
Apple: March 9th 'Spring Forward' Event - lumisota
http://www.apple.com/live/
======
andrewhillman
Well, considering we change the clocks to "spring forward" 2 a.m on March 8,
all signs point to some kind of watch being released. The Swiss must be
shaking in their boots while frantically clicking through the Android SDK. ;)

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austenallred
I don't even care about new hardware or products. I just want it to all be
incredibly stable and well-supported.

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serve_yay
From your lips to god's ears. But, I don't think "stability and support" are
gonna make the agenda for March 9.

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fdsary
I'm a programmer, and know very little about art (sadly).

The picture in the background here is very beautiful. Someone who makes that
kind of thing, how do they do it? How do they chose colours, and how would
they go about making the shapes actually appear on a screen?

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freehunter
It looks like a small handful of semi-transparent shapes (they look like
leaves to me) with different colors that are overlayed on each other. Since
they're different semi-transparent colors, the colors blend to form a new
shade where they have overlapped. Repeat this a few times with logic that
rotates the leaf around the axis a little below the bottom center of the
screen, and there you have it.

~~~
derefr
Yep. It's just a more gradated version of the iOS Photos app icon. It's pretty
easy to see what makes the simpler version look the way it does, when you blow
it up[1]: there are just eight translucent roundrects with gradients, and
everything else emerges from how they overlap.

(And from the fact that the gradients form a complete hue continuum. Look at
the small triangles in the middle to see the destination colors, and see how
they match the source colors of their neighbours.)

[1] [http://www.icreatemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/Pr...](http://www.icreatemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/Preview.png)

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asn0
Presumably announcing the Apple Watch is available to the huddled masses...

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gitah
I am looking forward to the outrage when the Apple Watch gold edition is
priced at $5-10k.

[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/24/caldwell-
edition](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/24/caldwell-edition)

~~~
listic
...while lasting about 3 hours on a single charge
[http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-
watch-...](http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/22/apple-targets-for-apple-watch-
battery-life-revealed-a5-caliber-cpu-inside/)

Really, if they will get away with that, the world has surely gone crazy.

~~~
bshimmin
I love how they reason it away in the article:

"Considered separately, the active use app, clock, and fitness numbers sound
very low, but the reality is that people will passively wear the Apple Watch
for most of the day, actively interacting with it only for short periods of
time."

Essentially they're saying, "People will buy an expensive watch that does all
this extra fancy stuff, but really they won't bother much with the extra fancy
stuff - because who actually wants to fiddle around with something on their
wrist for any protracted length of time?"

I think Apple has enough die-hard fans, who will buy almost anything they
make, for it to be hard for them to do something that will register as a
genuine complete flop... but I think the Apple Watch really could struggle to
get much traction amongst the masses, and I don't just mean the expensive gold
model.

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freehunter
If you used your iPhone at full power all day, it would be dead in three
hours. If you left it in standby, it would last for days. Most people do a
combination of these things, leading to the battery life averaging out to be
around one day of normal use.

Is that essentially saying people bought an expensive phone that does all this
fancy stuff but don't bother with it because they don't want to fiddle with
something in their hand for any length of time?

Try flooring the accelerator on your car and see how long the tank of gas
lasts. Compare it to idling away a full tank. Do people shy away from hot-
rodding their engines just because they don't want to fiddle with the
throttle, or because doing the speed limit and accelerating slowly tends to
suit their needs just fine?

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bshimmin
The aforementioned article about the Apple Watch talks of "heavy application
use" and suggests it might only last 2.5 hours. If you read, for example,
[http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-6-review-battery-
life-a...](http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-6-review-battery-life-and-
verdict-page-6), it suggests "heavy use" of the iPhone 6 (at 50% screen
brightness) yields about 14 hours of battery life. That's a pretty significant
difference.

While it's easy to say "it's more compelling to do stuff on a phone than it is
to do it on a watch, so you'll naturally use the phone more", that rather
makes me wonder why I would bother buying the watch, especially when you
actually need the phone as well.

Time will tell how people use these devices and whether the battery really
holds up to a reasonable person's usage. And, of course, it seems likely
(though not certain) that later generations will have improved battery life.

