

My Apple Watch After 5 Days - hboon
http://www.mollywatt.com/blog/entry/my-apple-watch-after-5-days

======
Osmium
I'm a big fan of 'accessibility first' design. Beyond the obvious benefits to
those who need them, it also creates affordances for people without
disabilities too.

An aside, but the Bradley watch[1] mentioned looks great. Shame it's so big.

[1] [http://www.dezeenwatchstore.com/shop/the-bradley-
stainless-s...](http://www.dezeenwatchstore.com/shop/the-bradley-stainless-
steel/)

~~~
vdnkh
>Shame it's so big.

40mm is actually on the smaller side for watches. Divers start at 42mm
typically. The Apple watch she purchased is also 42mm.

~~~
tricolon
Increasing watch size is a trend. Watches have not always been comically
large.

See:

[http://www.ablogtowatch.com/whats-deal-big-watch-sizes-
large...](http://www.ablogtowatch.com/whats-deal-big-watch-sizes-large-
timepiece-explained/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/fashion/trends/watchmakers...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/fashion/trends/watchmakers-
introduce-bigger-and-bolder-models.html)

------
MDCore
I am impressed and pleased that what a few years ago would have been a highly
specialized disability support tool seems to now be a case of changing a few
settings in a mass-produced product.

~~~
octo_t
Apple have always been known for excellent accessibility in their products.

There was a story that came out when Jobs died about how he'd personally
intervened when a bluetooth update(?) broke the software a kid in a wheelchair
was using.

~~~
microtherion
It probably would be more accurate to say "for the last 10 years" than
"always".

In the early 2000s, Apple realized that some of their most prominent school
deals were in danger of falling apart due to OS X's insufficient section 508
compliance. Since OS X marketshare was too small to ensure a sufficient
ecosystem of third party accessibility solution providers (as existed for
Windows), Apple formed an in-house accessibility team.

Over time, Apple realized that doing accessibility in-house and treating it as
a full stack responsibility fit in well with the company philosophy, so today
accessibility is indeed treated as a very important aspect of products.

Coincidentally, this week marks the 10th anniversary of the official release
of VoiceOver, Apple's OS X screen reader.

------
pandatigox
Expected a very negative response, which to my surprise, was actually
positive. Also very impressed with how even gadgets like the Apple Watch aimed
at "high-class" citizens are still very consumer-friendly.

Also TIL about Usher Disease!

------
Raphmedia
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.mollywatt.com/blog/entry/my-
apple-watch-after-5-days)

------
tolien
Interesting reading about the haptic notifications for navigation (different
vibration patterns to turn left/right). Was something I worked on as a
research project 4 years ago so it's neat to see being used for real.

------
skywhopper
This was a fascinating read for a view into a world I know all too little
about. But an equally big takeaway for me is the idea that haptic feedback may
end up being the biggest change that successful wearable products bring to our
lives. The potential is there for nearly everyone. Great post.

------
noonespecial
I haven't thought much of the apple watch yet but I may have severely
underestimated the utility of a device that's always with me and able to
gently give my arm a tap or a buzz.

The apple watch's kill app may be haptic.

~~~
mercer
I think Apple is counting much more on the 'novel' input/output stuff like the
little drawings, different buzzes, etc. And it makes sense, considering that,
in my opinion, this has been one of the biggest reasons for success. The iPod?
clickwheel. The iPhone/iPad? properly done touch interface. Or for that matter
where it started: mouse + keyboard!

I think many of us, especially in the tech world, underestimate how crucial
these kinds of innovation are for mainstream success. I recall people
shrugging when the iPhone came out because 'we had touch devices before', for
example, not realizing that there's a world of difference between the PDA-
generation interfaces that required a stylus and the finger-touch interface of
the iPhone.

Whether Apple's 'interface innovations' with the Watch are enough to make it a
success remains to be seen, of course. But I strongly suspect that Apple is
relying much more on these things to be a core part of the Watch' success than
anything else.

------
chaghalibaghali
I'd be really interested to hear from someone close to the Apple Watch, or who
understands UX better than me on how much this accessibility was by design and
how much it just naturally follows from good UX design.

------
jpalomaki
One interesting point in review is that she is finding the function for
sending heartbeat of small sketches useful. I think these were dismissed as
more or less useless demo stuff right after the launch by some journalists.

Now when I think more, the sketches could be actually quite nice quick and
discreet way of communicating with close friends. Quite quickly you would
probably come up with simple symbols for various things.

Here could be a network effect that would help Apple sell more watches. Get an
Apple Watch or you are excluded from the communications.

------
andygates
That's an interesting use-case for small-group tap messaging that I hadn't
even considered. Time to write something for Wear!

------
Jonovono
Can someone tell me why when you pair you take a photo of the watch face? I'm
guessing it just connects over bluetooth, so how does the photo help?

~~~
eddieroger
It's actually a video. The Watch plays a graphic that the iPhone parses
(somehow) and pulls out pairing information. Once they've synced up, they play
the same video before continuing on in the process. It was pretty slick.

~~~
Jonovono
Ah, cool! Thanks :)

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thisjepisje
Is the error page cached somewhere? I get _Error displaying the error page
[..]_ hehe

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hoare
am i the only one getting a malware-warning when hitting the page? Might be
avast though

------
serve_yay
Naah, it can't be true that Apple makes things that help people live their
lives. They just make fancy baubles for rich assholes. Right?

------
SlashmanX
Nice to see that accessibility is still being thought of, a lot of developers
and designers take this type of stuff for granted.

However, I found this to be quite a "jarring" read, with "Apple Watch" being
constantly written as such, seemed like an advertisement or at the very least
just some SEO trickery. Disrupted my reading flow quite a bit

~~~
serve_yay
Why are people on HN so obsessed with this? People buy things and talk about
them. Get over it.

