“I can’t quite shake the feeling that the Apple Watch is being serially underestimated,” Ben Thompson writes for Stratechery. “Nor, I think, is the long term threat to Apple’s position being fully appreciated.”
“Success isn’t guaranteed: the ability of a watch, or in this case the Apple Watch, to enable a new area of continuous computing depends on three factors: The physical design of the Watch; the interaction model for the Watch; the ability of the Watch to interact with its environment,” Thompson writes. “Apple and its competitors’ ability to deliver on each of these factors will determine whether the category ends up being a nice side business to phones, or the next step in the trend towards ever smaller and ever more convenient personal computers. And, for what it’s worth, after a few weeks with the Apple Watch, I’m increasingly bullish that it is the latter.”
“I do think there will be a bifurcation when it comes to the Watch’s relative importance vis-à-vis the smartphone between developed and developing countries: in the long run I do think that convenience trumps all, but there’s no denying a smartphone is already pretty darn convenient,” Thompson writes. “To put it another way, if you can afford it I do think that there is a sufficient delta between Watch and iPhone functionality to make the former worth owning despite its dependence on the latter. I also think that when the Watch inevitably gains cellular functionality I will carry my iPhone far less than I do today. Indeed, just as the iPhone makes far more sense as a digital hub than the Mac, the Watch will one day be the best hub yet.”
Read more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Thompson gets it. If you don’t understand why anyone would wear an Apple Watch or even if you wear an Apple Watch all day long as we do, read the full article.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jeff.L” for the heads up.]
