
Smartwatches and the three-second rule - schuke
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11299174/smartwatch-problems-design-features-pdas-zen-of-palm
======
mikestew
_Personal Digital Assistants like the Palm Pilot or Pocket PCs or even Apple’s
Newton were usually not very useful unless you regularly synced them with your
"real" computer. They ranged from very simple and cheap to very expensive —
and almost all of them were pretty slow. The most powerful PDAs tried to do
way too much and had fairly awful battery life.

Sound familiar?_

No, no it doesn't sound familiar at all. Syncing with my desktop was a nice
luxury, but not a necessity. More of a back up than anything, the Palm Pilot
and Newton were useful as a standalone device (Pocket PC? Eh, not so much).

Slow? Is the author too young to have used such devices and just looking at
CPU clock speeds? For the tasks for which it was designed, a Palm Pilot would
run rings around any device I use today. Check my task list? A button on the
front of the Palm. iOS or Android? Unlock device, search for app icon that
hopefully is on the front page. Tap icon, wait for it to load and then go find
it's "cloud store", bunch of back-and-forth while the two sync, then you can
use the app. Now, the difference is pretty small on modern mobile CPUs and
LTE, but the Palm still wins and certainly is not comparatively slow.

Awful battery life? Now the author is just making shit up. A Newton would run
for _weeks_ on some AA batteries. I've got one on my shelf that hasn't been
turned on in a year. I'd bet a paycheck that I could grab it today, hit the
button and it would power up. Try that with your iXuslaxy 12 in 12 months
time. Don't recall good numbers on the Palm, but I can guarantee you that I
wouldn't abide putting a new pair of AAs in it on a daily basis, so I'll
assume it would run for multiple days or weeks on some batteries. Pretty sure
early Pocket PCs needed to be charged daily...just like modern mobile devices,
so that's a wash and a long way away from "awful battery life".

No, I didn't finish the article with that opening salvo.

~~~
sushisource
Amusingly enough he then praises the Palm later. I think if he replaced that
opening bit with "early smartphones, like windows 6.5 smartphones" it would be
dead-on. Well, except the syncing thing. That's still bs.

~~~
mikestew
So I went back and finished the article. The problem with his opening
paragraph is that it is his premise for the rest of the article. And the truth
is not "smartwatches are too slow/battery-hungry/useless", it's that they try
to do too much. The author does use the Pebble as an example, and that's what
he should have gone with. The Pebble is the Palm of smartwatches: simple, good
battery life, pretty snappy, and doesn't try to overreach (much). I'm happy
with mine, and the reason this Apple "fanboy" doesn't have an Apple Watch is
because: battery-hungry, slow, and tries to do too much for too much money.

From where I sit, most companies are trying to put a "computer on my wrist"
when I'm really quite content with a "display on my wrist" (Pebble, mostly)
until we can sort out the power management and optimizations needed to make
"computer on my wrist" a workable product.

~~~
laumars
Precisely this. You summed up why I love my Pebble too. It's a watch first and
foremost, with a few handy gadgets. Rather than a smartphone on my wrist
fashioned like a watch.

~~~
digi_owl
The original Pebble seemed interesting. This new one with the whole timeline
concept seems over-designed.

------
Florin_Andrei
> _Personal Digital Assistants like the Palm Pilot or Pocket PCs or even
> Apple’s Newton were usually not very useful unless you regularly synced them
> with your "real" computer._

Having actually used one of those devices at that time, I can tell you it was
extremely useful. For the first time, I had a full contacts list, calendar,
and memos list, and I could take those anywhere with me. And the calendar
would beep me a while before events. That was fantastic.

You have to understand, back then the comparison term for these things was
nothing. Nada. Zip. Cell phones were just getting started, and they had few or
none of these features.

That little Palm Pilot was an incredibly useful device. Sure, it sucks when
you compare it to a modern smartphone.

~~~
rconti
Yep. I had a Pilot 1000 and a Palm V. I rarely synced it with my computer
except to back things up. Frankly, the syncing with Linux was abysmal anyway,
and even on Windows, the Palm apps left a lot to be desired; it was actually,
in some ways, more functional WITHOUT a computer!

I was in high school when they came out, and I saved my pennies and bought
one, and it was GREAT for having a contacts list and keeping track of my
calendar and homework todo list. To be honest, I've had a hard time
replicating it since then. It was just enough at the cutting edge of
technology that I WANTED to use it. These days, I have todo lists in my
iPhone, in Evernote, on my whiteboard, on my computer, and I never check ANY
of them.

I also don't get the gripe about the screen. Sure, it's worse than we have to
day, but I found 160x160 to be just fine.

[http://www1.pcmag.com/media/images/245693-palmpilot.jpg](http://www1.pcmag.com/media/images/245693-palmpilot.jpg)

~~~
mondoshawan
I had a Psion Series 5 in my high school days -- also something I saved my
shekels for. The thing was basically the closest you could get to a DOS
computer in your pocket with an amazing UI and full on device programmability.
The thing had a full keyboard (!) and word processor which I even used to type
out whole essays on. The little computer was a work of engineering genius --
even ran for a month on one pair of AA batteries.

