
Apple Watch Review: Bliss, but Only After a Steep Learning Curve - tysone
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/technology/personaltech/apple-watch-bliss-but-only-after-a-steep-learning-curve.html
======
jjoonathan
> my wife told me that I seemed to be getting lost in my phone less than in
> the past. She found that a blessing.

This is the first time I've heard the value-add of the watch over the phone
phrased in a convincing way.

------
danso
This is such garbage:

> Similarly, the most exciting thing about the Apple Watch isn’t the device
> itself, but the new tech vistas that may be opened by the first mainstream
> wearable computer. On-body devices have obvious uses in health care and
> payments. As the tech analyst Tim Bajarin has written, Apple also seems to
> be pushing a vision of the Watch as a general-purpose remote control for the
> real world, a nearly bionic way to open your hotel room, board a plane, call
> up an Uber or otherwise have the physical world respond to your desires
> nearly automatically.

Sorry, but how does being able to open your hotel room or call an Uber from
your watch, instead of your phone, some kind of new revolution? Are there
people who enter their hotel rooms or hail an Uber so often (i.e. multiple
times in a single hour, every day) that pulling out the phone is an action
worth optimizing?

There's a lot of potential in near-field communication features...such as a
hotel door unlocking as I walk past it. But that has nothing to do with a
wearable device; that could be accomplished with a phone as it is.

~~~
gregwtmtno
I think the author is describing how the smartphone became revolutionary for
uses that were beyond its initial incarnation.

If you look at the sentence in context, the preceding paragraph says it is the
smartphone that "became the basis of a wide range of powerful new tech
applications, from messaging to ride-sharing to payments." I think the author
was trying to say that having the world respond to your "desires nearly
automatically" might open similar "new tech vistas." That's how I read it
anyway.

Also, please consider the new Hacker News guideline against gratuitous
negativity.

~~~
bkurtz13
I understand the reasoning behind curating a community to promote the kind of
discourse users desire, but the type of self censorship that this comment
promotes unsettles me.

I feel like the "negativity" that HN is so concerned about could be dealt with
through down votes. The "gratuitous negativity" edict feels Orwellian, and I
question its value vs unintended consequences.

------
skc
I'm surprised (or perhaps I shouldn't be) that the one review to make it to HN
so far is the one that is gushing the most about this watch.

Yes it's the NY Times, but this is a tech gadget. I would have expected a NY
Times review to be lower down the pecking order here.

edit: Refreshed HN and now I see the Verge review. Oops.

~~~
soonghong
Weird, I saw the Verge review at first, but after refreshing I see NY Times

