:
1. Time
2. Temperature
3. Fitness
4. Music while running/working out
5. Alarms
6. Weather forecast
7. Sports scores
8. Stock prices
9. Timers
10. Turn-by-turn navigation
11. Quick texts (mainly replies, Siri works remarkably well for dictation)
12. Quick news via 3rd party news apps
13. Apple Pay
14. Apple TV Remote
15. Basic email (reading, deleting, marking unread)SEE ALSO:
Living with Apple Watch for one year – May 4, 2016
Reasons why I still wear my Apple Watch every day – April 25, 2016
A year with the Apple Watch: What works, what doesn’t, and what lies ahead – April 22, 2016
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
They must be. Cause the watch is still ugly and a waste of money and overpriced!
Complications, which arguably are the most useful and most often used are hamstrung by not updating as soon as you glance at the watch. Heck, more often than not, the complications don’t update at all. Take Stock info for example. After Apple released WatchOS 2 the complication for Stocks just stopped working as well as it did in the original WatchOS version. And the native Weather complication just has a mind of its own when it comes to highs and lows or day and night (I still haven’t figured out exactly what they’re supposed to show) temps. As soon as the hour changes, bam new values. Come back and hour later and it’s like traveling back in time since the two values are back to what they were before. Irony of ironies an app like Carrot Weather tough still has issues with updating at least manages to keep the highs and lows consistent. So yeah, there’s stuff about the watch that just needs some attention to detail. And the UI could use a simplification overhaul.
“There’s no getting around it: the first-gen Yoni Heisler leaves a lot to be desired,”
But that’s the whole problem with Apple. No matter what Apple does, no one is impressed. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Everything Apple does is said to be a some sort of flop. That term comes so easy to the critics when they’re talking about Apple. There are dozens of companies who sell products in far lesser numbers than Apple and yet those products are not considered flops.
There are these claims that Fitbit wearables are more successful than AppleWatch. Why? Because those Fitbit products sell in greater numbers. Wall Street’s standards of being successful is to sell a lot of a certain product no matter whether the quality is good or not. The mindset about Apple is totally messed up.
Tesla has a fair number of quality control problems with their Teslas, but it’s not constantly being thrown about and it’s not as though people are constantly saying Tesla is going to fail or something. Apple’s PR should set a lot of stuff straight about Apple. I honestly don’t even know what constitutes a failed product and it’s usually not explained in any detail.
Relax, Chico. The value of your AAPL shares may be at the mercy of the vendejos for now, but have a little faith. Your patience, if you can find any, will be rewarded in your lifetime, and those who maliciously denounced Apple will be discredited. Just remember, the jackals afford no respect to the Lion, but the Lion rules nonetheless.
… the simple reason is that there are so many Corporate board rooms that are absolutely petrified of what Apple inc. are doing to their various industries that they employ a myriad of bloggers to kick Apple inc. at every opportunity. For example, everyone has heard the refrain that “Apple Pay is a flop”. Far from it, Apple inc. is preparing the ground for this to go main stream; banks in the UK are seeing huge uptick in Contactless payments since Apple Pay was launched; these same banks are now hunkering down to see how they are going to remain in the payment business with this onslaught. Also, why do you think Apple Pay only launched initially with Amex in Canada, Australia and Singapore; simply, because local banks had too much to loose to let Apple inc. into their turf (Australia now has the first local bank supporting Apple Pay, so the others will follow). Apple inc. has had a tough launch of Apple Pay in the USA because of the lack of NFC ready POS terminals at retailers, nothing else; which is ramping now. Let’s also remember that Apple Pay has a very successful launch with one of the largest local banks in China just recently.
Even th CEO of Mastercard was heard to be defensive of their own position in the payments flow, evidently fearing where Apple Pay was heading; Apple Pay, with Touch ID and the secure enclave is going to bust the mobile payments landscape apart; that is not a prediction, but a fact!
Remember the Stev Jobs quote “Apple inc. skates to where the Puck is going, not to where it has been”
Folks had no issue with Apple products when Steve was alive. All has deteriorated sine Jobs death. ATV is overpriced waste, AW is “ok” nothing more. IOS is HORRIBLE.
Seriously? “Folks had no issue with Apple products when Steve was alive?” Give me a break: Only the iMac (no floppy disk slot), the iPhone (numerous issues), the iPad (a debacle between those who said it was un-needed and those who ridiculed the name), and ATV being a hobby….want more? Try the cube and the 10th anniversary Mac….oh yeah…Newton, perhaps? and eworld? “Tis better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” – attributed to A. Lincoln
I own a Watch and have worn it every day for about a year. Obviously Mr. Heisler has not. I can’t recall a time when the Watch was “painfully slow”. Even first gen, the Watch is a quality device, typical Apple. The UI was a bit obtuse for the first two weeks, but soon became second nature. It’s by no means a perfect device, but the negativity that has characterized most of the reviews and commentary is mostly bullshit.
I love my Apple Watch, and have also worn it daily for just under a year now. It’s native apps seem to work pretty well, and update quickly. The third party apps and complications, however, are very inconsistent in how quickly they update when called upon. I think that’s where the slowness argument is coming from, and I agree with it. I honestly don’t know whether the issue is hardware or software design borne, but it really needs to be fixed to resolve this complaint.