To this day, I still have yet to find anything that comes close to that same
reliability, stability, or feature standard.

~~~
rconti
I lusted after the Psion. Well done.

------
pavlov
I've used three smartwatches so far: Moto 360, Apple Watch and Samsung Gear
S2.

The Samsung is my clear favorite because it has the most watchlike physical
design _and_ the best designed software of the three. Considering the
reputation Samsung has in software, that was rather shocking (and perhaps
speaks more about Google's and Apple's failures).

Android Wear is distressingly non-spatial. Most of the time I felt lost in the
UI. I never could figure out if swiping left or right or up would bring me to
the same place as it did last time, or (more often) whether I'd be faced with
a surprising new screen out of nowhere.

Apple Watch has too many buttons and UI actions. It's rarely obvious what each
of them will do, so often I'd just cycle through them all: turn the crown, try
long press and force touch, swipe in all directions... The meaning of actions
varies arbitrarily (e.g. to set an alarm you must turn the crown and the
screen does nothing; in most other apps you specify values by touch actions
and the crown does nothing).

The Samsung Gear S2 has a rotating bezel that's much nicer to use than the
fidgety crown on the Apple Watch. It also has a clear meaning in the
interface: you turn the bezel to scroll through content. That covers a lot of
the things you actually do on a smartwatch, and there's no guessing whether
you need to swipe in this or that direction instead.

The Samsung is also the fastest of the bunch. Native apps start instantly,
whereas Apple Watch will often keep you waiting for 5-10 seconds for an app to
start.

My two cents on smartwatches... Supposedly Samsung's Gear software is coming
to iOS too (pending Apple approval it seems), so it's shaping up to be a real
cross-platform contender.

~~~
ohthehugemanate
I just got a gear s2, and I agree with your sentiment. But i had an original
Pebble since the Kickstart, and it's way better on everything but looks.

Pebble has one of the best looking watches on the market fwiw, in the Pebble
round... Unfortunately it's only IPX7 rated, just "splash resistant", and it
has a battery life like all the competitors. So I bought the s2, and it's good
enough. But the moment Pebble releases a good looking, round watch that can
survive a swimming pool and last like its other models, I'm in.

------
devbent
One of our guiding principles when designing experiences on Microsoft Band is
to try to limit interaction time. We had an "in and out in 5" rule we designed
around.

I'm still not 100% happy with how long some activities take to launch,
scrolling over can take time, but I feel that we've worked hard to adhere to
this.

I have always admired Palm's for how fast it was possible to access their
features. I was the most organized in life when I had a Palm Pilot and I could
take it out of my pocket, press one of the front buttons, and see my to-do
list pop up in front of me.

In comparison, getting to my to-do list on all smartphone platforms is a
multi-step process.

~~~
WhatIsDukkha
It's amazing how bad, fragmented or non-existent Todo and Memo applications
are on the platforms (compared to palm).

Instead of evolving from there it seems like they were largely just dropped or
ignored by the modern platforms.

/me uses org-mode

------
rcthompson
Forget smart watches, I have yet to use a smart phone that doesn't fail the
3-second rule on nearly every task. Often it's 5 seconds of waiting for the
phone to catch up between each and every action (each tap, swipe, etc.), so
that just loading a website takes a full minute (plus the time actually
required download the requisite data). Half the time, if I'm at home, I'll
start doing something on my phone and then decide that walking into the other
room to do it on my laptop is going to be faster than waiting for the phone.

I've only used Androids. Is it any better in iOS land?

~~~
dandelany
It is much better in iOS land, but only if you have an iPhone which is <2
generations old. I have an old iPhone 4 that's still in great condition but
it's completely unusable. The Uber app takes >5 minutes to start up (I timed
it). But my new iPhone 6s is lightning fast... As fast as the 4 was when I
first got it -_-

~~~
willtheperson
If you are using iOS 8 on the iPhone 4, make sure you turn on "reduce motion"
and turn on "reduce transparency" in settings > accessibility > increase
contrast. That alone made my iPad 2 go from garbage unusable, to, ok.

Transparency and blur effects seem to be the culprit for most slowness on
older devices.

------
dandelany
Pebble is still the only smart watch I've seen that I would (and do) use on a
daily basis. It's simple, cheap, super fast, always instantly readable, and
gets > a week of life out of a single charge.

------
valine
There are so many things the pebble does right. I think the best example is
the music remote, so let's compare it to the Apple Watch: If I want to skip
songs from my Apple Watch I have to lift my wrist, look down at the display,
swipe upward, swipe through glances til I find the music player, and then tap
the tiny skip button. Forget about doing this while biking. On pebble I hold
the up button for half a second and give it a click. I don't even need to look
down. The Apple Watch has so many advantages. It's faster, it has tight
integration with the iPhone, a gorgeous display with a high refresh rate, and
that delightful Taptic thing. And yet the pebble just works better. Apple
could learn a lot from this little company.

------
bsaul
"And the biggest complaint of all is, of course: it’s too slow."

I really don't think that app being slow is the "biggest problem". App being
pointless is a much greater issue, and it's not a problem of being slow. An
apple watch is about the same speed as an iphone1, and yet the iphone was an
instant success.

What's even more problematic is that even apple can't imagine useful user
scenarios in its _ads_ beyond sport session ( guy checking messages while
playing the piano in a concert ? I know it's a joke, but it would have been
better to come with a real example...). PDA had problems because they weren't
able to properly deliver the promises everyone thought about for those
devices. Smartwatch don't even have user expecting anything.

