The Apple Watch Reviews Are Brutal

heatlesssun said:
The iPad is a lot different situation, at least to me. I've long been a tablet fan and pretty much figured that the iPad would do well. It did better than I expected however in recent times I think it's current price and limitations have capped it's growth.

Having a touch based mobile computer to read on or surface the web on or take notes all is readily obvious functions for a general purpose tablet. Not really sure what the readily obvious functions are for a smartwatch that requires a smartphone in the first place.
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What's holding them back a tad is they control their own market. No-one else can make first tier products for their ecosystem. They could come up with a Surface3 like convertible laptop for their users - but they won't. Why? Because they want you to own both. They aren't competing with themselves in their own ecosystem.

Flip it to Microsoft/Google and the mass amount of first tier product makers drives a competitive innovation race. Every 6-12months someone tries to one up the other.

This is why I think they get surpassed. Yes, they're great when they are first out of the gate to get the indoctrination / loyalty. But they fumbled the Watch and are already 3 generations behind other companies. Heck, I think MS properly identified the market for smart watches with their health based band. They didn't go smartwatch, they entered a thriving market with a nice device.
 
Spidey329 said:
What's holding them back a tad is they control their own market. No-one else can make first tier products for their ecosystem. They could come up with a Surface3 like convertible laptop for their users - but they won't. Why? Because they want you to own both. They aren't competing with themselves in their own ecosystem.

Flip it to Microsoft/Google and the mass amount of first tier product makers drives a competitive innovation race. Every 6-12months someone tries to one up the other.

This is why I think they get surpassed. Yes, they're great when they are first out of the gate to get the indoctrination / loyalty. But they fumbled the Watch and are already 3 generations behind other companies. Heck, I think MS properly identified the market for smart watches with their health based band. They didn't go smartwatch, they entered a thriving market with a nice device.
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Apple is a hardware company and virtually all of their non-hardware efforts are about supporting their hardware. It's obviously a great and enormously successful business model for them even if they in the end aren't the unit leader as they are the profit leader by a wide margin.
 
Ducman69 said:
average aging hipster liberal douche leftist
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Where I'm from (michigan) it's almost the other way around. Older conservative right-wingers are the apple fans but they complain non-stop about how complicating technology is taking over their lives and they can't even learn how to use their freezer anymore before it keeps throwing an SMTP error. Chalk it up to being gullible and misinformed. I don't know any true techie who thinks apple stuff is the best at anything.
 
Youn said:
I don't know any true techie who thinks apple stuff is the best at anything.
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I consider myself reasonably technically literate and Apple's mobile products tend to be top notch at reaching average people. This tends to be grossly underestimated by Apple bashers. A product can be packed full of features but if the product doesn't resonate with the rank and file it will have a hard time being successful.

That said Apple products can be limited to those who might appreciate more functionality at the cost of ease of use.
 
Has there ever been a wrist watch that, except for the basic function of checking the time, did not require you to use your other hand to access whatever additional functions it offered or to look at it while doing so?

Hell, the first LED watches required you to push a button to see what time it was due to the power draw of those LEDs.
 
Ducman69 said:
Step 4: Give it to average aging hipster liberal douche leftist press that will do all your marketing for you.
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I would be embarrassed to wear one of these for just that reason. I'm not one of those, but i know people who saw me wearing an Apple Smartwatch would be thinking i was. I know i'm going to be thinking that's what anybody wearing one is.
 
As an early smartwatch adopter all of these complaints people have are just typical firstimer newb complaints that even I had. They have never used a smartwatch before so their initial impressions are mixed. From what I have read based on features and reviews, the Apple Watch is mostly the same as any Android Watch. It does nothing better and nothing worse. It has mostly the same features and shortcoming, and ultimately will be used in exactly the same manner as the rest of us have been, primarily for email and text messaging.
 
pigpen said:
I would be embarrassed to wear one of these for just that reason. I'm not one of those, but i know people who saw me wearing an Apple Smartwatch would be thinking i was. I know i'm going to be thinking that's what anybody wearing one is.
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Well, some people are just sad and judgemental like that....

