“The Apple Watch is a watch in as much as a DVD player or a microwave is a watch,” Adrienne LaFrance writes for The Atlantic. “That is to say, there is a clock on it—and, okay, fine, you wear it on your wrist—but its raison d’être isn’t to tell time.”
“What, then, is its main purpose? Another way of thinking about this question is: Why would anybody buy this thing? The people who say they won’t usually say something like, “But I already have an iPhone.” (Plus: It’s expensive!)” LaFrance writes. “Already having an iPhone is sort of the point, though… A couple months ago, my friend Andrew Phelps, who is a product manager at The New York Times, described to me the usefulness of the Watch in a way I’ve been unable to stop thinking about since: It is ultimately a device that helps you decide whether to look at your phone.”
“People already have a habit of checking their phones mindlessly—so much so that the phenomenon of thinking your phone is vibrating when it’s not is a thing we have a name for (phantom vibration syndrome),” LaFrance writes. “The idea of turning that compulsion into a habit that requires only a glance is appealing, questions of etiquette aside. It’s also already natural, skeuomorphically speaking. Or, to put it the way Jack Riley did in a recent Nieman Lab article, ‘the wristwatch has the advantage of a hundred years of mass market adoption.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
With iPhone, Apple changed the fabric of our everyday lives: All around the world today, you see people constantly pulling phones from pockets and staring at them. With Apple Watch, Apple will change behavior worldwide once again. A quick glance at your Watch and you’re off. No more smartphone zombies. Watch and see. – MacDailyNews Take, January 30, 2015
Bravo to Andrew……!!!!
Nice to hear from people who finally get it!!!!!
AppleWatch seems like a nice device to play with if you like playing with gadgets. However, I don’t find it any more compelling than say a Garmin Fenix 3 which is a pretty awesome fitness band for training and exercising. I think it all depends on what a person is looking for. Why decide on one or the other? Get both of them. One size does not fit all.
I don’t “look at it” to play with.
Apple Watch will be to receive notifications of whatever interests me, like when I’m due someplace, as an active reminder.
I’m not likely to wear it for fitness reasons, as there are or will be more competent devices for that functionality.
At work last year I could get 10 to 15 calls, texts or e-mails a day on my phone.
Since I retired about a year ago, I have one or two calls a week, trying to sell me something. That’s it.
Apparently, I don’t need an Watch.
You will need a watch, and welcome to retirement!
Apple Watch is an enhancement of iPhone. Like the Retina Display enhanced iPhone. Developers quickly added support for the Retina Display. Customers wanted an iPhone with Retina Display as soon as possible. The same thing happens with Apple Watch, except this time, customers don’t need to buy a whole new iPhone.
Does this mean iPhone sales will slow down?.
No! Christ no. You clearly have no been paying attention. Repeat after me – you need an iPhone to use the Apple Watch. So if anything, iPhone sales will go up. Sheesh!
It’s not a watch, it’s a gadget. A watch is a finely crafted mechanical piece of art and function. The Apple Wrist device is a peripheral for the iPhone. It’s a wrist computer that will require software updates, security updates, and be obsoleted by new versions every year. That’s not a watch.
Still a watch, but you watch more than the time.
It’s a wrist communication device.
As an active investor in AAPL, all I hope is that more people want one than Apple can build them for a lá iPhone 6 Plus.
Apple has not yet revealed that the ‘data pins’ in the watch band connection are actually to disallow cheap knock-off watch bands to be installed that don’t have the chip installed in them.
Wow, another doofski who has not been paying attention. Sheesh!
It has been reported the contacts WILL NOT BE on the final version. The contacts are apparently a special type of lightning port for pre-launch internal testing.
That at least is what the reports have been saying. Pay attention please, or go back to your Android Wear watch, where exposed contacts and exposure to inferiority is your reward for supporting Treasonoogle.
Michael Knight used it to communicate with KITT already