
Apple Waits as App Developers Study Who’s Buying Its Watch - niels_olson
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/technology/personaltech/apple-waits-as-app-developers-study-whos-buying-its-watch.html
======
kylen
The phone is about consuming/producing content and that's what many popular
apps (like FB, Instagram, etc) are all about. No FB app on the watch indicates
that the standard FB experience doesnt work on the platform, in the same way
it wouldnt work on your kettle. That doesnt mean the kettle is a failure.

The watch is all about quick access to small, self-contained nuggets of
information and simple actions. Previously, these have been limited to "what's
the time?", "what's the date?", etc. With smart watches we can now have
"what's next on my calendar?", "what's the weather like today?", "pay for this
coffee", etc. They sound simple but they can quickly become habits. Developers
will eventually work out which of these work, but this is a genuinely new
platform - it will take time and iteration.

Additionally, any comparison to the iPad launch is unfair. The iPad, in terms
of how it is used, really is just a big iPhone.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Really? Are we at an age when taking the phone out of our pocket is an
inconvenience? Frankly, I live my life in front of a computer on a desk. My
calendar and a million other things are one click away and in a format far
more convenient than a phone or a a watch.

I think the watch will, in the long term, be a flop. Apple needs to find a
real killer app for it or it is toast. I already have a $500 iPhone in my
pocket or on my desk and a $5,000 computer on my desk. They are going to have
to pull off a really interesting trick to justify a $500 watch that is
redundant. Yes, they are selling bunches of them, but I fail to see this as a
long term product unless they pull a rabbit out of a hat.

How many of you developed iPhone apps? Us? Over a dozen. How many of you are
developing Apple Watch apps. Us? Zero. No interest in working for Apple for
free.

Down-vote away. I know the truth hurts.

~~~
Osmium
> I think the watch will, in the long term, be a flop. Apple needs to find a
> real killer app for it or it is toast.

There already are killer apps. Fitness is one. The question isn't if wearables
are going to be a success (they already are), but just how smart and connected
we need them to be: do you choose the Fitbit or the Apple Watch? etc. It seems
that most objections to smart watches are due to price and size/aesthetics,
both of which are hopefully only temporary issues, rather than absolute
functionality. A bit of imagination is all that's needed.

> Down-vote away. I know the truth hurts.

If you get down votes, it'll be for the attitude, not the opinion...

~~~
MeNotMe
Oh contraire, fitness is a 'success' because many think they should do more
but don't have the willpower and then buy this magic device to overcome their
lack of will.

This leads to hardware sales and non-usage.

Which makes it really hard for others to work on such a plattform.

~~~
1stop
I run 60km+ per week, I use wearables to track performance and do accurate
heart rate training. I compete with my friends for distances, speeds,
segments, Nike fuel any other metric we think is fun.

I don't lack will power (when my wearables run out of battery I still run).

So your comment sounds way off base to me. Just to give you a perspective you
may not have seen.

~~~
MeNotMe
Not sure how your example adds something to "many think".

~~~
1stop
"Many think" differently to what you said, as I illustrated. Which therefore
actually defines wearables in "fitness" as a huge success, which is the exact
opposite of the point you were making.

You have a whole industry built on wearables and fitness with millions of
miles run/ridden/hiked/whatevered... That's hardly "non-usage".

Did you forget the point you were making?

If you need further convincing, look at the higher end of wearables, with
Garmin, Polar, etc making specialised wearable devices, for specific sports
and making a killing. Consumer-ising that space is surely a winning ticket. I
mean that's essentially GoPros business model isn't it?

~~~
MeNotMe
Not to make this a point, as my initial "many" is weak on facts, but your
example makes it "one person think", not many.

~~~
1stop
No, I sited the fact all these wearable apps have heaps of usage.

But yes, comments on the internet are "one person think". Good luck with the
self-rationalisation you got going there.

------
tbatchelli
I have one that I didn't pay for. I thought I wouldn't like it and at first I
didn't think I had much use for it. After a week I changed my mind and I love
it. It gets out of my way and it keeps my phone in my pocket. I have been
leveraging its fitness tracking features quite a bit as I am somewhat
sedentary, and the feedback has been quite helpful -- and motivating.

One thing I noticed today is that now when I consider any app for purchase, I
check for wether it has support for the watch and wether this support makes
sense (e.g. today I was looking for a pomodoro timer app).

None of what I write above I would have guessed from the product description
and the advertisements. Whether it is useful to you or not will depend on the
apps that exist and your lifestyle. It's hard to predict and expensive to
test. YMMV

~~~
IBM
I haven't tried it yet but this isn't surprising to me at all. Every recent
Apple product has had a slow burn until mainstream adoption except for the
iPad which exploded out of the gate. I think the Mac might have had the
slowest burn of them all without really penetrating the mainstream until the
early 2000s with the Intel switch and the iPod acting as a gateway drug.

