[Someone1234]

True but you can hardly blame people for being confused.

The Apple Watch was announced on September 9, 2014, but did not ship until April 24, 2015. So the Watch feels a year old even if it has technically only been selling for half that time.

Even when it was announced it was behind the competition. By April 2015 (when they shipped the first units) the competition had moved on again. The only reason it is selling at all is because of the little Apple logo.

Moto 360 2 and Huawei Watch are watches that actually look like watches, same thickness, shape, and with a longer battery life. Why anyone purchased an Apple Watch is still beyond me. It is one of their weakest new product launches ever.

[superdude]

"The only reason it is selling at all is because of the little Apple logo."

Statements like that are not productive.

[Someone1234]

Neither are statements that claim something isn't productive without saying why.

[astrodust]

Your hand-waving dismissal ("It's the logo, duh") shows a profound lack of understanding of how products are developed, marketed and sold.

If it was as simple as slapping a logo on something then companies would be able to do this with impunity. Every brand that's lost focus on what it does and instead seeks to monetize its brand has failed. Eventually your reputation goes from being valuable to being associated with cheap junk.

Maybe you can try and explain why the Moto watch isn't selling very well and Apple's is. Maybe there's more to it than a logo. Maybe Apple is a company focused on engaging with customers and delivering products they want rather than what Motorola is doing by launching a watch just because.

Apple was very concerned with making the watch relevant to people. Motorola was very concerned with getting to market first.

So what we have is watches for early adopters (Motorola, etc.) and watches for ordinary people (Apple Watch). I don't think choice is a bad thing here, and I wouldn't think less of someone for making a decision between the two.

[Someone1234]

> Maybe you can try and explain why the Moto watch isn't selling very well and Apple's is.

The Apple brand. Nothing more. That was my point. Apple released a watch which when announced had year old specs and technology, and when shipped was older yet still. But just because of the brand every major news outlet had a piece about it, every major tech blog had several articles about it, and people drolled over what is essentially a "me too!" product.

> Maybe Apple is a company focused on engaging with customers and delivering products they want rather than what Motorola is doing by launching a watch just because.

Do you have any basis at all for this? Other companies release stuff "just because" but when Apple releases stuff it is to "engage customers?" That comes across so bias/clouded it is incredible.

> Apple was very concerned with making the watch relevant to people. Motorola was very concerned with getting to market first.

Motorola wasn't first to market, smartwatches are years old at this point. This is third generation tech'. Apple entered the market late, nobody was racing to beat them. You could literally go into any major electronics retailer and buy six or more different smartwatches on the day Apple announced the Watch (and that was six months before it shipped).

So, no, nobody was racing to take Apple's toys. Apple was racing to get into a preexisting market last of any major manufacturer.

> So what we have is watches for early adopters (Motorola, etc.) and watches for ordinary people (Apple Watch). I don't think choice is a bad thing here, and I wouldn't think less of someone for making a decision between the two.

Early adopters are 2011. It is 2014-15 we're talking about. Unless the Pebble (1), Galaxy Gear (1), LG Watch, etc didn't ship for the last three or four years...

There's nothing "ordinary" about Apple's brick-shaped watch. Circular watches blend in. They appear like normal watches. Apple's Watch is for tech geeks who wish to stand out.

I think categorising three years and three generations of smart watches as "early adopters" and anything post-Apple as a copycat product is incredible.

[Steko]

> The Apple brand. Nothing more.

So maybe you can explain why review after review also said it was the first decent smartwatch?

If all you had to do is slap an Apple logo on things the original apple tv, iphone 5c, g4 cube, ROKR (well itunes), 20th anniversary mac, various ipod flops would have all been hits.

Instead it tends to be the case that people like to buy the best products. Apple products that sell very well also tend to be reviewed very well. This could be because the press is also in thrall of Apple but we could also look at the reception of Apple maps, bendgate, and antennagate and say maybe the press is more than happy to savage apple when they can.

> Early adopters are 2011.

Early adopters are associated with products that ship before a product goes mainstream. Currently even people with an Apple Watch are early adopters in my view.

> Unless the Pebble (1), Galaxy Gear (1), LG Watch, etc didn't ship for the last three or four years...

Zero of those watches shipped 3-4 years ago.

[Someone1234]

> So maybe you can explain why review after review also said it was the first decent smartwatch?

Because many of those reviews are from people who haven't used another smartwatch. If you look at the dedicate technology press, they're at best lukewarm about the Apple Watch. It is the non-tech press that praise it endlessly. But as far as they know smartwatches haven't existed for years ahead of it.

