iWatch

These things launched yesterday in my country, so naturally I was there on day one. No 'proper' Apple Store where I live, but the main Apple retailer's store was fairly packed. Much more than I expected, today brought out all the geeks it seems. I had to queue for like half an hour just to buy one, and I'd made a pre-reservation.

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First impressions: bought the 42mm Sport version (because it's expensive enough as it is) with the white strap, and this thing looks and feels SWEET. Not sure what planet the people who ragged on the aluminium Watch come from, but they're alien for sure, because the anodized matte silvery finish is absolutely flawless, with a pearly shine to it, and the weight is just right too. Enough to make the product feel solid, but not so much it becomes bulky. The elastomer strap is silky smooth to the touch, and very very supple, quite unlike any other synthetic strap I've ever held - or worn.

The OLED display works well enough in direct sunlight - it's not super bright exactly, but I can decipher text and such. The taptic vibrator definitely makes itself felt on high, but I notice it on low as well, and from what I can tell it is dead silent too (at arm's distance anyway.)

Initial setup was relatively quick and painless, but left my Watch set to English language rather than mirroring the preset in my phone. Weird! Anyway, it's just one change away in the settings app on the iPhone, but one unneeded change it felt like. Maybe they'll fix someday... *shrug* Kinda weird that most settings are made in a separate app on iPhone rather than in a tab in the main settings app, or on the Watch itself. Feels a bit kludgy, and an aspect I expect them to iterate on in the future.

Today I went for a walk, to try out the exercise features a bit. ...It works, is probably what I can say about that. :) The Watch gives you a tap on the wrist for every kilometer, when activating the display it shows distance, time, calories spent, or you can flip to show the heartrate instead and so on. Kinda cool, in a geeky sort of way.

As nice as this watch is, its resident software isn't as polished (yet) as iOS. Screen updates and scrolling jerk and hitch at times, touchscreen is slightly unresponsive sometimes, and lack of configuration options cause some annoyances. "Glances" for example is bite-sized info screens accessed by swiping up from the time display, showing stuff like weather/temp, texts, tweets, battery capacity and so on. Problem is, you can't change the order of these so those you like looking at appear grouped together, or set which you want to show up at all. Most people probably don't give a shit about stock quotes for example but that Glance is always there, for everyone, and from what I can tell can't be disabled. The stocks app on the Watch cannot be disabled either as it's part of Apple's own suite. It'll clutter up your launch screen regardless if you need or want it or not.

One other con I noticed pretty quickly (and which I was ready for after having worn all those G-shocks in the past), but still made me cringe: you get sweaty wearing it. Very. Or well, I do anyway. It has to sit fairly snugly on the arm for the heartrate sensor to be accurate.

Second, bigger con: I have now worn that thing for a bunch of hours in public, around thousands of people, and nobody has noticed my new Apple Watch and stopped me, asking about it!
(This is sarcasm, btw...)
 
So, did you figure out what the point of this device actually is?
For me, the point is to have it mainly as a timepiece. I've always worn watches, since I was in first grade, except for the past couple years because my then-current Polar exercise watch was stolen in a locker room. I felt naked for a long time after that, but didn't feel there was anything I really wanted to spend money on. Casio didn't make any interesting stuff anymore, and Polar wasn't really my thing either (in addition to being rather expensive.)

With today's smart devices that connect to time servers on the internet to automatically set time, it felt stupid to have a separate thing on my wrist which drifted and had to be manually adjusted regularly to keep it accurate. I did look at a Seiko kinetic mechanical watch with GPS receiver to keep time accurate not too long ago, but it was seriously fuckhell expensive (for me), so I was like...umm, no.

And then Apple showed this thing, and I thought, "finally!" :D
So I guess the point is to sell to idiots like me? Lol.

To be fair, Apple Watch does more for me than just track the time. The exercise stuff is something I hope I will get use of, because I don't move nearly enough as it is. Getting texts and notifications on my wrist instead of deep down in my pocket is also handy, especially wintertime when I don't want to have to pull off my glove and dig the phone out of my pants and fiddle with it while icy winds and snow and shit is flying around me. Control music playback from my wrist, again without having to dig out the phone and unlock it. Maps and directions, on the wrist, with taps to let you know which way to turn. Stuff of that sort. Most people would maybe say, "well I'm not paying US$350+ for THAT!", but IDC, you know? Because I'm a geek, and to me this thing will serve a purpose.

Then there's the whole Apple Pay bit too which my phone can't do because it doesn't have NFC, but the Watch does, except Apple Pay isn't enabled in Sweden yet, and I'm betting won't be either until after I've upgraded to a new phone...but theoretically, I could have paid for a terrible burger at McDonald's by waving my watch at a terminal, if I wanted to.
 
No one said that you were an idiot. Don't begin with drama.

