“Ever since Apple introduced Nightstand mode in watchOS 2, having a charging dock for the Apple Watch makes sense,” Romain Dillet reports for TechCrunch. “A dock can hold the Watch in place while you sleep so that you don’t have to put it on the side and attach it to a charging cable like an animal.”
“Today, Apple launched an official Apple Watch charging dock that works both in Nightstand mode and as a flat charging pod,” Dillet reports. “But it’s an expensive accessory as it costs $79.”
“Contrarily to unofficial Apple Watch docks, Apple’s dock doesn’t rely on an Apple Watch cable,” Dillet reports. “The charging puck is built into the dock. Instead, there is a Lightning port at the back of the dock.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The amount of use the Apple Watch’s Alarm Clock, Timer, and Stopwatch get still amazes us.
It seems that various forms of timekeeping on your wrist (or on your nightstand) is actually valuable and extremely useful. Who’da thunk it?!
Seriously, it’s the easy-to-use nature of the Apple Watch’s Alarm Clock, Timer, and Stopwatch that actually make them get used multiple times per day.
Oh, which Apple Watch Dock have we been using (and certainly will continue to use despite this rather late* official Apple Watch Dock)?
Spigen’s Apple Watch Stand (compatible with Nightstand Mode) – $10.99
*Here’s yet another example of something a properly-run multi-billion dollar company should have had available on Day One, not Day 209.
SEE ALSO:
What Steve Jobs gave Apple that Tim Cook cannot – November 18, 2015
actually – I would not have bought one on day 1 – but now that I understand the watch , its night time storage issue and the charging needs I get that I now need one to make life easier.
So timing IS everything. Apple is not making mistakes – they just know how we think.
You’re an apologist. An equivocator. A settler.
Apple would have sold millions of these docks on day one and millions more in the 209 DAYS (!) since Apple Watch launched.
Hold Apple to a higher standard lest they forget what made them in the first place. The world has enough mediocrity.
You and MDN are spoiled babies. If you open all your gifts on Xmas eve, then how sad you will be on Xmas morning when there is nothing there under the tree but torn paper. Relax, let them do their thing. Get another hobby besides haranguing Apple.
You are 100% spot on. “G” is nothing but an Apple apologist.
As an Apple shareholder, I have had ENOUGH of Tim Cook. He is absolutely incompetent.
FIRE Tim Cook!
Just sell your shares and be done with it.
I love my Watch. I wish it could be 10X louder so that I can use it as an alarm. I need a Foghorn or Diesel Truck Horn to even budge me in the morning. That or a swift kick in the head. 😛
When I first got my Apple WATCH I would just attach it to the mag-charger and lie it flat on the nightstand. Shortly after nightstand mode was announced, I ordered a SPIGEN Apple Watch Stand from Amazon for $11 – it allows WATCH to be charged while on it’s side, so that nightstand mode works – and it supports the WATCH so button pushes for time display and snooze can be used.
I was so impressed with this little dock, I bought a second SPIGEN stand and Apple mag-charger to put in my “travel chargers” bag when traveling. Never have to worry about leaving the house without a WATCH charger now – it’s always in the bag with additional iPhone and iPad chargers & cables.
Good job spotting the Spigen! And the right price!
The one in the Apple Store (Elevation Lab) is $30. I thought it pricey for a hunk of rubber.
The new charger is too big—why the big lip to make it the size of a saucer for a cup? White? $80? Ugh.
I bought one of those elevation stands and returned it. They don’t support the WATCH so when you go to press the button to see the time, or push the digital crown to snooze, it falls off.
The writing is on the wall for iPhone 7 wireless charging.
I’m sorry, and I know some of you may disagree, but that charger is too large, too expensive, and too much a unitasker for me. Frankly, I think it’s ugly too.
Really, who wants a big white plastic donut on their nightstand? The watches aren’t white. Did we create a charger to match the cable rather than the watch?
IMHO, someone at Apple needs to stand up (pun intended) to John Ive from time to time and say, “hey, I know from a design perspective it’s beautiful, but from a common-man perspective, it’s too much.”
It looks like one of those ‘roid donuts for your ass. Just sayin’…
hardware is still second to none, software has become a bad joke.
It reminds me a lot of the Motorola V70 charging stand (with clock) that I had what seems like eons ago. It was big, plastic, and round.
And there is something somehow cheap looking about this Apple product. Perhaps it’s the chrome on white look, which is very chinese to me. The Spigen looks to be more practical, more useful, and better designed for night table use, (after all, who has a night table with any frakkin’ room on it, anyway?!), than the Apple stand. And there’s also something unsettling and disturbing about how Apple is price pointing things recently.
I use my iPhone and Digital Clock app to display the time all night, so if I awake and glance at the iPhone propped against a lamp on my dresser, I know what time it is. I would like to switch to Nightstand Mode on my Watch for this purpose but it only shows the time if touched. What can’t it always show the time while it’s connected to the charger? Frustrating!