~~~
aidenn0
My handspring visor delivered a better experience for PDA things than my phone
right now. My Palm T5 was better yet (great battery life, played videos,
excellent calendaring, and they both were insanely responsive compared to my
phone.

I used an old Centro when my android phone was bricked, and while the web
browser was worse than crap, many other things were surprisingly refreshing,
plus it sipped battery (3 year old battery, ran for about 70 hours on a
charge).

I wonder if some of it is that we've hit a level of complexity at which
efficient implementations are not as feasible; try counting the number of
levels of abstraction in the android OS; there's a lot. Having even 10% of the
features and flash that android has, along with a semi-secure sandbox for
applications written the way PalmOS was isn't feasible; even Garnet was
showing places where the complexity was causing implementation issues.

------
grahamburger
I really, really like my LG G watch R. Looks pretty much like a regular watch
(I've had many people comment that they didn't even realize it was a
smartwatch) I've had it for a year and a few months and worn it in the shower,
swimming, etc and almost no signs of wear. It's does what I need plenty fast
and gets out of the way the rest of the time. If you're in the market for a
watch check it out (or the newer Urbane).

------
iolothebard
My PocketPC screamed. 206MHz ARM was amazing in 2003.

My wife loves her Band. I offered her the new one but she didn't see any
reason to upgrade. If the MS Phone platform weren't such a joke, it would have
been a gateway to her getting a windows phone. I got her an SGS7 instead.

She's sad she can't use Cortana with her Samsung, but she's not willing to
give up everything she likes for that one feature.

------
polynomial
You often hear about the yesteryear of Palm Pilots (and Newtons) but I wonder
why the Cassiopeia doesn't seem to get the same nostalgia.

The early generation boasted a 640 x 240 screen, ran Windows CE and had a full
PCMCIA slot.

But the next generation ditched the "nano-notebook" form factor to imitate
Pilot/Newton, which apparently was what everyone wanted.

~~~
mondoshawan
I had a Casseopeia I bought second hand. The problem I had with it as compared
to the Psion Series 5 was simply that it was too power hungry and windows CE
was simply not reliable enough. I had cases where alarms would not go off,
data corruption, and a battery that lasted at most a day.

------
cm3
I have a similar rule for websites. Unless I really, really need to get the
info on a page, I close it immediately if it doesn't show content in 2
seconds. Often it's pages that replace HTML with JavaScript content engines
but not necessarily.

------
bobajeff
I really just want a really small smartphone that I can __optionally __strap
to my wrist.

That's all smartphone/smartwatch manufacturers need to keep in mind when it
comes to marketing to me.

------
tardo99
The Garmin 235 is compelling.

~~~
intrasight
Does look cool. But a bit pricey. And last I checked, they didn't let you have
access to your data on your watch.

~~~
massysett
As a runner I can say that the Garmin is not pricey from my perspective
because it is optimized for running. I got a new Garmin Forerunner to replace
my old one even though it's about the same cost as an Apple Watch. I have no
interest in buying Apple Watch because I would need to carry an iPhone while
running, and I have no interest in strapping this big clunky phone to my arm
when running.

------
rconti
The biggest problem with the smartwatch is the 3-5 second hang in the
conversation when a user gets an alert and robotically pauses mid-word to
check it..... then looks back at you.... blinks.. remembers what they were
saying, and continue on.

I'm not the kind of person gripe about "kids these days and their technology"
but I've found the watch to be a real issue.

~~~
Fogest
A phone could have the same issue? If someone is unable to wait a few seconds
to finish a sentence, ask for a moment and check if it is important, than I
think that is not the watches problem and a problem that would come up via
other devices anyway.

~~~
rconti
Could, but I've almost NEVER noticed it with phones, and I notice it every
single alert with smartwatch wearers. It's like a pavlovian response. With
phones, people either wait to take it out of their pocket, or they do so as
they speak. I'm not sure why the wrist action causes them to pause mid-word.
It's extremely strange.

Granted my sample size is small; just a few folks I know at work and
personally who have them. It's uncanny though.

~~~
Fogest
Well I have noticed worse with phones. People having their phones out during a
conversation and starting to reply or look at something on their phone while
"listening" to me talk. This was at school, however during the summer when I
work people with smartwatches I would notice would typically excuse themselves
if they noticed an important phone call or message they had to deal with. They
would always finish talking though before they even checked if it was
important though, unless it was buzzing like a phone call.

But like you said, this is also my personal experience and my school and work
environment may be much different than yours, and even have a different kind
of cultural approach.

