I like this -
"The first all-new device during his tenure, the Apple Watch, is not yet a mega hit."
- as if some day it just is going to be a mega hit.
It already outsold all competitor smartwatches many times over, and became a business big enough to be listed on Wall Street on its own -- several billion dollars in revenue.
And as battery life increases, bluetooth tech gets better reach, wifi can last longer on it, and cpu/memory can handle more things right on the device, its usability will only get better.
I interpreted that as, someday it might yet be a mega hit. It's still a relatively new product that's only had one iteration, and even though it didn't set the world on fire, it didn't bomb either. Most tech companies iterate on things a few times before giving up on them, unless they are just fundamental market failures like the iPod HiFi.
What did you like about that statement? Your interpretation made it sound like you didn't agree with it.
I certainly don't agree with it. Wearables have a lot of potential, but wearable watches are fundamentally not a great idea - for practical reasons (screen too small, limited battery life) and for marketing reasons (can't compete at the low end, certainly can't compete at the lifestyle/status display high end).
Watch isn't even primarily a watch - it's an iPhone remote. And that's getting into rarefied meta-product territory.
So unlike the iPhone and the home computer, both of which have obvious use cases, Watch is still trying to define a compelling reason for existing.
But this just highlights the current Apple problem. Cook designs products using a very simple heuristic - smaller, bigger, thinner, more colours: basically good enough.
Jobs used to use a different heuristic - magical, original, creative, obviously useful, with world-beating production values.
It's a completely different approach. And you can see that in Watch.
Watch has no magic. It's good enough - barely, more or less. But that's all it is.
And if you're aiming for good enough instead of magical, it's too easy to fall short and end up with not quite good enough - which is where many Apple buyers are feeling the current product lines are heading.
>I certainly don't agree with it. Wearables have a lot of potential, but wearable watches are fundamentally not a great idea - for practical reasons (screen too small, limited battery life)
I'm not sure I follow. A wearable watch will have the biggest screen and better battery life combo than any other kind of practical wearable device I can think of (e.g. when not strapping a 3" screen and a battery pack the size of a Zippo on you and calling it a wearable).
>So unlike the iPhone and the home computer, both of which have obvious use cases, Watch is still trying to define a compelling reason for existing.
If not other things, Fitness/health/medical services would be a killer reason for existing.
Wearables don't necessarily need a screen, and if they do have a screen, a more elegant version of Google Glass is going to be more persuasive - when someone finally gets it right, which they will in the next few years. (Could be Apple. But I'd put money on someone like Huawei.)
The watch format is a dead end.
The user benefit of the iPhone was obvious. The user benefit of a wearable watch is not obvious at all. As soon as you call the product a "watch" you're constraining the possible design and the user expectations, and also competing with hundreds of years of history.
As for health - for now, FitBit does it better.
A permanent on-wrist health lab with medical record sharing would be amazing, but the technology for that is a long way away.
Meanwhile Pokemon Go has done a lot more for health than any wearable has.
2/3 of Americans are considered to be overweight/obese. And before you say, 'that's even more of reason to own one,' no matter how sleek the advertising campaign to peddle a broadly useless piece of technojunk, you're never going to convince the populous that exercising is fun. Unless it detects cancer, it's just a toy.
>you're never going to convince the populous that exercising is fun
You don't have to convince the "populous", just enough tens of millions, and it would be a huge profit center.
And you don't have to convince them about exercise being fun or anything similar either -- just that not dying from heart attack and knowing your glucose levels and such is fun...
(There are 30 million people with diabetes in the US alone for example).
Such delusion. The personal computer was important; a well designed mp3 player was desired by many; the tablet, a new way to interface; the smart phone, a communication necessity. The watch is just a toy without a core reason for existence. Not just apple's, all smart watches. It's ironic that a company who made its business selling fashionable tech will peak and fall from relevancy selling a purely fashionable device. You can monitor your glucose level with a sub-$20 device from a pharmacy, not several hundred dollars and a iphone requirement.
It's okay. You're not an innovator. You're not a visionary. You can't see the horizon. You're probably fascinated by shiny objects; trapped in the superficial glaze, unable to comprehend the substrate.
And as battery life increases, bluetooth tech gets better reach, wifi can last longer on it, and cpu/memory can handle more things right on the device, its usability will only get better.