Can Even Apple Make a Watch Insanely Smart? 196
theodp writes "Throwing some cold water on the buzz surrounding the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch launch, The New Yorker's Matt Buchanan questions how smart a watch can really be. Calling offerings like the Galaxy Gear useful but not the stuff of dreams and revolutions, Buchanan writes, 'So there remains a strange undercurrent of hope that somebody-Apple-will figure out, soon, some grander vision for wearable technology, transforming it from something that people have vaguely imagined into something people intensely desire. It did it for smartphones, once, and again, for tablets. The question that Apple has been charged with, since nobody has definitively answered it yet, is whether the lack of an invention that truly carries us beyond the last five hundred years of wrist-mounted technology is the result of a failure of imagination or simply a fact of nature-that a watch will always just be a watch, no matter how smart it might think it is.' So, will you be an early adopter and drink Samsung's or Sony's smartwatch Kool-Aid, wait to see what Apple comes up with, or hold out for a Windows Forearm Pad 8?"
Steve Jobs on your Wrist... (Score:1)
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China's language problem will get fixed in 100 ms. =)
Technically it will be Algeria's language problems that get fixed in 100 ms. Unless Apple iWatch is allowed to use Google maps.
Re: Steve Jobs on your Wrist... (Score:2)
"400 Million Chinese can't speak Mandarin"
What about us 6 billion 600 million Non- Chinese who can't speak Mandarin?
I want to get fixed too.
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Language - Percent of World Population
Mandarin 12.44%
Spanish 4.85%
English 4.83%
Arabic 3.25%
Hindi 2.68%
Bengali 2.66%
Portuguese 2.62%
Russian 2.12%
Japanese 1.80%
German 1.33%
Javanese 1.25%
Others 61.17%
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Javanese is the overly excited language programmers speak at around 10am after 4 cups of coffee right?
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Mistake? Java is an island of Indonesia, with over a hundred million people (also making it the world's most populous island and one of the most densely-populated places in the world).
It's not just a programming language and a cup of coffee. :)
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Doesn't that need revising now that the Chinese government has admitted that 400 million of them cannot speak it after all? Based on the figures for English, that seems to be counting only first language speakers, so Mandarin should be lower still (Chinese government may call all of China outside of a couple of special administrative regions native speakers, but the reality is very different, and many more will speak it as a second language in addition to t
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If you subtract 400MM you get roughly 900MM. Since the "official" language is Mandarin even if you speak something else at home I suspect you would count as a mandarin speaker if you know it as well. Case in point my wife's cousin is from fuzhou. He speaks some dialect my wife cant understand (Fuzhou dialect I believe), as well as Mandarin. Would he be a mandarin speaker in China's eyes? Probably.
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The Apple iWatch will have a 3D avatar of Steve Jobs on its screen at all times. This will make the iWatch "Insanely Smart".
The innovation will be that it's actually called "myWatch" and Apple will extract royalties directly from your account on the use of the name every time it records you saying "let me check my watch". Apple stocks will soar!
Later software updates (that you have to agree with so that you can continue to use your music collection that you don't own) will extract royalties every time you think it.
Wait (Score:1, Informative)
I'll wait to see what Apple (or anyone else) comes out with but I don't hold out much hope for any of them - seems like a lost cause. The marginal increase in convenience from having it on your wrist compared to taking it out of your pocket just doesn't counter the decrease in display size and functionality compared to a phone. Even if it was extremely low cost, if I have the phone with me anyway, why bother with the watch?
Re:Wait (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there are genuine use cases for it. Rather than keeping your phone in a pocket close to your body it can stay in your jacket or bag because you will definitely feel the watch vibrating. The watch will be audible in almost any clothing too, where as a phone in your bag can go unnoticed unless it's really, really loud.
A watch would also be nice for doing things like contactless payments. I see a lot of people travelling on public transport paying with their phones, but I'd prefer to have a cheap watch I can brush against the payment pad instead of having to take my expensive phone out.
For Google Now type notifications it might be nice as well. Kind of like how Glass shows you stuff all the time, but less intrusive and maybe more socially acceptable.
Re:Wait (Score:4, Informative)
Most of those things you mentioned fail for the watch use case though.