-----

In my opinion, the dire battery life is the big killer here. Well, that and the minor detail that my phone runs Android. Also, the fact that I haven't worn a watch in over a decade.
 
heatlesssun said:
Apple has a knack of making significant refinements to existing products and making them highly desirable to the mass market, the latest example of that being the iPad which revolutionized tablets.

I don't think that's going to happen in this case.
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Agreed, for all the hate, they have a good track record of combining existing technology into a better, more polished and attractive package that is more mass-market friendly. That's what they're good at - you can call that innovation in a way, but they're absolutely not the core inventors of 99.9% of this technology like their blind follower think.

Cali3350 said:
To call the iPhone anything other than paradigm shifting for the market is disingenuous at best.

Yes, PDA's and phones that could do 'smart' things existed before then, and yes, Apple didnt really do anything with the iPhone that hadnt been done before. But it sure as hell put it together, packaged it, and made the experience better than anyone else did, and made their competitors do almost total 180's in how they approached the market.

To not call that a huge achievement and worthy of praise is absurd.

But thats the iPhone. This thing aint the iPhone. I dont actually know anyone even interested in this. Im VERY curious to see how sales go.
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Agreed. The watch seems to be a departure; I wonder if Apple actually felt some pressure to get it out there with the competitors in the market.
 
XenIneX said:
In my opinion, the dire battery life is the big killer here. Well, that and the minor detail that my phone runs Android. Also, the fact that I haven't worn a watch in over a decade.
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Ya, the only way IMO this would even make sense from a pure conceptual standpoint, is if it replaced your phone.

But it can't do that with this product, you can't comfortably wear a large enough LCD on your wrist, speakerphone is annoying to people and hardly anyone wears bluetooth earpieces anymore (except in the hood, whats up with that? everyone in the ghetto by me has a earpiece lol!), and if you make it easily dockable so you can take it out to browse the web and play games and use it as a GPS like you do your phone then there's a higher chance of dropping something that small. It just really doesn't make sense to me, and just ends up being a redundant device that you have to remember to keep charged.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Agreed, for all the hate, they have a good track record of combining existing technology into a better, more polished and attractive package that is more mass-market friendly. That's what they're good at - you can call that innovation in a way, but they're absolutely not the core inventors of 99.9% of this technology like their blind follower think.
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No one thinks that except for the people on this forum projecting what they think about Apple users onto Apple users.

Someone already posted a picture of two guys having a conversation with a macbook sitting next to them and decided that they are "average aging hipster liberal douche leftist" and he threw in "pinko" as an afterthought. Is he basing it on the macbook? The beards? The suspenders?

They just look like normal grad students to me and if you asked them if Apple invented the macbook in front of them they would either think you were stupid or think you thought they were stupid and probably troll you in either case and tell you everything you think they'd say.

I mean, you guys totally "invented" these insults. Completely original, no one's heard them before :rolleyes:
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
One can always count on the the ducky69 to find a political slant in something that has nothing to do with politics. :D
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Just like liberals, Apple fans don't respond well to getting their buttons pushed, vehemently push their opinion on folks, then demean others when they don't get their way. I think his point was absolutely relevant.
 
Flapjack said:
Just like liberals, Apple fans don't respond well to getting their buttons pushed, vehemently push their opinion on folks, then demean others when they don't get their way. I think his point was absolutely relevant.
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I don't think those sorts of reactions to criticisms are in any way limited to a certain political party or acknowledge barriers related to the branding of a product someone purchases. In fact, they're purely human traits that are exhibited everywhere. Categorizing them as the domain of a specific group of people be it related to politics or a brand of consumer electronics demonstrates a very narrow perspective, a lack of understanding of human psychology, and set of personal biases that evokes emotions that override reason and inhibit the ability to think critically. It's about the same as a girl in school flipping out and looking disgusted over someone that had the nerve to wear GAP instead of Ambercrombie & Fitch (and shows about the same level of maturity too). :D
 
Flapjack said:
Just like liberals, Apple fans don't respond well to getting their buttons pushed, vehemently push their opinion on folks, then demean others when they don't get their way. I think his point was absolutely relevant.
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This is why we're doomed; you're literally doing what you're claiming "liberals" do in the same breath. 2 sides of the same coin.
 