Heck the Mac is still growing long after the PC market matured and even while
it's declining. That is what the end game for iPhone will be in my opinion.
When the global smartphone market finally becomes saturated, the iPhone can
still grow at the expense of Android from switchers (that's when being the
highly differentiated product will help the most).

~~~
minthd
>> that's when being the highly differentiated product will help the most

But the iPhone does seem to lose differentiation. Android apps have recently
become well designed using material design, there's an app saturation, and 90%
of the time people spend in phones is inside apps anyway,so it's harder to
differentiate on the OS.

~~~
madeofpalk
> 90% of the time people spend in phones is inside apps anyway,so it's harder
> to differentiate on the OS.

But the app does not run within isolation, the OS impacts a lot on the app
experience. e.g. iOS Share Sheets/Android Intents. How a tweet is shared from
the Twitter app is dictated by the OS

~~~
minthd
Even with that, Android itself is well designed.

Currently it seems that apple is taking the battle to curation. I'm not sure
it has the advantage there - but than again, content quality is very
subjective and hard to compare,and than it becomes a marketing game - and
Apple is much stronger in marketing.

------
zik
I think Facebook have misunderstood the niche of smartwatches. Saying that
they're trying to deliver a "good Facebook experience" on such a small screen
shows that they thinks it's just a smaller smartphone. But the strength of
smartwatches is in notifications, not detailed content delivery. Instead of
trying to deliver entire feeds they should be trying to deliver notifications
and summaries with just enough information to let the user decide whether to
pull out their phone and use the full facebook app.

~~~
gfosco
That is all part of what makes a watch app a "good experience." I guarantee
the notifications handling would be the main focus of it.

------
somberi
I have had the apple watch for a week, and I am indifferent to having or not
having it.

This I think is its problem. It is probably the first Apple Device that has
been released without a sharp use case. I mean it is cool that I can answer
phone calls from my wrist (A candidate who I interviewed for an hour could not
tell I was talking from my Apple Watch). But it is not a necessity.

This is in essence the problem with wearables. To quote an article from the
Economist : "One measure of a wearable device's success is whether you would
turn around for it if you were halfway to work—as you would for a smartphone.
Yet market research suggests that consumers are not willing to make an about-
face and fetch their fitness trackers"

Ref: An year old. [http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-
finance/21613925-...](http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-
finance/21613925-potential-market-personal-fitness-tracking-devices-over-
hyped-shedding-wearables)

~~~
amirmc
That's an utterly ridiculous criterion/comparison. Of course, I'd turn around
and go back home for _the device that people expect to reach me on_
(irrespective of how 'smart' that device is - it's my _phone_ after all).

The thing that smartwatches bring that fitness trackers didn't is a _multi-
function_ device. Each feature is incremental and by itself might not be
compelling enough to care about long term, but add enough of them together and
maybe then it can jump the chasm into everyday use (e.g. telling the time +
fitness tracking + alerts + payments + quick comms + ???).

------
Htsthbjig
Read the Innovator's dilemma to understand that when a new product is launched
nobody really knows what is useful for.

It happened to the Iphone, it took at least a year and a half(it had no apps
at launch!!) to start being useful for something and it happened to the Ipad:
people did stare at it and say "it's cool, but I don't know what I could use
this for", There is a video of a news reported asking this to people about the
Ipad.

Selling millions of devices is the best feedback they could have. People
always find crazy uses for any new tech.

~~~
minthd
Apple surely did know that apps would be a hit.That's why they gave monopoly
on the iPhone to at&t - the weaker carrier at the time, in exchange for(among
others) full control over the app store.

And i'm sure if you've asked in a place like HN at the time - they would have
talked about some killer app ideas and a marketplace.

And let's not forget - we've already had android wear for some time(and the
pebble before) ,and yet no great ideas, even just as prototypes or
discussions.

------
eridius
Kind of a weird article. Sure, many companies are waiting because they're not
sure how to make a compelling experience for their app on the Watch. But that
seems kind of obvious. The article said that 5 of the top 20 apps (by
popularity) have Watch apps. It suggests this is a bad sign. My reaction is,
really, that many? Just because an app is popular on iOS does not mean it
lends itself to the watch form factor.

On a related note, a quote from the article:

> _The lack of support from Facebook — and from other popular app makers like
> Snapchat and Google, which also do not have apps for Apple Watch — [...]_

I get why it would make some sense to have a Watch app for Facebook, although
it's still a challenge to design a great UX on such a tiny space, but Snapchat
and Google? I can't even imagine how that would work on the watch. You
certainly can't take photos on the watch, and I wouldn't want to try and view
an ephemeral photo on the watch because it's so small. And similarly, what
would Google offer? The article mentioned Google Mail, but you can already get
your Google Mail on your watch by using the built-in Mail app.