Contact-less payments are a nightmare - the possibility of an unintentional scan is pretty damn high. Ah you say, but you'll require you to authenticate - well ok, but now you've turned a one-handed action (remove phone from pocket, press "allow" and swipe) into a two-handed action (hold hand against scanner, use other hand to press "allow" on the watch face").
The Watch is a really terrible form factor for pretty much anything that's not passive, because there is no possible way to control it with the hand of the arm it's worn on - it takes things which only need one hand on your smart phone to implicitly involving two.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Japanese phones with contactless payment allows you to pre-authorize certain services. For example you could pre-authorize Japan Rail, then when you want to use the train you just brush against the payment pad as you go through the barrier. No danger of accidentally paying for anything else.
In any case I don't think the accidental payment issue is a major one. There have been incidents of it happening but only because the payment machines have had too much range. Once the banks get on top of that an make sure the machines only work up to about 10mm it will be fine. The banks are obviously keen to prevent accidental payments and improve the customer's experience, and so are the retailers because it costs them money when it happens. The system has been in use in Japan for a decade now and works just fine, the teething problems having long since been worked out.
Re:Wait (Score:4, Funny)
That's Japan. You think American banks give a shit about improving customers' experiences? I think not.
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In any case I don't think the accidental payment issue is a major one. There have been incidents of it happening but only because the payment machines have had too much range. Once the banks get on top of that an make sure the machines only work up to about 10mm it will be fine.
That won't do - a malicious scanner will not abide by the standards. It's the device's
job to enforce distance limits. And I don't see that working without a proximity sensor:
A better antenna on the scanner improves both sending and receiving range.
Unfortunately, with mandatory proximity sensing, the usecase of "keep device in the
bag and just wave past the scanner" is out. Passive devices are out too (make sure
to wrap your "proximity pay"-enabled cards in metal).
So maybe that's the use case for a p
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That won't do - a malicious scanner will not abide by the standards.
And it is STUPID to make a malicious scanner for the purpose of stealing money from the contact-less payment device.
All payments through these contact-less device has 2 parties, the payer and the payee, in normal case, the transaction will be logged by both and reconciled centrally.
By building a malicious scanner, the clearing center will just get the "deduct money" half of the transaction, and no "receive money" side from any valid merchant. These orphaned transactions will be easily flagged and reversed.
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Contact-less payments are a nightmare - the possibility of an unintentional scan is pretty damn high.
Spoken like someone who had never used contact-less payment before.
News for you, contact-less payment has been in use in Asian cities for over a decade (just one example http://www.octopus.com.hk/home/en/index.html [octopus.com.hk] launched 16 years ago), and most people has no nightmares of paying unintentionally.
And yes, they have watches also http://www.octopus.com.hk/get-your-octopus/choose-your-octopus/licensed-octopus-products/en/index.html [octopus.com.hk]
I use contact-less payment all the time in Australia these days. But I don't wear my credit cards on my risk, since my hand goes near a lot of contact-less scanners just as a part of interacting with the checkout. If I'm getting on a bus, it could gets even nearer routinely. A watch would be on my hand. Which puts it in the accidental scan zone. Unless I have to push a button to validate - which, with a phone, I can still do one handed. With a watch I have to use two hands.
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For easy payments and tap , new technology in the form of a two sided ring is appearing and could catch on fast. .Near field will catch on.Good time to invest in the technology.
Two sides one for public side info the other is private at all cost info
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To be honest, I can't think of any use cases for a so-called smart watch that requires a companion device. But it kind of fails as a standalone device as well:
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May not happen in our lifetime, but it's not so far out there as to be impossible either. Think of the Human+ movement.
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just maybe it could be the handset part of a phone bluetooth linked. For the smart part of a phone you need a decent sized screen but for a phone call a small handset might be workable. There's little point in carrying 2 billable mobile communication devices.
Time ,heart monitor/ exercise, maybe text message / alert display. It might be handy to be able to see if an important email had come in or the usual rubbish. Remote for your music playing to bluetooth headphones. facebook alerts possibly why not slash
for it to be really smart it needs it's own modem (Score:2)
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That's not a concern if they can also hurt the sales of their competitors' products.
