[nijynot]

Why get this denim jacket when you can get an iPhone and an Apple Watch?

Jacquard only puts limits on you as it's stuck on that specific denim jacket. Apple Watch on the other hand works with any jacket. You don't even need a jacket with Apple watch, you can wear whatever you want, whenever you want, and it would still work compared to Jacquard which wouldn't.

[anindha]

The idea is that every piece of clothing one day will incorporate this.

[nijynot]

But why not buy a single smart watch and keep your clothes normal? I mean, it's seems redundant to make every single piece have similar tech functionality when you can have one watch that works with all clothes. If you choose to have different tech in different clothes, I don't see why you don't want to combine everything into a watch. Though there are edge cases where you can want to split it up. But then your customer base gets much smaller.

[Brakenshire]

In this case, it's possible you would actually wear one jacket whenever you were cycling, and the gestures might only be useful for that application. A cycling jacket also probably needs to be water and wind resistant, breathe well, and include reflective panels. The latter at least seems to be included in this design. The idea of clothing engineered to a particular purpose is a good one, in my opinion. For instance to use woven retroreflective material (which reflects back bright light, but looks normal in ordinary conditions) in a casual jacket you would use whenever you were cycling, but could also as a general purpose jacket, rather than having to carry around and put on a lot of separate and unwieldy reflective gear.

However, it does need to use a standard api for communication between the snap tag, phone and jacket, and use a standard physical connector. I'm not going to spend $350 for a jacket that can only be used with one company's proprietary technology, and which has to be replaced when the next generation snap tag / dongle comes out.

[anindha]

Interacting with your clothing is more convenient than interacting with a smart watch in many situations. If one day it costs $0.50 to add, why not add it to every jacket that is made?

[simias]

What a waste. Why not just have a standard latch design on your clothes and let the user connect and disconnect their devices? It would allow for upgrade without having to discard everything.

Do you really want to buy a new jacket every time you upgrade your touch gizmo or vice-versa? Do you want vendor-locked clothes? It's very user-hostile IMO.

[rtkwe]

That's basically where this goes if I'm understanding your right, but this is the first one and they're the only one making it so there's no standard. There's two totally separate items here. There's the cloth with the woven in conductive fibers and the Bluetooth dongle that takes that touch data and translates it into commands by extracting gestures. If this takes off in a big way and more companies get into it you'll probably see a standard develop around the attachment between the woven sensor and the dongle to communicate to your phone.

[659087]

That one day will be the day I stop wearing clothing and move to a nudist colony.

"I wasn't masturbating, officer, I swear. I was just swiping through my contact list"

[Mz]

Totally not creepy and totally not classist.

/s

[anindha]

Haha

You could have said that about a device that knows exactly where you are every minute of the day - but here we are.

[Mz]

And lots of people decry that. It also is an upper class first world problem. I don't imagine too many poor people have smart phones, and I don't imagine all clothing will have tech interwoven. That may become common among the wealthier classes in developed countries, it is unlikely to be the norm for all people on the planet.

Your comment fails as a rebuttal.

[shimon]

Many poor people have smartphones. They're a big force in getting more people access to the internet and other technology, which is probably overall positive even though it has some significant negative repercussions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/01/for-more-poor-americans-smar...

http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/

[Mz]

From what I have read, cell phones are really common in Africa. I recently read that in Malawi, one of the poorest countries on the planet, a village may only have one cell phone, but everyone has their own sim card. But, they don't appear to have smart phones.

Poor Americans are not the poorest people on the planet. And talking like they are casually dismisses the existence of billions of people.

I am pretty darn poor for an American. I was homeless until recently. I am well aware that even homeless Americans frequently have cell phones. My latest Tracphone is a smart phone because the Walmart didn't have a dumb phone when I went to get a new phone.

Still, the fact that some Americans are poor and also have a cheap smart phone does not negate the existence of poor Americans who don't have a smart phone, who may not have a phone at all.

The comment I replied to suggested that ALL clothing will someday have this tech. I think that is unlikely. Perhaps "all" (aka most) clothing of fairly well off Americans, but certainly not all clothes on the entire planet.

That may be "pedantic," but the essence of classism, racism, etc is that people glibly say "all people" when they really mean some subset of people. That subset winds up being the only subset that counts. The needs and realities of other people outside that subset are utterly ignored and if you try to bring them into the conversation, you get shouted down, downvoted, etc.

[nextlevelwizard]

>classist

what does this even means in this context?

[Mz]

The idea is that every piece of clothing one day will incorporate this.

Do you really think it is literally true that the goal is every single piece of clothing on the entire planet will connect to the internet? Or just the clothes of the relatively well off?

Because when you talk like it will be completely universal when that seems rather far fetched, you implicitly deny the existence of those people for whom this is highly unlikely to be true.

[KirinDave]

Ideally clothing can use your back and stomach as a haptic surface. This offers directional feedback and more channels (an upper and lower feedback band, minimally). It also offers more natural touch surfaces.

Indie folks have been doing this for years, and it's getting quite small. Interested parties are both homebrew hackers and folks working at improving the lives of sensory impairment.

[r00fus]

Talk about visceral inputs. What about connected small clothes? When that person who swiped you on tinder will give you a nice little buzz in the right place.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Apple Watch on the other hand only works with an iPhone.