Flapjack said:
Just like liberals, Apple fans don't respond well to getting their buttons pushed, vehemently push their opinion on folks, then demean others when they don't get their way. I think his point was absolutely relevant.
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Because everyone besides liberals and Apple fans respond well to criticism. /s
 
Ducman69 said:
Yes, it absolutely shifted paradigms and engaged sexy technologies with the convergence of bleeding-edge holistic and innovative turn-key solutions that recontextualized dynamic architecture to cultivate revolutionary platforms.
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Ok Steve
 
Ducman69 said:
Ya, the only way IMO this would even make sense from a pure conceptual standpoint, is if it replaced your phone.

But it can't do that with this product, you can't comfortably wear a large enough LCD on your wrist, speakerphone is annoying to people and hardly anyone wears bluetooth earpieces anymore (except in the hood, whats up with that? everyone in the ghetto by me has a earpiece lol!), and if you make it easily dockable so you can take it out to browse the web and play games and use it as a GPS like you do your phone then there's a higher chance of dropping something that small. It just really doesn't make sense to me, and just ends up being a redundant device that you have to remember to keep charged.
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I thought the same things but went out on a limb and bought one anyway after demo'ing a unit at a Verizon store. I'd say the primary purpose is to relieve yourself of that tech anxiety wondering what your phone is notifying you about if you receive a lot of notifications. Some people grow tired of checking their phones yet at the same time do not want to disable any notifications, so they are stuck with a vibrating pocket of mystery at times of the day. The watch solves this. It's also fun in a sense that you can a selection of pretty watchfaces to swap between giving you the feeling of a themed device.

I dont actually find it redundant since it saves me the hassle of having to adjust my seating posture to remove a phone or worry about leaving one out on my desk all the time. A quick glance at my wrist and I know that my g/f simply responded to my last message an hour ago with "k".
 
Cali3350 said:
To call the iPhone anything other than paradigm shifting for the market is disingenuous at best.

Yes, PDA's and phones that could do 'smart' things existed before then, and yes, Apple didnt really do anything with the iPhone that hadnt been done before. But it sure as hell put it together, packaged it, and made the experience better than anyone else did, and made their competitors do almost total 180's in how they approached the market.

To not call that a huge achievement and worthy of praise is absurd.

But thats the iPhone. This thing aint the iPhone. I dont actually know anyone even interested in this. Im VERY curious to see how sales go.
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LG prada released 6 months before the iphone did and looked pretty much exactly the same. Yet you and most people conveniently forget this thing existed. And the media whom all were ipod / apple fans thought it better to sweep it under the rug. Just the same as how apple pretty much copied archos for the ipod and the ipad and you can barely find a person who knows about those products.
 
rudy said:
LG prada released 6 months before the iphone did and looked pretty much exactly the same. Yet you and most people conveniently forget this thing existed. And the media whom all were ipod / apple fans thought it better to sweep it under the rug. Just the same as how apple pretty much copied archos for the ipod and the ipad and you can barely find a person who knows about those products.
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surprisingly, no one remembers market turds :rolleyes:

iPhone wins. Here's why:

The LG is smaller, sure. It's a better size, for an un-smartphone.It's the nicest LG I've ever seen. But it often uses it's touchscreen to boring effect. There is no interface advantage here. You touch buttons on screen to scroll and click around, much like a Palm or WM6 Phone. The menu design itself is similar to that on any high end LG phone, like, say the Shine. The 3-inch diagonal comes in useful as the entirety of it becomes a viewfinder in camera mode. The touchscreen let's you drag the home screen's clock around, and that fishy in the photo above is actually "touchable". And it ships with some touchscreen games. But generally speaking, it operates just like a regular phone. No revolutionary usage models here, either.