Re: for it to be really smart it needs it's own mo (Score:2)
Omate true smart on Kickstarter looks like a good option. it seems to do everything a Smart Watch should do.
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I was one of the kickstart backers for Pebble, and have been using the watch every day for ~5 months. There are two things that keep me putting it on every day, despite having to remember to charge it once a week or so:
- Text messages and incoming calls on your wrist. The difference between looking at your wrist and pulling out a phone seems negligible, but remember that you don't have to hold onto a wristwatch.
- You never miss a vibrate alert that's strapped to your wrist. I'll sometimes have something get
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I'll wait to see what Apple (or anyone else) comes out with but I don't hold out much hope for any of them - seems like a lost cause. The marginal increase in convenience from having it on your wrist compared to taking it out of your pocket just doesn't counter the decrease in display size and functionality compared to a phone. Even if it was extremely low cost, if I have the phone with me anyway, why bother with the watch?
Any increase in convenience,however marginal, has been enough in the past to sell products and services if everything else about the product is up to par.
You still keep your phone just like you did before. The cost is not that you lose your phone, the cost is that you're going to have to wear something around your wrist again like in the olden days. That thing then has to look good enough, has to be reasonably comfortable, can't get too much in the way, etc.
The main problem for Apple and other prospective s
Already Got One (Score:1)
Pebble http://getpebble.com/
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You probably meant to say "we, at pebble, already produce and sell a similar product that might interest some of you as a nice alternative to the product discussed here. You can read more about it at http://oursite.com/ [oursite.com]"
At least do it honneslty if you want to place your product. People, especially on tech sites, are always open to interesting products... If presented the right way. Now you just look like a lamer that doesn't understand what we want and do not want. How can I trust you to know what I want as
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I just got mine recently, and it's fantastic at what it does. Notifications, weather, Google Now support, and more. I just tried a biking app for it that shows speed, distance, and elevation. You can actually read the thing in sunlight and the battery lasts a week. It's too bad they're not more readily available.
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You're definitely more likely to be a shill, based on the comment you replied to, and your carefully written but spurious argument and "high horse". You reek of "corporate responsibility" and all the duplicity that goes with that.
First of all, why have we got any reason to believe that if someone were promoting Pebble for reward, they'd make a dumb anecdotal comment and ju st give the link?
Since the Pebble is a) more open (computing-wise), b) a lot cheaper and c) a commodity (replacable) item, as opposed to
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Awwww... "lamer". I haven't seen that in YEARS! Fond memories.
Now I wanna play Tradewars.
Re:Already Got One (Score:4, Informative)
missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't have to be "incredibly smart". It just has to be smart in the right places.
The original iPhone didn't really do anything that wasn't available elsewhere already. But it bundled the proper things together in the proper way and had the proper design to make it all work well. I had owned several PDAs before, but the iPhone was the PDA I had always wanted.
Same for the watch. My bet is that while everyone else is working on cramming as much crap into the watch as possible. Apple is busy making sure there is no crap on it, only the right mix of the right stuff you really want on your wrist.
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When you look at the iPhone, Apple figured out how to make it do stuff people craved to do over and over, but not gadgety stuff that sounds sci-fi cool and you only want to try out once. The Samsung watch has a LOT of cool tech packed into it, but reported lagginess will kill it in the market. Nobody wants to wait to interact with their watch.
To expound on what the right mix of stuff probably is for a watch, the focus should be on things that people will want to do multiple times a day, and thi
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Simply having a lot of crap is not the problem. High end Android phones have a lot of features, but you can easily manage them and turn off the ones you don't want. Customizability is key, making the phone work according to the user's preferences and with the features they want.
With Apple it's Apple's way or the highway. That's fine if your needs and preferences happen to match Apple's.
I just hope that there are standards for smart watches, and interoperability. Obviously Apple's watch will be Apple only, b
Omate TrueSmart: Water-resistant standalone Smartw (Score:2)
Here is one I think has real potential:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/omate/omate-truesmart-water-resistant-standalone-smartwa [kickstarter.com]
It was mentioned here on /. not long ago:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/08/26/0454236/omate-truesmart-watch-stands-alone-no-phone-required [slashdot.org]
They have already reached some amazing stretch goals, such as Sapphire Crystal Glass, and are
aiming for further ones, like 720p video recording.