------
psionides
I know who _isn 't_ buying it - anyone like me who doesn't live in one of
those lucky 16 countries... It's still not available globally and it's not
clear when it will be, so either they have a terrible supply of them, or
there's still quite a lot of demand in the countries where it's being sold.

~~~
doodyhead
Re-shipping services like myus.com for the US and parcelmotel.com for the
UK/Ireland make this an easily surmountable problem.

I'm in Ireland, ordered mine from the UK on a Sunday night, had it by
Thursday. Supply seems to be stable by now and I imagine they'll start
shipping further afield soon.

~~~
psionides
I don't know if I want a small or a big one though, and I can't just go to an
Apple Store to try both on... As soon as I have a chance of checking how they
feel on my wrist, I'll think about ordering them through some unofficial
channels.

------
graffitici
I've had a Pebble for a little while, and I'm extremely happy with it. I
bought it last fall for under $100 on Black Friday. My main goal was to give
this smartwatch craze a try before the Apple Watch came out. The Pebble also
has some apps, although in much smaller quantities, and with fairly elementary
UX. But the main thing for me was the notifications. That's the killer app for
me.

It's hard to understand the value of this unless you use one. I frequently
used to miss text messages, or even phone calls because I wouldn't feel my
iPhone vibrating in my pocket. With the Pebble, I have the phone on "Do Not
Disturb" at all times, and never miss any notification of importance. It's
gotten to the point that the idea of having a device in your pocket
broadcasting a loud noise to the entire surrounding seems like the stone age..
A little vibration on the wrist, and I know something happened. Then I can
choose to take out my phone to react on it, or just postpone that.

I actually found that this increases the battery life on my phone (despite
Bluetooth being turned on). Since I used to miss notifications (and would look
at the time..), I would frequently take out my phone, unnecessarily lighting
up the screen. No more!

So my idea of the perfect smartwatch is one that can provide decent
notifications, and has a long battery life. I'd appreciate it if it looked
good.. :)

------
steaminghacker
Is there a name for the phenomenon that people tend to push back against new
technology they don't have, and then once they get that technology, they're
raving about how good it is.

This is connected with the way people discover personal uses for new tech in
ways they didn't foresee _beforehand_.

I'm a firm believer that wearable smart devices will eventually go mainstream.
A bit like mobile phones did. In 5 years everyone will wear a smart device and
there will be a choice of different platforms.

------
lurkinggrue
Weren't there recent articles about the sales of the Apple Watch dropping off
by 90%?

------
marincounty
Personally, I feel Apple should admit they got it wrong--on so many levels.
Just let it die. Let companies like Pebble give it a go?

Drop the whole concept of a smart watch. Work on getting that iPhone small
enough, so it can be strapped to a wrist.

If they insist on keeping this product; get the price down, and do a complete
redesign.

(I know they don't want to canabilize iPhone sales, but that would be years
away? I would actually strap a 1 x 3 inch devise to my forearm--if I could
make calls, and access the Internet. That's something I might buy?)

One another note, to mechanical watch enthusiasts; I found a vintage IWC cal.
89 in a box of old broken watches. It is so old the paint on the face was worn
away. I only noticed a fish on the crown. I don't think the watch has ever
been servised? It's probally from the 50's. I'm in the process of getting its
history from IWC. I literally thought it was a old, cheap Timex. I was bored
one night, and wound it. It wound rather smoothly? "No--it must be a cheap
watch, with a fish on the crown? A Horologist tossed it in the spare parts bin
years ago?". Well, a day later, it was keeping perfect time? I was shocked? I
timed it on a Viborgraph, and it was keeping time with an error rate of 1
min/day. They built this movement for longevity? IWC still has parts for this
movement. I could pass along this watch to my nephew, and he could wear it
another 70 years? (Dillon--you don't know me, and I'm sorry. Me and your
father had a falling out. You seem like a great kid! This watch is yours when
I pass, which may be soon?). Apple--this is why some of us love our watches.
This actually happened last week. Sorry about using HN as a diary? I don't
have anyone to talk to anymore.

~~~
chippy
I enjoy your comments, marincounty!

I doubt that Apple are doing the wrong thing, I suspect that people will buy
into it because they are high tech, wealthy, innovators and some will buy it
because they already have invested several thousand dollars in the company via
all the devices and others will buy it for status reasons.

But it will be a good thing in the end, it will change things, like the iPod
and the iPhone - cheaper and better alternatives will be created, perhaps even
devices that are designed for use in developing countries where length of life
and hardiness are the main features.

~~~
rimantas
So which are _cheaper_ and _better_ alternatives to iPhone?

