“Realizing that on the iPhone the “phone” is but an app — one which I find populated with FaceTime calls rather than cellular calls and whose messaging history is filled with iMessage threads rather than SMS — I consider it safe to say what the iPhone is today not as much a phone as a very personal computer,” Horace Dediu writes for Asymco.And so the question is whether the Watch will quickly leave behind its timekeeping anchor and move into being something completely different.”
“I had the chance to use the Watch for a few days and can say that timekeeping is probably as insignificant to its essence as it’s possible to be,” Dediu writes. “I find myself drawn into a conversation by its vocabulary of vibrations. I find myself talking to it. I find myself listening to it. I find myself glancing at information about faraway places. I find myself paying for things with it. I find myself checking into flights with it. I order transportation, listen to news, check live data streams and get myself nagged to exercise. It tells me where I am. It tells me where to go. It tells me when to leave.”
“Nothing ever worn on a wrist, or anywhere else for that matter, has done any of these things before. Not only are these things mesmerizing but they are done in a productive way on a wristwatch. In other words they are done in a mindful way that do not intrude into daily life,” Dediu writes. “Even more remarkably, this tasteful minder is offered not to a fortunate few but to millions of people of average means. In the true sense of technological democratization, Apple Watch is a phenomenon for mass consumption. Its launch needs to be understood as a watershed event.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Two flashbacks:
The day the iPhone was unveiled:
Apple’s “iPhone” isn’t really a phone at all. It’s really a small touchscreen Mac OS X computer, a Mac nano tablet, if you will. Here’s how misnamed the iPhone is: Some people are complaining that Jobs didn’t spend enough time on the Mac in his keynote! Folks, iPhone is not only a Mac, it’s the most radical new Mac in years! What’s to stop Apple from making a 12-inch model (and larger, and smaller) one of these days (use the headset for the phone, please) and calling it a Mac tablet?
It has an iPod built in, yes, so it can be used solely as a “true video widescreen iPod,” if that’s what you want. And even using it just like that, the price is about right. It also has a smartphone built in, too; except this smartphone’s UI actually makes sense and is usable. Even if you just use it as a smartphone, the price is right, too.
But, the main thing about the “iPhone” is that it’s really a pocket Mac. – StaveJack, MacDailyNews, January 9, 2007
The day the Apple Watch was unveiled:
Apple today revealed the world’s first smart watch and, once Apple Watch hits the market in early 2015, nothing will ever be the same.
Apple Watch, starting at just $349, will be a massive hit. Already in its nascent, first generation form Apple Watch is an object of lust, a compelling design that screams, “Wear me! Everyday and everywhere!” With its rather remarkable Digital Crown and pressure-sensitive Force Touch Retina display, precision engineering, exacting build quality, and pioneering user interface, Apple Watch proves that innovation did not die at Apple when Steve Jobs left us far too early.
Apple Watch is going to change everything… 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!
“We value charm and wit more than bandwidth and throughput.”
Apple Watch bla bla bla……….
……..
… you need an iPhone.
Mass consumption?
Yep
You’re right.. there are 6 billion people in the world, and to date, Apple will only be able to sell the watch to the 165 million or so current iPhone owners. 🙂
Oh wait, a second, make that 700 million iPhones (as of March 2015.) 165 million was for last year alone!
In 2014, Nikon sold about 2.7 million units of ALL their compact cameras. I think those are considered a mass market product. /s.
How many Apple watches are going to be sold in the next year? It’s already around a million on the first day, just in the US.
Mass market product? Yeh, I think so.
For some short sight is incurable for others it is curable but they lack the sense to see how. Which are you?
Ahhhh, the success and impact of a product can be seen by the number of trolls.
If it wasn’t a significant apple product Trolls wouldn’t bother.
Hey All Trolls have some more:
By selling one million in USA in one day, more around the world besides significantly eclipsing all the android wear, google glass etc crap and making them look insipid (Moto 360 ON (desperation) price reduced SALE !! etc ) , apple also made a ton of MONEY which it can throw into highest class R&D, acquiring of companies (like the isreali Camera company just announced), corner supplies etc to put it even FURTHER AHEAD…
one thing Android has though, they are TIME MACHINES, use one and you are sooooo yesterday….
Nailed it!!!
Great article, sounds like a watershed moment, humankind will look back on & say wow!!
Edison invented the light bulb, Jony Ive lit up our wrist!!
Edison did not invent the light bulb or indeed even the first practical light bulb which is what he is wrongly credited with, however like Samsung (and indeed Microsoft) he appropriated the idea and marketed it as his own. Nice slogan mind so perhaps worth the re writing of history.
More hype than fact.
Over 300 Million Americans, about a million of which bought the watch.