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aiming for further ones, like 720p video recording.
That's what I mean.
Why in all hells would I want a watch that does video recording? Or Facebook? Or messaging?
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Why in all hells would I want a watch that does video recording? Or Facebook? Or messaging?
Samsung doesn't know the answer to that. But I seriously doubt they even asked themselves the question.
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The iPod was the same thing. No wireless, less space than a nomad, but I eventually replaced my nomad with an iPod because the firewire less me transfer music quickly, the build quality was much better, and the fact that I could move music quickly meant that I did
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I'm pretty sure it did. Visual voicemail for instance. Or a proper web browser.
Re:missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
You, Sir, have no idea what the heck you are talking about.
You still think that technology matters, but it frankly doesn't, or very little. It's not who has the coolest widgets, it is who can make it work.
All the PDAs at that time, all of them, without exception, were toys. Average people wouldn't touch one with a ten foot pole. Heck, I'm an IT guy and I considered them barely useable. In fact, for serious stuff I even moved back to paper and pen.
The iPhone was, above all, useable. No, more then that, it was a pleasure to use. That's why it essentially started the smartphone market even though smartphones had been around for quite a while already.
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PDA's had already blown up and went away by the time the iPhone came out, without network connections they were useless, and a number of units before the iPhone proved that point.
Lets also not kid outselves, without the latest n greatest technology your iPhone would be 3/4 inch thick, contain a resistive touch 65k color screen and run for 3 hours on a 1 lb battery. People want stuff that works, but they also want stuff that doesnt suck so having the latest zippy, or the biggest gb is very much a part of pr
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Just click the big blue circled arrow to the right of the names in recent calls list to views the contact entry to send text, pick different numbers etc. Seems like Apple made the right choice here. 99% of the time I want to call the recent callers back, but if I need to send a text or call a different number it is easy.
Likewise, for messages there are the "Email", "Facetime" and "Contact>" buttons at the top of the window. You might need to scroll to the top to seem them if you have a long conversation.
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I want by default a person-centric interface instead of a delivery-method-centric interface.
Are you sure you want that, or does it just sound like a cute idea?
I have an interest in HCI even though I'm not an expert. But one of the things you learn quickly in that area is that what people say they would find easy to use and what they actually find easy to use are quite often different things.
In a person-centric interface, you burden your brain with remembering individual data points, instead of having one rule that it needs to remember and can apply to everything. There's a lot of research that ind
Smart watch not such a smart idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble everyone is grappling with here is that they want a smart watch to be some kind of smartphone-like thing. We've seen it work in comics, right? Dick Tracey and all. The only trouble is that the size of things people want to put on their wrists isn't big enough for much of a display, isn't big enough for much of a data entry device and isn't big enough for much of a battery. You just can't pack a lot of function on there, much less do it attractively, much less do it in a form factor where it becomes a fashion accessory, particularly for ladies since ladies are used to tiny watches.
Flexible displays are the answer (Score:2)
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Watches aren't flexible. Why would you think flexible display is important? The only way a flexible display could matter is if it unfolds to make a larger display than the watch face... but that's not going to happen.
The key feature will be the display though. An e-ink display that doesn't flash for instance (can change single pixels without having to refresh whole areas). An always-on display that takes next to no power is the key feature for a smart watch. Combine that with something useful like a al
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This means it won't need to be a high powered device. I agree with you that this is not practical at this time.
But, if I'm able to check notifications such as text messages, subject lines of received emails, and navigation commands from my GPS, I'd be happy. I should be able to change music tracks without pulling out my phone. It could display a grocery list.
Stop thinking of it as it's
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I still like wearing Casio Data Bank calculator watches (currently DB150). It would be nice to have touch screen, Internet, etc. with long battery life and not require a phone separately. The tiny square iPod Nano would be good, but I have not found a way to install third party softwares, apps, etc. on my free (six/6)th generation model (8 GB) so far. :(
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The Watch is so 20th c. (Score:2)
Are they even building a watch? (Score:2)
innovation in a smart watch (Score:2)
It would be handy if it told the time as well
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LOL AC, the fat and fluid in the average arm was not factored in during extensive testing. Version 2 will have a better antenna in the longer, stronger band...
but also cause cancer in 7.3% of all users
The Interface, Stupid (Score:2)
"five hundred years of wrist-mounted technology?" (Score:3)
According to wiki:
Patek Philippe created the first wristwatch in 1868 for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary.
