“Unveiled last week and available tomorrow, the Apple Watch Series 4 is a major update to the now four-year-old device series. Having wear-tested one for the last week I definitely feel it’s well worth the upgrade for existing users and finally the right time to get an Apple Watch for anyone who has been on the fence. Valuable new health features, a louder speaker, thinner case, haptic crown and faster overall performance are all benefits but it’s the larger screen that makes both new and old features alike really come to life,” Josh Rubin writes for Cool Hunting. “While all elements of the WatchOS were redesigned for the 30% larger screen on the Series 4, it’s the new watch faces I’m most enamored by.”
“A colorful, new Infograph face houses up to eight complications,” Rubin writes. “I vary between this info-dense watch face and the new ultra-minimal and very hypnotic Fire, Water, Liquid Metal and Vapor faces. And these faces are more special than Apple let on during their keynote. They’re not rendered—each face is high resolution video shot in a studio using real fire, water and vapor elements.”
Rubin writes, “Surely it would have been cheaper to just render fire, water, liquid metal and vapor, but this is what makes Apple special—putting in the time and effort to do something right and real might only be noticed directly by a few, but is certainly felt by all.”
MacDailyNews Take: If only Apple would have put 1/10th of the effort into making the Nike Run Club app – around which their Apple Watch Nike+ is marketed and sold and which is therefore, ultimately, Apple’s responsibility – work flawlessly (we’d settle for it just working reliably well). It makes no sense at all to have the NRC app suck so hard on the Apple Watch Nike+ (for years, no less). It lets the whole experience down far, far more than actual fire video vs. rendered fire video in a watch face.
Hence, we award Apple yet another Misplaced Priorities Trophy:
Because Apple is packing, squeezing, layering a humongous amount of visual data onto the Apple Watch, it may feel it must add more – not less – entertainment value for emotional relief?
Because Apple is packing, squeezing, layering a humongous amount of visual data onto the Apple Watch, it may feel it must add more – not less – entertainment value for emotional relief?
But it sure is befuddling that such “unnecessary” detail, as wonderful as it is, lacks with traditionally critical Apple products.
re NRC: when apple doesnt care about something, they REALLY don’t care about it.