The iPhone uses it's touchscreen to zoom photos and webpages, flick scroll through long lists. iPhone has all the iTunes and data syncing integration built in, and the neato factor of coverflow. iPhone has networked widget compatibility for weather, stocks (yawn), and who knows what else is coming down the line. The Prada's sync software is rudimentary, allowing you to transfer contacts and calendar appointments. The Prada does have 3G, although that may be in Europe only flavors, while the iPhone only has EDGE and WiFi. (Since this is an import phone for the foreseeable future, it's likely.) The LG's 3-inch screen is 240 x 400. The Apple's is 3.5 inches, at 320 x 480. 8GB vs whatever you can fit into the LG's few megs of internal mem, plus the microSD slot. The browser sucks on the LG phone. LG phone has the advantage of being able to run J2ME progs. And has SMS and IM, which IMO are very obvious things that the iPhone should have. (Firmware!)

The Prada would be a good phone, the nicest non-business user touchscreen phone, I can think of at the moment. But at $700-850 bucks, it's just way too expensive. The iPhone isn't perfect, but the amount of innovation it has pushes it into another class. This is a really stupid comparison: iPhone wins. (The better comparison is iPhone to Helio Ocean of N95. – Brian Lam
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-- http://gizmodo.com/261172/settling-this-iphone-vs-lg-prada-nonsense (shortly before the iPhone released)
 
rudy said:
LG prada released 6 months before the iphone did and looked pretty much exactly the same. Yet you and most people conveniently forget this thing existed. And the media whom all were ipod / apple fans thought it better to sweep it under the rug. Just the same as how apple pretty much copied archos for the ipod and the ipad and you can barely find a person who knows about those products.
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I don't think the post you quoted was at all citing product originality or being first to market with something. Often industry leaders aren't the companies that bring the product to the shelves the soonest. The point being made is that sales demonstrated that the iPhone was what people wanted to purchase. If the consumer had been interested in an LG product, then [H] users would be busy accusing people who buy LG phones as being hipsters or communists or whatever else instead of people who buy Apple stuff. It's a competitive market and consumers spoke their mind though their purchases.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I don't think the post you quoted was at all citing product originality or being first to market with something. Often industry leaders aren't the companies that bring the product to the shelves the soonest. The point being made is that sales demonstrated that the iPhone was what people wanted to purchase. If the consumer had been interested in an LG product, then [H] users would be busy accusing people who buy LG phones as being hipsters or communists or whatever else instead of people who buy Apple stuff. It's a competitive market and consumers spoke their mind though their purchases.
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It was pretty implied, people cite apple for being fist with a full touch screen phone and capacitive, if you ask common people everywhere that is exactly what they will tell you is so great about the iphone. Yet it was false. You almost never hear any of these people EVER saying shit like oh yeah I compared the prada and the iphone and preferred the iphone for this or that. Same with archos products. The only revolution apple brought to the table was a marketing presence the likes of which none of these other companies could do, and the reason? It was because the marketing industry was loaded with closeted mactards who all used macs and they were waiting for any day for apple to make a comeback and then they would give it massive unwarranted publicity. And prior to the ipod they tried many times to make apple a hit. I remember all the way back the fruity macs that everyone remembers but no one bought (think about that mope) how apple would constantly get way more publicity than a company of that size and market presence ever warranted. It was constant, companies 3x their size would get no coverage on anything they did and the same holds true today.
 
The watch is dead. We've already got Watch 2.0 -- it's called the smartphone. Who really wants a stamp-sized screen, and then strapped immovable to an appendage like medieval times?

It's a bunch of industry mouth-breathing that's gotten impatient without Jobs' divine touch rolling out the next big thing in recent years. The smart-watch is the fat kid leftover in the dodgeball lineup, so they grabbed him in desperation, tried polishing him up a bit, and are now trying to throw him back into the arena to a thunderous blasting of "The Final Countdown". But no one's fooled (or should be).

It's something out of a Ben Stiller movie, or something.
 
Coldblackice said:
The watch is dead. We've already got Watch 2.0 -- it's called the smartphone. Who really wants a stamp-sized screen, and then strapped immovable to an appendage like medieval times?

It's a bunch of industry mouth-breathing that's gotten impatient without Jobs' divine touch rolling out the next big thing in recent years. The smart-watch is the fat kid leftover in the dodgeball lineup, so they grabbed him in desperation, tried polishing him up a bit, and are now trying to throw him back into the arena to a thunderous blasting of "The Final Countdown". But no one's fooled (or should be).