Too bad Job wasn't still around. He could "reinvent" that wristwatch.
It's the screen size, stupid (Score:2)
Wearable information Technology and the Watch (Score:2)
I've been working on wearable computers since 1994 (http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/lizzy/oranchak/witintro.html) and I believe strongly in the concept. The smart phone has delivered nearly all the promise we had hoped for except hands-free operation. The cell phone watch is not new. I bought one that was made in China and wore it for years. In fact, I showed that watch at the Gadget Show during the 2008 International Symposium of Wearable Computers in Pittsburgh and I had been using for a couple of year
Apple is a software company (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I don't understand why people are so enamored with their offerings.
Because they are well made, easy to use, have a well thought out interface and for the most part require very little fiddling to work. My 94 year old technologically illiterate grandmother is able to effectively utilize an iPad while at the same time I am able to get what I want out of an iPhone and I'm about big a tech geek as you are likely to run into. What makes Apple products attractive and different is the software.
They don't do anything different in my opinion.
Ahh but they do and those differences are what people are willing to pay for. What you have to understand is that Apple is fundamentally a software company. Steve Jobs himself has said so [youtube.com] explicitly. What is different about Apple's products is the software and what it does. It's not so much about them doing tasks that no one else can do as it is how they do those tasks. Apple (usually) provides a well designed and well executed experience and software is how they tie it all together. People buy Macs for the software - the hardware is barely different from PCs from Dell or HP. People buy iPods, iPhones and iPads for the software. The hardware isn't much different from the competition and in fact some competitors have rather slavishly copies Apple's designs. What Apple does differently is found in their software.
I prefer the Android approach that "opens the innovation tent" to everyone willing to give it a shot.
Nothing wrong with that but there are positives as well as drawbacks. If you are someone (like me and probably you) who really likes to fiddle with your gear then Android might very well be a better choice. But for my non-tech savvy relatives who just want a smartphone I point them at an iPhone. Not everyone wants to endlessly mess around with arcane features of their phones. Apple's products aren't for everyone but Apple has never pretended that they were. That said they sell an awful lot of product so they clearly are doing something that appeals to a lot of people.
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What you have to understand is that Apple is fundamentally a software company.
That's simply wrong and everybody knows it, no matter what Jobs might have said once in one of his promotional videos. Apple's profit still mostly comes from hardware sales and it has always been that way. If they were a software company, they could easily open OS X and iOS to other hardware manufacturers, but in fact that would be their immediate death sentence.
Software is why people buy Apple (Score:2)
That's simply wrong and everybody knows it, no matter what Jobs might have said once in one of his promotional videos.
"Wrong"? No. Counterintuitive I'll agree. Apple sells a vertically integrated product but (almost) no one buys a Mac to run Windows or Linux on it. They buy it because of OS X. OS X is what makes a Mac a Mac. Without OS X a Mac is just another me-too PC.
Oh and just because you dislike Steve Jobs doesn't mean he is wrong. I've listened to a lot of his talks over the years and I've seen few instances where he was wrong about the big picture business model stuff. He got the details wrong sometimes but
Don't smart phones already have piles of sensors (Score:2)
built in? I am wondering if what is really needed here is not a watch sized display that talks to the phone in your bag, but a phone mounted on your wrist. The only problem with that scenario now is that shirt sleeves aren't made to accommodate a phone-sized object strapped to your wrist. So what we really need then is for shirts to be made with bigger sleeves and some sort of strap attachment for a phone to put it on your wrist (OK, maybe a minor tweak to the phone design so that the power button is loc
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Wearable Apple = iClothes (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one thing that Apple could do that a conventional electronic devices or software house competitor cannot: shift the discussion from wearable tech to pieces of fashionable clothing. If we think about it, the white earbuds are a fashion item as much as an accessory for MP3 players. People made or adapted existing bracelets to wear the iPod Nano as a wristwatch. Loads of armbands were built to accommodate wearing iPods and iPhones when exercising. Nike has sensors for shoes that link up with the current generation of iPod. The tech part they've got nailed already (Sony, Samsung, Apple, Google, ... all of them). Getting people to wear it without looking silly is the challenge and has been for a long time.
