Hacker News Reader

Comment by DarkTree | Hacker News Reader

I assume smart watches are still way too early in their development life-cycle to analyze whether or not they are useful as a product. Remember the original iPhone? It didn't have the app store. The first day I got my iPhone 6, I didn't have an internet connection and couldn't connect to anything. It felt almost useless. I think the difference with smart watches is that we already have the power/versatility of smart phones, in effect, we have already realized their great potential. We didn't have this standard when getting the first iPhone to compare it to. It's possible watches will have some type of evolution that is as great (but probably less) from the first iPhone to the 6S.

I don't see myself buying a smart watch anytime soon, but I said the same thing about buying a smartphone years ago.

View on HN

I want to have an open mind about the smartwatch platform, but when I look back and compare my thoughts about the Apple Watch to my thoughts about the original iPhone, I find a few differences. Even in its v.1 state, the iPhone offered lots of value: maps, web browser, nice touch-optimized calendar/ email/photo apps. People were excited by that. I'm just not getting that same sense of immediate value from the Apple Watch.

> I don't see myself buying a smart watch anytime soon, but I said the same thing about buying a smartphone years ago.

But a smartphone solves problems. lots of problems. GPS, camera, email... it does a lot. A smartwatch has to solve different problems, or current problems better, to be useful. Whereas right now it's more fashion than function.

Of course, the original iPhone didn't have GPS nor a camera that could compete with any of the digital ones available at the time. I think the problem is that almost all of the 3rd party apps run very slowly on the iWatch. I _really_ want to know how close my Uber driver is by staring at my wrist, but right now it's no faster than opening my phone.

I agree, that's why I wouldn't buy one right now. But future technology is hard to predict. I couldn't have predicted something like the app store. There might be some unforeseen killer feature that smart watches will dominate. Who knows.

For me, the Apple Watch has done a great job of solving meeting notifications. I have lots of meetings throughout the day, and it keeps me on track much better then my phone ever did. I also like the fact that I can keep my phone at my desk for long chunks of time and not miss important notifications.

The watch is not for everyone; however there are a few use cases that it handles much better than a phone (at least for me).

There are many problems to be solved in health monitoring and sleep- and fitness-tracking. And there is a real market for fitness bands, even if it's not a huge one.

There's also a designer watch/fashion market, which is the one that seems to be of more interest to Apple. However, it doesn't appear to be winning in that one.

The current Apple Watch market appears to be "geeks with iPhones who live in Silicon Valley, or wannabees". How is it doing there?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com