“Watching Timothy D. Cook last week as he introduced the Apple Watch to the world was almost touching, in his channeling of his predecessor,” Steve Lohr reports for The New York Times. “The back-and-forth pacing of the stage, the hand gestures, the cadence of his speech and the script unabashedly filled with superlatives — ‘We set out to build the best watch in the world’ — were all reminiscent of the late Steven P. Jobs.”
“Of course, Mr. Cook lacks the track record, life story and the showman’s flair of the Apple co-founder. But while leaders all leave the stage sooner or later, corporate values can endure,” Lohr reports. “For decades, Apple has stood out in the business world for three things: taste, trust and utility. These are not words scribbled on a white board or printed in an annual report, but values that have guided Apple’s product and design decisions. The Apple Watch reflects and interprets those values — how well it has done that will be its test of success or failure.”
“How well does the Apple Watch do on the taste test? The consensus is that it is a stylish piece of personal technology, given all that’s in it,” Lohr reports. “The critique among outside designers is that Apple has crammed too much in it… On the trust front, the Apple Watch should benefit from a trailing wind of good will. People like Apple products, to say the least. Its offerings have a well-earned reputation for feeling intuitive and personalized. Apple products respect the individual. People trust Apple… Then, there is a question of how many people will find utility from the device? Will the health-monitoring features, when combined with other offerings on the Apple Watch, for example, be enough to make large numbers of consumers buy it?”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Along with many millions of people, you are going to want an Apple Watch. All you have to do it touch it and see even a glimpse of what it can do and you’ll be sold. Apple Watch already does so much, but once third-party developers get a hold of WatchKit and really dig in, the sky’s the limit! …The Apple Watch is going to be a massive hit that sells millions upon millions of units. – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, September 9, 2014
Related articles:
Tim Cook of Apple Watch battery life: ‘You’ll want to charge them every night’ – September 12, 2014
Old school watch makers don’t get Apple Watch – September 12, 2014
Apple Watch, the world’s first real smartwatch, will be a massive hit – September 9, 2014
Apple iWatch designer Jony Ive: Switzerland is in deep shit – September 4, 2014
I see one problem for people who have a hard time reading screens without reading glasses.
Huh? How big do you want it? If they have trouble reading an iWatch they would have no chance of using a normal watch
Yes I was thinking the same thing, why is something like that only a perceived problem with an Apple watch which can adapt its face to suit and is the same size, a strange point to raise.
More generally you have to laugh when you hear designers composing that there is too much included, that’s probably because they can’t claim how they would have done it better. Competitive bunch are designers.
I think his point is that for telling time it may not be a problem but the text that may be used in some Apps and the interface may not be suited for people that may require reading glasses. Simply a statement of the limitations of a smaller display.
I think watch app will have minimum text and more graphics.
Siri can help, I suppose.
And I’m pretty sure Apple will enable all those APIs for those with various disabilities. And this would be particularly so given that they are pushing the medical and health uses for this, it probably will be more of use to them as a result.
I guess you’ll have to wait for the hapic braille version then.
Apple is still holding plenty of iWatch cards close to the chest.
At the debut in 2015 there will be lots more said about this device, especially concerning health and sensors. Probably iOS 8.5 comes out at the same time. Plus tCook says developers are positively devoting themselves to watchKit already.
If people are even barely interested today they’ll be crazed by the time iWatch pre-sales are being taken.
Well, either that or those particular details are still not quite set in stone yet so cannot be announced even if they wanted to.
I LOVE the look of the Watch I think Apple will sell millions of Watches but I don’t think I’ll be buying the 1.0 for these reasons:
1) I’m an old guy plain and simple. I need more than 1 day battery life from my watch. It drives me crazy to forget my watch. If I forget to or can’t charge my watch it would annoy me greatly.
2) I travel constantly. I already have to charge my laptop, charge my bluetooth headset, backup battery, and my phone. I just can’t have another thing to charge. My nightstand at the Hotel looks ridiculous.
3) I WILL NOT carry another charger. I can’t believe they made a new charger AND they made it magnetic. My Plantronics headset has its own screwy charger. My back up battery uses micro usb, my phone uses the lightening connector and my Macbook uses that huge brick. It almost feels like Apple is taunting me with a HUGE magnet to put into my laptop bag. NOT road warrior friendly. Why not just use the lightening connector?
I believe it will improve for us travel types in 2.0.
I guess I can understand not wanting another charger. (Although I respectfully disagree about the watch’s charger — I think it’s a brilliant design.) But I don’t get why anyone needs more than a day’s charge out of a watch. I mean, you do sleep, don’t you? I presume you don’t wear your watch to bed. Can’t you just charge it at night?
I don’t wear a watch unless I leave the house. I would just put the Apple Watch on the charger when I take it off.