What Apple can do rather than try to out-gadget the gadget makers is to design beautiful items of clothing that have the right pockets in the right places to carry the iPhone. Maybe some way to get a microphone and headphones built in to make calls and chat with Siri. There's always money for fashion items and I suspecct that Apple fanboy/girl would be happy to wear the team's colours. Pay £150 for a turtleneck? No problem. They can all wear the same model of iClothes until next year's is released. It would be a bit like Star Trek, with everyone on the planet wearing the same type of clothes.
Old (Score:2)
A smart watch once saved Harold Crick's life.
The smartest watch is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that what a smartwatch needs to be is as a "companion device" to a phone, and nothing more.
It needs a screen, two buttons (or areas to tap) for "Yes" and "No" and low-bandwidth communication with the phone. The phone tells the watch what to display and what the buttons mean. The watch then needs only to reply with "Message understood, displaying screen", "Yes" and "No". That's it.
All the "killer apps" that a smartwatch could be used for require those things and nothing more.
The Samsung watch and many stand-alone smartwatches are too powerful, too feature-rich and already too bloated. The Samsung watch is already too large to wear comfortably on the wrist. Has anyone mentioned battery life yet? My Casio has a battery life measured in years.
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t needs a screen, two buttons (or areas to tap) for "Yes" and "No" and low-bandwidth communication with the phone. The phone tells the watch what to display and what the buttons mean. The watch then needs only to reply with "Message understood, displaying screen", "Yes" and "No". That's it.
Smartest post here so far. It seems that many (including Samsung's designers) are fixated at taking a smart phone and shrinking it to the point where you can attach it to your wrist. At which point it's not usable as a smart phone, doesn't fit on your wrist, and doesn't serve any useful purpose.
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I have to agree as far as the smartest post so far.
I was thinking about this over the weekend as I heard about all of these wonderful (planned/hoped-for) things in watches. They talked about joggers using heart rate monitors, etc. I was thinking that a simple blue tooth connection to the phone/hand device to send whatever telemetry. Let that device do the heavy lifting, then as GP said, send back whatever to the display as desired.
It really seems silly on so many levels to try to pack all of that into on
Team effort? (Score:3)
Re:Team effort? Cooking with Ive (Score:2)
Ive has been there about 2 decades and has seen what it takes mentally to kill off losers & I see him having the strength to do it.
I agree with other Slashdot comments that a smart watch needs to be able to work with an iPhone, so you don't have to pick up the phone all the time.
Unique features might allow NFC to work exchanging contact info and "approvals", instead of cards and cash.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the managers at Apple are all so busy watching each other and playing court politics that innovation is dead. Jobs was very vocal and out there about what was good and bad for his company and what he liked and didnt like. I hear the new guy has nothing to say unless hes pissed. Good luck Apple..
Are you confusing Microsoft and Apple here?
It seems that Tim Cook is quite good at removing people who don't pull their weight for the company.
my definition of a smart watch (Score:2)
In no particular order:
Of course, provides time, calendar,
Why not just an iPhone strapped to your wrist? (Score:2)
How is the current or future generation of iWatches going to be any different than an iPhone/Android phone in a small form factor strapped to your wrist? You'll still need a bluetooth headset to talk/hear the conversation.
It seems that the iWatch companies are trying to save us 1second of having to dig our phone out of our pocket. They don't look all that attractive compared to a similarly priced watch (mechanical or quartz) and remind me of the calculator watches of the 80s.
tech just isn't quite there yet (Score:2)
Right now I'd love a watch as small and light as my simple casio but which vibrates when I have a call. I am tired of my phone ringing when I don't want to it too and when it does ring I miss the call. The Pebble is about everything I want in a smartwatch, though it could be thinner and lighter. Unfortunately unless Pebble gets bought by Google or Google releases a GoogleNow API its not going to work. The next GoogleGlass product could very well be their headset in watch form. If it just provided notif
ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
Misdirection (Score:2)
I still think this might just be misdirection on Apple's part.