Apple sunk a ton of money, time and effort into this project and it would seem at the expense of many other ongoing projects/products. A million customers sound more like what Steve Jobs described as a hobby- Apple TV in it’s first couple of iterations.
Hope those who ordered it like your new watch, but color me skeptical.
BTW- Apple Retail needs to seriously up it’s game. I went to my local store- which used to have gold standard service- and watched customers go unattended at the tables as the hipster staff stood around bullshitting at the front of the store.
Comparing tats and piercings is not going to sell product.
Are you just complaining to us… or did you do something constructive, such as speak to the manager?
Troll has probably not been in a Apple Store. We would know if she/he was in by the DNA from the drool left on the watch display case.
“More hype than fact.
Over 300 Million Americans, about a million of which bought the watch.”
… IN ONE DAY.
More hype than fact, my ass!
Well said Horace.
Watershed event? AppleWatch launch came and went and there’s almost no way to tell it even happened unless you follow tech sites. Apple looks pretty much the same as it did a few days ago. It doesn’t seem as though many consumers care. Apple hasn’t said anything official about the results of the launch, so it’s probably not worth mentioning. It honestly seems like another lost weekend for Apple.
News from the past…
iPhone launch came and went and there’s almost no way to tell it even happened unless you follow tech sites. Apple looks pretty much the same as it did a few days ago.
Certainly many prominent CEOs and “analysts” said variations on that… i.e. “Nothing to see here”, AND continued to say it long after the iPhone launch.
Theres delusion and then there is macnificentseven48ism. If it weren’t so long you would likely go down in the Oxford Dictionary as another term for dick.
Fortune
According to market research data
Apple sold more Apple Watches on the device’s first day of preorder sales than its rival companies sold Android-based smartwatches throughout all of 2014, according to market research data.
Not even a surprise.
“Cynics may say it does too little. Philistines may say it does too much. But for me it does just what I want it to do when I want it done. The things which are not done time stay out of the way. This discretion is just as important as the effectiveness of action.”
Dediu clearly understands the essence of an Apple product. Good article.
What people seem to fail to understand (time and time again sadly) is that its environment often has to grow into the device, its where real innovation rather than mock high impact versions, really make their impact over time but as usual the blind don’t see it if ever at all, until they take it for granted as part of their everyday life. Give it time and all those things in that environment will start to wirelessly plug in to that little device on your wrist and instant control of it will become desirable and increasingly instinctive to the user. Nice thing is people can grow with it or simply choose to step off the elevator at whatever point they feel happy with.
It’s an interface for the digital world that for the first time integrates with your body directly, and is readily accessible at all times. It’s blurring the boundaries of having a device at all, it’s on your wrist, and would have the same benefit of having a computer hardwired into your arm, with the convenience of being able to take it off if you want.
Someday, we will have a swarm of computers the size of a blood cell in our bloodstream. This is but another step toward that direction, and I don’t want to miss a single step along the way.
I’ve been wondering about the mass appeal of the Watch and how it will interface with HomeKit and an updated Apple TV media center. The Watch could be integrated with HomeKit for lighting, environmental heating/cooling. The Watch could be more convenient than your iPhone to control your Apple media / home control center — and CarPlay. Combined with the ease and popularity of Swift SDK, I think we are in for more surprises at WWDC.
The Watch will be the first time in decades I’ve cared about buying a watch that isn’t just a cheap Timex I throw in my pocket.
Could not agree more with the author !
The Apple Watch is a watershed moment because it is the first device to interface the human experience with the rest of the world. Up until now, computing has been a brain driven activity. The brain makes a decision and the user utilizes an input method – keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, etc. to complete a command. The watch changes this paradigm by utilizing sensors. Picture this: let’s say a couple is getting romantic and decides to enhance the mood by turning on some soft music and setting a pastel lighting scene. To accomplish this task takes work. First, the brain has to decide to take action, next the iPhone must be turned-on, then the correct music has to be chosen, and finally the lightening arrangement needs to be selected. The Apple Watch eliminates the work because it will sense the romantic heartbeats of the couple and automatically create the scene.
This human to world interface will also apply to game playing. Games scenes and actions will be dynamically generated based on the players vitals. For example, let’s say it is determined that fifteen minutes of high-rate heart pumping is the maximum amount a certain player can handle before becoming too fatigued and stopping the game prematurely. Games will also be able to sense that heart rate is decreasing too quickly and introduce new/difficult challenges/scenes to keep the pace exciting.
Sensing a user’s emotions is also going to be a boon for advertisers and TV/film content producers. Eventually, they will be able to determine excitement, boredom, pleasure, disgust, etc. This means if you are under fifty and/or healthy you won’t see peeing into a tube advertisements any longer. Yuck and always around dinner time. CNN and CNBC what are you thinking? I don’t want to see male enhancement ads when I’m digging into a filet mignon.
This is just the beginning.