
Apple Watch Review: The Smartwatch Finally Makes Sense - robgibbons
http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-watch-review-the-smartwatch-finally-makes-sense-1428494495
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nickysielicki
I love how the title is "The Smartwatch Finally Makes Sense" and yet his main
criticism is that the software is not up to par with current market offerings.

So why does Apple's smartwatch make more sense, exactly? The fact that Apple
makes it?

Garbage article.

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danso
Maybe it's because the OP/WSJ review got posted a few minutes earlier, but why
is The Verge's much more thorough, well-produced review flagged down into the
second page?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9340254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9340254)

Though I'm eternally miffed at The Verge for giving a high rating to the HTC
One brick-of-a-phone, they generally do produce in-depth, engaging reviews.

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robotnoises
> if you can tolerate single-day battery life, half-baked apps and inevitable
> obsolescence, you can now wear the future on your wrist.

... seems like a lot to tolerate for $500+ USD, and yet I still kinda want
one.

~~~
dlp211
Maybe I'm weird, but single day battery life is not a "knock" against the
smart watch. I'm 32 and have worn a watch since I can remember, but I never
wear it to bed. I currently have been wearing a Moto 360 and have no problem
docking it every night.

My complaint main against the smart watch is I hate that the watch face is
digital. I want a smart watch that looks like a normal watch or I'd rather the
smart watch take on another form (eg: Microsoft Band) which I can wear in
conjunction with a traditional watch.

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smackfu
Lots of reviews out today. Pretty mixed, definitely sounds like an Apple 1.0
product, especially on the software side.

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bla2
>T he battery lives up it [sic] its all-day billing, but sometimes just
barely.

If a new watch barely makes it through the day, a months-old watch won't.

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higherpurpose
Sounds like the smartwatch Samsung would've built (and has kind of already
done it). Except I remember the idea of "smartphone on your wrist" being met
with much more hostility in reviews than in Apple Watch's case. In the reviews
for Samsung's smartwatches it was called a "stupid idea". In the Apple Watch's
reviews it's "well...you learn to cope with it".

I'm not defending Samsung's watches. I think all smartwatches are a solution
in search of a problem right now, and that most implementations are either
terrible or insufficient. Just pointing out the obvious bias for one company.

~~~
bydo
Samsung's watch was a smaller, worse smartphone strapped to your wrist, down
to a camera, dialer, etc. They marketed it based on that: do everything your
phone can, less comfortably and conveniently, without taking your phone out of
your pocket! Unsurprisingly this was not an attractive use case to many.

Apple is positioning their watch as something to get you off of your phone,
rather than another way to access it (Google did this a little more than
Samsung's first offering, but Apple is taking it much further). There's a
reason every review is seeded with the narrative of spending too much time
with technology. We'll see how this bears out—a lot of us have no problem
keeping our phones in our pockets already, and many smartphone obsessives
wouldn't be able to make the switch with the Watch in its current state if
they even could be convinced that they wanted to—but at least it makes
somewhat more sense.

(I'm not buying one, either. Yet.)