Apple's product line (Score:2)
If you look at Apple's product line, their smart watch would probably fit in mainly as an iOS/OS X remote, letting you connect to all of your iTunes-account-connected devices. Apple TV remote (with accelerometer), autologin/unlock within range, notifications from all of your devices aggregated(?), GPS, maybe some way to access Spotlight on all devices and Siri to tie everything together. Apps would mainly use notifications to work with the device. Home automation and security systems could be interesting
Mistaken use-case (Score:2)
Re:First of all the Betteridge Obligatory: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so quick in discounting them, even though the effect of Steve's passing has been quite obvious.
But Apple never was a one-man show, even though he took the spotlight. From all I know, Steve's strength was not in designing or creating anything, but in inspiring others and, most importantly, his ability to cut through the crap to the core issues and to kill anything that sucked. Where other companies spend time and resources on bad products (and sometimes even bring them to market), Steve would just kill it brutally with a few words and everyone could go back to making something good.
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And who is killing the bad ideas now?
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And who is killing the bad ideas now?
The consumer, just like they do for other consumer electronics items and computers.
Right, and the problem with that is that it's a lot slower than having someone at the company do it early. Most stuff they send to market will be crap like it is from the other vendors.
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From all I know, Steve's strength was not in designing or creating anything, but in inspiring others and, most importantly, his ability to cut through the crap to the core issues and to kill anything that sucked.
Well, Tim Cook doesn't seem to be doing well in any of those areas, so, what's left but to milk the legacy of Jobs?
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If your company relies on the CEO to be the final QA, you have a bigger problem.
Other companies would kill for having the problems that Apple had during the past decade. So your point is?
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Projection much?
ProTip: Not being a fanboi of the thing you're a fanboi of does not mean being a fanboi of some other thing. There is also the possibility that you've outgrown the need to be a fanboi at all.
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the last five hundred years of wrist-mounted technology is the result of a failure
Say what?? A smartass New Yorker wants to impress but fails to fact check
Wrist watches is a technology only about 100 years old [wikipedia.org]
Before wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches, which often had covers and were carried in a pocket and attached to a watch chain or watch fob.[3] In the early 1900s, the wristwatch, originally called a Wristlet, was reserved for women and considered more of a passing fad than a serious timepiece. Men, who carried pocket watches, were quoted as saying they would "sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch"
Speakinf for myself, I'd rather wear a 16 core desktop than a smart watch; carrying the desktop, at least I'd have the advantage of the physical exercise, with a smart watch one can do mostly nothing: not enough computation power, screen economy, batery life.
Re:Another Fail (Score:4, Informative)
Wrist watches is a technology only about 100 years old
Patek Philippe created the first wristwatch in 1868 for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. [wikipedia.org], so 145 years.
That said, the smartass reporter did some research; Wearable watches date back about 500 years, but they appear to have been worn as necklaces (Flavor-Flav in the 16th century yo) rather than on the wrist. He just confused wearable with wrist-mounted.
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On an offtopic note:
When Abe Simpson says he "tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time," it's taken as insane old-man ramblings, but it's actually a very obscure reference to the old school watches... called "onions" or "turnips."
See the last sentence here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_watches#1800.E2.80.931850_Lever_escapement [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Another Fail (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh please give us a break. As if only Apple can figure anything out. I find it humorous how much they copied from Android into iOS the last few rounds.
There's the one thing that companies like Samsung can't find out without copying Apple (as demonstrated by that horror watch that Samsung released): What features to add and more importantly, what features to leave out.
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I've racked my brain trying to dream up a smartwatch I'd want, couldn't really hack it.
Maybe Apple will come up with something nice.Or maybe they'll come up with something shiny, magical and overpriced
You lacked imagination.
A watch that links with my phone via bluetooth, which will act as mic+speaker, with headphone plugs, and shows the time and alerts (phone call showing caller, text, reminders, etc) with vibrate option, 2 side buttons to let me take or reject calls, would have removed my need to take the phone out 95% of the time.
Headphone wires going from my wrist, through my sleeve, to my ear is much less troublesome than from my pocket or bag. Bluetooth headsets are ok, but I don't want to risk dro