[threeseed]

I agree it is their weakest product launch. However there are a number of innovations e.g. digital crown, force touch, haptic feedback and the excellent Fitness capabilities that do put in far ahead of the competition in day to day usability. It's really the software that is letting it down. And I don't know if you have seen a Moto 360/Huawei Watch in person but they are ridiculously large and tacky. They are nothing like a normal watch you would see around especially not for females which the Apple Watch's smaller size is an excellent match for.

[Someone1234]

> And I don't know if you have seen a Moto 360/Huawei Watch in person but they are ridiculously large and tacky.

I have. The 360 looks like a traditional watch, and the Apple Watch looks far bigger[0], and unusual. Have you seen them in real life? We have people in the building who own the 360 and others with the Apple Watch, I see them daily. The Apple Watch stands out as being a "box on the wrist" the 360 is invisible unless brought up or shown off.

> However there are a number of innovations e.g. digital crown, force touch, haptic feedback and the excellent Fitness capabilities that do put in far ahead of the competition in day to day usability.

This is so typical of Apple fans. Ignore everything on the market then claim Apple innovated/created every major product feature. Almost everything on your list pre-existed ahead of the Apple Watch announcement (let alone launch).

The crown is a watch feature which is over fifty years old. It has appeared on digital watches for at least twenty years before Apple "invented it." I myself owned a digital watch in the mid 1990s with a crown (which allowed you to set the time, change the date, etc all on a completely digital watch).

Apple was not the first watch to contain a vibrator ("haptic feedback"), IBM and Citizen Watch created the horrifying "WatchPad" in 2000(!) which had it. Since then many (most?) smartwatches have contained it as standard. It is absurd to call it an Apple innovation for a product released in 2015.

It is laughable to point at the fitness stuff. Even stepping away from smartwatches for a second, there is an entire market of fitness trackers around, many of which have incredible usability and are extremely popular. Fitbit, Garmin, iFit, heck even Microsoft have been producing products in this field for literally years ahead. Then there is the smartwatch competition from Samsung, LG, Garmin, Moto, etc all have fitness tracking capabilities.

It is like you either haven't been following technology at all or are just trolling. There's no other explanation for anyone claiming that Apple "innovated" most of the stuff on your list. I half expected you to claim that Apple invented the LCD screen on a smartwatch, or the wrist strap, it would be no more absurd than your other claims...

[0] http://www.modernhoot.com/372/moto-360-and-apple-watch-side-...

[threeseed]

I have no idea what you are ranting on about here. I never said Apple invented the concept of a crown nor haptic feedback. That's just ridiculous. In fact many of their features are not true inventions by any sense of the word. They are merely novel implementations when applied to the context of a smart watch. And they serve to improve the day to day usability which is far superior to the Moto 360 and the other Android Wear devices I've seen. This has been Apple's playbook since the beginning.

My point with the fitness capabilities is that it is the best implementation of it both in terms of accuracy and usability. And I have tried quite a few in my time.

[Someone1234]

> I never said Apple invented the concept of a crown nor haptic feedback.

Yes you did. To quote you:

> However there are a number of innovations e.g. digital crown, force touch, haptic feedback and the excellent Fitness capabilities that do put in far ahead of the competition in day to day usability.

Innovation: a new method, idea, product, etc.

So, yes, you did absolutely claim Apple invented the concept of the crown, haptic feedback, and so on. Otherwise that sentence makes no sense.

> They are merely novel implementations when applied to the context of a smart watch.

As I've shown even that isn't the case. I can list a smartwatch which had every feature on your least except one (force touch). Nothing novel about anything else you listed with regard to Apple Watch. Maybe of the features listed can be traced back to the early 2000s on smartwatches.

> And they serve to improve the day to day usability which is far superior to the Moto 360 and the other Android Wear devices I've seen.

Given that both have most of the features, that claim makes no sense. Maybe if you took of your tinted Apple fan goggles for a second and actually tried someone else's products, you would know how inaccurate that statement is.

I've used Apple Watch and a Moto 360. Have you? You didn't even answer my question when I asked you if you had even seen a Moto 360 in real life.

> My point with the fitness capabilities is that it is the best implementation of it both in terms of accuracy and usability. And I have tried quite a few in my time.

So have I. They aren't. Fitbit did it better many many years ago. Apple introduced a fitness product which is like something from 2010. The fitness trackers you can buy today are far and ahead better for anything beyond the basics.

[Steko]

Your misreadings are comical. He claimed that Apple's use of the crown was innovative (and it is) not that they invented the crown. He claimed that Apple's use of haptic feedback was innovative (and it is), not that they invented vibration. And across the board, review after review -- whether from tech press or watch press -- have echoed these claims -- Apple's implementations are innovative. By all means have at those windmills though.