“It’s been my contention from the start that the Digital Crown is little more than aesthetic accoutrement, an homage to the history of timekeeping where something a bit more modern would be a lot more useful and durable. The scroll and zoom functions that the thing performs can be equally achieved via a clickable touch panel, minus the seemingly commonplace potential for obstructive environmental buildup through regular use,” Andy Faust writes for WatchAware. “A further benefit to such a touch-based solution would be inertial scrolling, perhaps with an edge-hold function to eliminate the need for multiple spins of the current hardware. In terms of device longevity, moving parts are the bane of mobile technology. And the more moving that those moving parts do, the more likely they are to break down.
Faust writes, “In a couple of years, Apple will understand that sales no longer need (and probably never needed) the skeuomorphic Digital Crown to entice traditionalists, at which time I expect the company’s assembly and bottom lines to both insist on its obsolescence.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Because the simple reality is that it isn’t needed. It’s a complex moving part in a platform antithetical to hardware delicacy. The solid state has always been the mobile ideal, and we’ve always been moving towards it. Yet the Digital Crown rotates about a delicate spindle, gets gunked up through normal daily use, and — though tactile enough — is not even as responsive or useful as the cheaper, more durable alternative would be,” Faust writes. “It’s not as responsive or useful as a touch panel.”
“Note, however, that I do not say ‘touch screen,’ as I am not suggesting that the Digital Crown’s functions be replaced or reimagined for on-screen us,” Faust writes. “Rather, I am saying that there is ample space on (in?) the Apple Watch bezel to put a dedicated touch panel that would replicate the Digital Crown’s entire utility in the same way Apple’s Magic Mouse replicates the traditional click wheel.”
Read more, and see the diagrams of how an Apple Watch without a Digital Crown would work, and work better than today’s Apple Watch, in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: One could view the Digital Crown in much the same way as the original iPod’s mechanical click wheel which taught users the UI concept and how to use later iPod models’ capacitive-sensing click wheel. Looked at this way, the mechanical Digital Crown is a teaching aid, letting us spin and click mechanically until we’re ready for the more advanced virtual “Digital Crown.”
Plus, in a skeuomorphic manner, the mechanical Digital Crown is a familiar element for a wristwatch, so it makes it easy to accept Apple Watch on your wrist. Then, later, when users realize what Apple Watch is, and how it works, they’ll no longer need such hand-holding. It’s a very Apple-like way use things that people recognize from the real world in order to introduce a strange new product.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]