~~~
freehunter
Because of the big screen, it's easier to browse the web on a tablet than on a
phone. Easier than that is a laptop. A PC has an even bigger screen than that!
But people still use phones, mostly for the minor convenience of having it in
your pocket instead of in a bag, but also for the unique interactions it
provides.

I use my PC for eight hours a day straight. I use my phone for maybe 10
minutes here, 10 minutes there, maybe an hour long call once or twice a day.
Is there anything wrong with that? Should I be using my phone more? I mean,
why would I spend all the money on having a powerful phone when I'm only using
it occasionally?

That's the logic you seem to be putting towards this watch. I'm not going to
defend the battery life, it's totally crap. I'm just arguing against the
logic. You seem to be saying if you're not using the device constantly, it's
not worth having. I don't use my car constantly. I don't use my phone
constantly. I don't use my Pebble constantly. But they're nice to have for
their own reasons. The point of the watch is not to use it 100%, all the time.
It's to use it when it makes sense to use it. Heavy application use isn't what
it's designed for.

Still, I agree the battery makes it useless even for the intended
functionality.

~~~
bshimmin
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. It just seems to me that it's a lot
of money to spend on something that you aren't intending to use all that much
(regardless of the battery life problem). You have a phone in your pocket that
works quite well for many tasks; do you really need to spend a bunch more
money on a fancy watch that does some of the same things as your phone, via
your phone, in possibly a less useful way?

I really don't know, perhaps Joe Public will see it very differently to me;
certainly those of my friends who don't work in tech, but overwhelmingly do
own iPhones, I have spoken to about the Apple Watch seem fairly uncertain as
to its general usefulness.

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joeblau
I was wondering why they were painting the Yerba Buena center yesterday. The
railing and awning were yellow and I saw a bunch of painters out there
painting everything gray. When I walked by today, almost everything was gray.
I'm hoping for some retina macbook air, new macbook pro and of course the
watch.

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ascendantlogic
My early 2011 MBP finally gave up the ghost this past weekend and I bought a
new 15" on Monday. I _knew_ this was going to happen.

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masklinn
The event's probably going to be all about the watch and none about the rest.

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ascendantlogic
Yeah, I read that after the fact. I'd still give it an outside chance that
they announce Broadwell MBP's but if Apple Watch is the star of the show, then
that's somewhat unlikely.

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BinaryIdiot
I've purchased a Pebble and, more recently, a Moto 360. I love the idea of
smart watches but I feel like they need to be as passive as possible for the
best user experience. So far the Apple Watch looks like it needs a lot of
interaction to do different things. I'm excited to see a real demo of the
interface to see if that's really the case.

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antoinevg
Quad core i7 on the mini's please. It would be nice to have parity with 2012
in 2015.

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allsystemsgo
I get that a retina macbook air would be great, but the big selling point of
the macbook air is its battery life, and I don't anticipate them sacrificing
that.

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joezydeco
The refurbished Macbook Airs on Apple's web store are a pretty good indicator
if there's a refresh coming.

Usually the 15-18% refurb discount jumps to around 25-30% if those models are
going to get discontinued. Not seeing that on the store (yet).

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gldnspud
If they're going to sell a watch, does this mean our iPhone alarms will
forevermore work correctly during DST switchovers and calendar year
increments?

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Axsuul
I hope this is the new Macbook Pro

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zomg
just give me a retina mbair pleeeease!

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PinnBrain
Yes, tangent, but please support the movements in several states to abolish
daylight savings time. Having time move out from under us has long been a pain
for programming robust systems. Perhaps the 5th or 6th generation of Apple
watch will not need to do such an archaic adjustment.

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spacehome
Daylight Savings Time has some ill effects, true, but if you think that making
life easier for programmers is a point that should convince the general
public, you're sorely out of touch. For one, it's not all that difficult in
the scheme of things. For another, programmers dealing with dates in the past
will always have to consider it. Lastly, the general perception is that
programmers get paid quite well enough and can suck it up and deal with this
minor annoyance.

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uptown
Just wait till we travel to other planets' timezones. That's when programmers
will really earn their paychecks.

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happyscrappy
Or when timezones depend on how fast you are traveling.