This device is not a watch. It is everything else with the function to show time as well, and you can put on your wrist.

You can always optimise your spendings with something really worth. You see that your country Sweden is not even fully supported?
Then why do you support them?
 
You can always optimise your spendings with something really worth. You see that your country Sweden is not even fully supported?
Then why do you support them?

Maybe it has enough features to be worthwhile? I can't use PSNow in sweden but still I have a PSVita.
 
It's just Apple Pay which doesn't work, but then again, it doesn't work on iPhone either, are people supposed to toss their phones because of one feature which isn't implemented yet? Universal's off his rockers as usual. :p

By the way, the only countries which have Apple Pay right now is the U.S., Canada IIRC and the U.K., and in the latter one you're capped in purchases at like £40 or something like that (possibly due to gov't regulations; I'm not entirely sure why this is the case), so even if you were to go to say, do grocery shopping for your family you would quickly hit the cap.

More countries will follow undoubtedly because this will be a way for Apple to leech money from all of your purchases, not just those from the App Store or iTunes Store, but as it requires striking deals with local banks and credit card entities in each country and getting gov't certification and so on, getting worldwide support for this feature will take years and years (and possibly years.)
 
Yes but we were thinking it :D
yes and the reason Grall noone noticed your watch is the same reason ppl dont look at a deformed hunchback, as your mum saiz 'its impolite to stare' trust me,they were cracking up with laughter as soon as your back was turned :LOL:

Still no word on sales numbers?
 
It's ok to stare when you are extremely impressed by something/somebody. You are not doing anything wrong.

Anyways, I think Casio and Panasonic, and Sony would do a smartwatch for me. You can stay with your beloved fruity.co. :LOL:
 
yes and the reason Grall noone noticed your watch is the same reason ppl dont look at a deformed hunchback, as your mum saiz 'its impolite to stare' trust me,they were cracking up with laughter as soon as your back was turned :LOL:

Still no word on sales numbers?

I've seen reports that sales have plummeted since introduction. But what I've seen has all been anecdotal. This could potentially be Apple's biggest failure since the Apple 3. :p Or just a mediocre product like Apple TV. Or reports are wrong and it's still selling well.

Regards,
SB
 
I've seen reports that sales have plummeted since introduction. But what I've seen has all been anecdotal. This could potentially be Apple's biggest failure since the Apple 3. :p Or just a mediocre product like Apple TV. Or reports are wrong and it's still selling well.
Or it has already sold a certain number of units (I've seen an estimate of 4M?), which some interpret at huge and others as a disaster. ;)
 
I've seen reports that sales have plummeted since introduction.
Yes of course sales has plummeted; all the early adopters in the first wave of countries have already bought theirs, and most people don't need, want or know about smartwatches. It's a niche product, but still the best selling smartwatch on the market, by far.

The store where I bought mine has alledgedly almost sold out of all of their product, but again, early adopters, so continuous sales will of course be less. I went back today to buy a second charge cable for my laptop bag, it's fascinating to see the people looking at and asking about the Watch. Not all of them by far are the traditional geek or apple fan-type person. Saw a short, rotund lady in her mid-50s for example expressing interest, standing next to a tanned slim 16-ish lad (would have been "surfer dude" in cali or hawaii :p) with long, mussy sunbleached hair who was there with what appeared his dad and older brother.
 
well on the way then, to the forecast 36 million in the first year :oops:

That's only potentially 12 million in a year for the US. Maybe more, maybe less depending on holiday season sales as most of those sales were in the first month.

Not sure what their sales are like in the rest of the world. I don't track Apple much, so not sure if rest of world >= 2/3 of all Apple sales.

Regards,
SB
 
36 million is pure guesswork of course, or perhaps deliberately wishful thinking put out by entities interested in pumping Apple's stock. I'd be surprised if Apple Watch sales hit anywhere near this in the first year; even though people who have used other smartwatches say Apple Watch is the best of the lot on the market right now, the product is both quite expensive and still obviously immature. There's quirks, rough edges and so on.

Some of it will be fixed in WatchOS 2 this autumn, but I doubt Apple manages to fix everything people have complained about in their first iteration, that would be like, a miracle... :p
 
In the conf call, Cook said that instead of plummeting after early adopters buying, sales have accelerate with the highest volume in July. And based on revenue in the 'other', the watch revenue should be higher than $1B. Or significantly higher than, say, the Microsoft Surface.

The watch isn't for me, yet, but I think it'll do just fine.
 
According to Macrumors, some analyst firm claims Apple captured 75% market share in smartwatch segment, with Samsung as #2 at 7.5%.

This is roughly what you might expect to happen when one company takes a holistic approach to making a smartwatch, from software and user interface, to selection of materials and design of casing and bands, while the other team repeatedly throws shit against the wall to see what might stick. :p
 
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