It's something out of a Ben Stiller movie, or something.
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Perhaps real watches for the common slob are dead. I'm perfectly fine watching the garbage most people call watches disappear and they become symbols of the more educated and refined again. You are right though, smart watches are nothing but a desperate grab at a market that doesn't exist and only appeals to those with zero sense of taste or style.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Perhaps real watches for the common slob are dead. I'm perfectly fine watching the garbage most people call watches disappear and they become symbols of the more educated and refined again. You are right though, smart watches are nothing but a desperate grab at a market that doesn't exist and only appeals to those with zero sense of taste or style.
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Pardon me, could you pass the Grey Poupon?
 
At first, I thought the iPhone was a Blackberry knockoff (and it was/still is) - until I saw Visual Voicemail - that was the feature that sold it, to me at least.

At first, I thought the iPad was pretty pointless too - until I sat down with one at home, and could take a full page, (mostly) non-compromised web page from desk to couch to toilet to bed. And it had a very Star Trek vibe that worked well.

Watch - I don't know. I don't see a hook on it yet. Yeah, there's a Dick Tracy thing to it, but that isn't really new. Apple is pitching the haptic feedback and health monitoring as hooks - I don't know that it will be enough.

As one other poster said - This will be the first product without Steve putting his reality distortion on it - and I think this is probably the product that needs it the most of all products they have recently released.

I don't feel obligated to rush out and buy one, or even to rush out and demo one. But if I happened to see one out in the wild I'd be interested enough to at least take a look. I won't write it off as a copycat or a disaster, but I won't harp it as the next home run must have either.
 
Ridiculous... The Apple Watch is going to do exactly what all other first gen Apple products do, completely change the category its launched in and become the defacto standard.

They are going to sell millions, its going to inspire almost all tech companies to release wearable tech. The reviews are absurd... Same clickbait they had at the iPad launch.

Remember the iPad launch everyone universally hated it... looking back its easy to see the iPad changed the landscape and set the standard.

There is a reason Apple is as popular as they are, because they do shit right, they put more care into every nook and cranny of their products than everyone else.

People are gonna hate on them because they want to be "different" now that Apple is the richest company in the world...

Bring the hate now.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
One can always count on the the ducky69 to find a political slant in something that has nothing to do with politics. :D
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^This - aren't these people the best thing to happen to the internet... ever??!! Now flappy is picking up the slack where ducky left off! Stay classy guys, but don't forget to head over to CNN, Reuters, and the BBC to let them know how smart and clever you are before you get offline! :rolleyes:
 
Coldblackice said:
The watch is dead. We've already got Watch 2.0 -- it's called the smartphone. Who really wants a stamp-sized screen, and then strapped immovable to an appendage like medieval times?

It's a bunch of industry mouth-breathing that's gotten impatient without Jobs' divine touch rolling out the next big thing in recent years. The smart-watch is the fat kid leftover in the dodgeball lineup, so they grabbed him in desperation, tried polishing him up a bit, and are now trying to throw him back into the arena to a thunderous blasting of "The Final Countdown". But no one's fooled (or should be).

It's something out of a Ben Stiller movie, or something.
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The watch is very much alive among the educated and affluent/successful. The "smart" watch, well that died before it was conceived due to the fact the hipsters that it is marketed to find watches "uncool" and "unnecessary".
 
I think it will fail. I just think it is too small to do anything remotely useful. Aside from its basic function of being a watch (with low battery life), what does it do better than a phone?
 
veilv0x said:
Ridiculous... The Apple Watch is going to do exactly what all other first gen Apple products do, completely change the category its launched in and become the defacto standard.

They are going to sell millions, its going to inspire almost all tech companies to release wearable tech. The reviews are absurd... Same clickbait they had at the iPad launch.

Remember the iPad launch everyone universally hated it... looking back its easy to see the iPad changed the landscape and set the standard.

There is a reason Apple is as popular as they are, because they do shit right, they put more care into every nook and cranny of their products than everyone else.

People are gonna hate on them because they want to be "different" now that Apple is the richest company in the world...

