Where Apple went wrong with Apple Watch or something

“Apple’s position in the market now is much more analogous to Microsoft’s, back when Microsoft was trying to navigate the shift from the PC to mobile,” James Allworth writes for Medium. “And it appears that Apple has fallen into exactly the same trap. Rather than start anew — with a beginner’s mind… they’ve tried to take the last paradigm and just jam it into the new one. The old has bled into the new. The result, at least as it stands now: just like Microsoft did, Apple knows what needs to be built — a phone-disrupting device. It’s just that they can’t bring themselves to let go of the past in order to do the job properly.”

“The result is a product that is half-intended to rely the iPhone, and half-intended to replace it. It’s part mimicking the iPhone, and halfway to reimagining it. Well, where I’m from, we have a term for this: one foot on either side of a barbed-wire fence,” Allworth writes. “As a result, Apple are leaving themselves open to exactly the same fate that befell Microsoft back in 2007: Slipping.”

“Right now, Amazon are sitting atop one of the most promising platform-like products that has emerged post-smartphone: the Echo,” Allworth writes. “Rather than try to supplement the phone, Amazon understood the way in which you’d engage with a device at home was fundamentally different from the way that you’d engage with a device like a phone outside of the home. And so they didn’t try to add a whole host of interaction features from the previous paradigm. There was none of Microsoft’s adding keyboards and styluses to their phones. Nor was there any of Apple‘s three modes of interaction for its Watch (through a dial, through voice, through a touch screen; and with a home screen full of apps, too… a kitchen sink design effort if ever there was one).”

“Instead, you interact with the Echo just one way. And just as Apple nailed the touch screen of the iPhone because that was the only was to interact with the device, Amazon have completely nailed the interaction method of the Echo: voice,” Allworth writes. “It really is awesome.”

Tons more – recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Take: Apple Watch is a diamond in the rough. It’s a foothold in the market.

Because it was released when it was released, in the state it was released, there are 12+ million Apple Watch users with 97% satisfaction rates who are going to buy the next Apple Watch, not something else. And, when the technology gets there, Apple will cannibalize portions of the iPhone experience (think: GPS in the Watch or in the Apple Smartband for the Watch).

But, and this is a big BUT and also the flaw in Allworth’s argument: The smartwatch is not the product that supplants the smartphone. This is due in large part to display size. Apple has it right: The smartwatch offloads some important aspects of the smartphone experience*.

The smartwatch doesn’t replace the smartphone, it augments it.

Apple offers three modes of interaction for Apple Watch because the size of the display dictates all three input modes for various functions and usage situations (running in the park vs. dining at a restaurant, working in a quiet office vs. standing in a stadium full of cheering fans, etcetera; yes, the wrist goes everywhere).

When “Product X” arises (the product that supplants the smartphone) then Apple – if they’re operating correctly; meaning: if the execs in charge paid attention at Apple University – will have been the company that developed it and they will cannibalize the iPhone with “Product X” just as they cannibalized iPod with iPhone (and are cannibalizing Mac with iPad, however glacially).

So, Allworth has this important bit wrong: The Apple Watch wasn’t “half-intended to rely the iPhone, and half-intended to replace it.” The Apple Watch was intended to augment the iPhone and that’s exactly what it does. Due its tiny screen, it simply can’t replace the iPhone in toto (it can only replace a subset of the iPhone functions where the display size is not the limiting factor). Can it be improved? Of course. And Apple will certainly do so.

Who, besides Allworth, says there needs to be “a phone-disrupting device?” What’s wrong with the iPhone that it needs to be disrupted? Nothing.

Things that need to be disrupted have glaring flaws: Mechanical portable music payers with cassette tapes that hold an hour of music and have to be fast-forwarded and rewound to hear songs, a music business that charges $18 for plastic discs containing one good song, or automobiles that pollute the air their drivers need to breathe (hint, hint).

The iPhone remains a technological marvel – it’s a freakin’ Mac in your pocket!!! It was and is amazing and it will remain so for the foreseeable future. iPhone does not cry out to be disrupted.

And, yes, Amazon Echo is a great product – although it does come with privacy concerns as you might imagine with a microphone-equipped device that’s “always listening” in your home.

*We haven’t checked the time, the weather, sports scores, used the calculator, or set an alarm or timer with our iPhones since the day we first strapped Apple Watches to our wrists. We have, in large part, stopped using our iPhones for quick messaging and for turn-by-turn directions. It’s all done via Apple Watch in much quicker fashion.