——RM
I sleep with my watch on. I also surf so the fact it isn’t waterproof is a bit disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, it looks cool/useful and I may get one at some point…perhaps not a Gen1 watch tho.
The Lightning connector is too bulky.
Yes, it seems small on the iPhone, but consider the amount of space *inside* the iPhone that’s taken up with the receptacle for a Lightning connector…no way they could spare that much space in the Apple Watch.
I don’t know this for sure, but I’m guessing/hoping that the Apple Watch will still be charging on a 5V source, which is USB-level power. With that, you should be able to just have an Apple Watch charging *cord* which takes neglible space, not a full-blown bulky adapter. Plug it into a USB port on your laptop, problem solved.
I took the Apple Watch only having the ‘crown’ and button and going with inductance charging rather than a cord as a design decision to reduce the number of ‘holes’ that have to be water protected. Adding a charging port would defeat that purpose as well as ruin the lines of the current prototype. As for inductance charging and reducing the number of charge cords, I propose that they add either an adapter or an inductance charge area on all new Apple mobile devices.
Sell apple watch gift cards during dec holidays remember Xmas is the time for giving watches. See how many prepaid watches go out the door before it is available. Do the sports watches especially.
Just create a series of regular iTunes gift cards with pics of the iPhone6/6+.. No need for a separate special card.. 🙂
Another what would Steve do along with quotes from anonymous former Apple employees. Fact is Steve is gone and he told Tim not to think about what he’d do but to do what he (Tim) thinks is right. This constant “Steve wouldn’t have done that” whining is getting so old and so annoying. If Apple only did what Steve would have done we wouldn’t have half the features we got in iOS 8 not larger screen phones. That would be bad news for keeping Apple competitive.
How can he say that “Apple has crammed too much in it…”?
Perhaps it also has “too many notes! The human ear can only hear so many notes. Just remove a few of them.” Who was it who said something like that?
Emperor Joseph II in a remark to Mozart, at least according to “Amadeus”.
I do not understand the one gimmick about sending a HeartBeat to someone. I’m still going to buy & try it, but can’t wait for 2nd Gen Apple Watch.
Regardless of how great the Apple Watch is, it’s only an iphone accessory.
The iPod, iPhone and iPad were compatible with Windows from the first (well, not the iPod, but soon). THAT is what allowed them to take off. The Apple Watch is simply an iPhone accessory, no where near the potential customer base of the iDevices or even the Apple TV. Apple will only be selling to a subset of existing iPhone customers, no one else. Then again, there was that rumor of an Android version of iTunes a while ago…
Agreed.. Unlike the other Apple devices sold in recent years, the Apple Watch is a non-gateway product meaning you do not buy it first and extend into the other Apple products and the ecosystem. The target audience is a subset of iPhone users (iPhone 5 or newer) so users (Apple or not) that do not use or intend to purchase the iPhone 5 or newer are out of the picture. Further reducing that total are those that either cannot afford or willing to pay the minimum $349 price for the watch since it is likely there will be no subsidy similar to the iPhone from telecom carriers.
A while ago there was a rumor about Apple making an Android compatible version of iTunes. I wonder if this might have been a sign that Apple may introduce Android compatibility to the Apple Watch. It seems unlikely, but it could turn it into a gateway product.
Definately unlikely unless at the very least Siri exists on the Apple Watch independent of the smartphone that it will connect to. If Google Now replaces Siri, the Apple Watch will no longer be a gateway product, at least to the Apple ecosystem.
Good points. I had low hopes for the Apple Watch unless it had a killer app, which in a couple years of thinking didn’t yield anything unless it involved implanted medical devices (Apple has been in talks with the FDA). It’ll be popular, but far from spectacular.
Then again, it is a v1.0 product.
I have decided to take every Apple announcement/rumor with a grain of salt until the actual product is released to the public. For all we know given the amount of time till the Apple Watch is released the design and function could change drastically based on how well other watches smart or otherwise do in the market in that time. However should that happen the newsies will have a field day about how Apple has joined the ranks of announcing imaginary products as official announcements.
A good way of looking at it. I don’t expect Apple to come out with a game changer on a regular basis, that can’t be controlled or predicted. There was the Apple II, the Mac, a nice switching of CPUs to PowerPC then Intel, but I think the original Mac, then iMac, then OS X and iPod, iPhone and iPad cover it.
Mac, iMac, iPod, OS X, iPhone and iPad. 6 innovations in 30 years. You can’t schedule innovation. it happens when it happens. Give me a list of Microsoft’s innovations that didn’t involve accusations.
Acquisitions, perhaps?
Dang automatic crapola!
Make it waterproof.
This. My Pebble is rated to 5 atmospheres. Don’t even talk to me about a “sport” watch that you must take off in the shower. What is this, the 1950s?