Bring the hate now.
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Nice paid endorsement.
 
rudy said:
It was pretty implied, people cite apple for being fist with a full touch screen phone and capacitive, if you ask common people everywhere that is exactly what they will tell you is so great about the iphone. Yet it was false. You almost never hear any of these people EVER saying shit like oh yeah I compared the prada and the iphone and preferred the iphone for this or that. Same with archos products. The only revolution apple brought to the table was a marketing presence the likes of which none of these other companies could do, and the reason? It was because the marketing industry was loaded with closeted mactards who all used macs and they were waiting for any day for apple to make a comeback and then they would give it massive unwarranted publicity. And prior to the ipod they tried many times to make apple a hit. I remember all the way back the fruity macs that everyone remembers but no one bought (think about that mope) how apple would constantly get way more publicity than a company of that size and market presence ever warranted. It was constant, companies 3x their size would get no coverage on anything they did and the same holds true today.
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what am I supposed to be thinking about?

to be honest I'm still kind of floored by your statement that Prada doesn't have the marketing clout that Apple has.

You know Prada isn't a tech company, right?
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I don't think those sorts of reactions to criticisms are in any way limited to a certain political party or acknowledge barriers related to the branding of a product someone purchases. In fact, they're purely human traits that are exhibited everywhere. Categorizing them as the domain of a specific group of people be it related to politics or a brand of consumer electronics demonstrates a very narrow perspective, a lack of understanding of human psychology, and set of personal biases that evokes emotions that override reason and inhibit the ability to think critically. It's about the same as a girl in school flipping out and looking disgusted over someone that had the nerve to wear GAP instead of Ambercrombie & Fitch (and shows about the same level of maturity too). :D
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Well... it was mostly a joke, but since you brought it up....

I engage in a LOT of political debate. Almost my entire family in New England are on the liberal side of the coin (though many have been shifting towards conservative, as of late). What I have noticed, in talking with them (and others outside my family) is that liberals are quick to anger, and very often resort to anger or hateful names/accusations when the debate doesn't go their way. Now, this could be because I let stuff upset me less... though I doubt it, as many things get me fired up.

Your comment, while not hateful, was definitely accusatory. I am neither immature, nor lacking in an understanding of human psychology. Actually, I pride myself in knowing and understanding how people think and behave than most. I'm no expert, of course, but I am very interested in how different minds think.

For instance, while my gut wanted me to judge this article as "biased", I still read the whole thing... and was very interested nonetheless:

Differences in Conservative and Liberal Brains
http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004818

As for specifically iPhone usage, I read that the majority of diehard Apple fans also considered themselves liberal. I was mostly being sarcastic when I posted the first time, but I also have to consider how most of my political debates go, and how similar they are to the various "android vs iphone" debates I've had.

When I refer to these debates, they typically end with these kind of statements:

You believe that because:
- you have low intelligence
- you are a right-wing nut
- you are homophobic
- sexist
- racist

I find the whole thing humorous. All of my conservative college, work, gay, black, straight, women, etc friends will disagree with all of those statements and say that I'm none of the above. But liberals who don't know me well will automatically refer to one of the above (or others) when they cannot get me to agree to their views.

You see this all around. It is very common for a political debate to end with one of the above accusations. What I have also noticed is that iPhone vs Android debates seem to trend along the same lines. I can almost 100% reliably ask that person, at the end of the discussion, if they are a liberal. They would be.

TwistedAegis said:
This is why we're doomed; you're literally doing what you're claiming "liberals" do in the same breath. 2 sides of the same coin.
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heatlesssun said:
Because everyone besides liberals and Apple fans respond well to criticism. /s
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Flapjack said:
What I have also noticed is that iPhone vs Android debates seem to trend along the same lines. I can almost 100% reliably ask that person, at the end of the discussion, if they are a liberal. They would be.
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So what was your point? That liberals like to buy phones from American companies and conservatives like to support foreign companies like Samsung, Little Giant, etc? Or is it that Liberals like the more tried and true, but less bleading edge hardware and Conservatives like rooted/ run whatever apps no matter how dangerous phones? What the heck does liberal and conservative even mean any more?

Why bother trying to judge and compartmentalize people based on their phones when there are way too many variables to cleanly do so.
 
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