Comment by markpapadakis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by markpapadakis | Hacker News Reader

Apple definitely hoped for an iPhone like leap forward for smart watches, and certainly tried hard to accomplish just that - but they probably realised soon after it was made available for purchase that this was no repeat, maybe even long before that.

The fact of the matter is, the iPhone was a truly revolutionary product(they often quoted that in their marketing material, but that was no hyperbole), whereas the Watch has been an evolutionary advancement compared to what was already at the market, at best. That is to say, it didn’t do anything particularly different, or did what alternative products did differently. It integrates well with the Apple ecosystem, and that digital crown is interesting( from what I am hearing, it’s not that great in practice ), and..well, that’s about it, really.

I believe Apple can eventually transform this into a great product, one step at a time. I am not personally drawn to the Watch, or any ‘smart watch’ for that matter, but maybe it’s because I haven’t experienced yet what Apple hasn’t invented yet that would make me want to buy and wear it. Maybe next year when the Home Kit initiative enables ‘smart devices’ and the watch to play nice together, or when you can control your Apple Car using the watch and Siri (if you can name your Apple car, I ‘ll name mine KITT), then I ‘ll really want it.

This is something I've been wondering about for a while in regards to Apple. Like you said, the iPhone was truly revolutionary. It was the best phone on the market by a very large margin. The iPad was also significantly better than the competition when it first came out (mostly due to Apple's iron fist approach to app developers).

These days the only product Apples makes that is significantly better than the competition is the MBP, and even that gap is slowly disappearing. The iPhone is not significantly better than the top Android phones. Microsoft has leapfrogged Apple in the tablet space. The Apple Watch was anything but revolutionary. Their desktops have never been better than the competition. Apple TV doesn't offer much compared to the competition. Their recent service offerings (e.g. Apple Music) haven't been better than the competition.

I can't remember the last time Apple released something that was clearly better than anything else on the market. That used to be routine for Apple. I don't know if it's due to Apple getting worse or everyone else getting better, but it's interesting to note.

I didn't know Microsoft had leapfrogged Apple in the tablet space.

I suggest that instead of evaluating things like the iPad or the Watch in terms of whether they’re the next iPhone, we evaluate them in terms of whether they defend the iPhone against being disrupted.

Go back to when the they gave the green light to the iPad. iPhones were small. Tablets were a thing, but not big. e-readers were a thing. Phablets were growing in markets like Asia.

What if everyone started buying tablets, and used bluetooth headsets to make calls? It seems unlikely that they would completely replace phones, but it could be that people start buying phones that are compatible with their tablets, and Apple would be frozen out.

So they brought out the iPad, and no, tablets didn’t replace phones, but Apple made some money and Tim Cook sleeps well at night.

Now I think it’s the same thing with watches. It seems unlikely, but one day we might find that all watches can make calls, and Amazon has one that uses voice to buy toilet paper or whatever, and what if people start buying phones that are compatible with their watch instead of watches compatible with their phones?

Apple doesn’t want to be frozen out of that game, so here’s a watch, and Apple is making some money, and if watches evolve to become huge, nobody is going to think of Apple has having “missed the boat.”

For the market leader, this is their primary imperative: Don't miss the boat. They don’t have to win in tablets or watches, they just have to make sure they are strong enough that if the phone business gets disrupted, they can compete. Or if the phones aren’t disrupted, at least make sure that nobody buys a Samsung because “Apple doesn’t make a tablet or watch that works well with an iPhone."

The only problem with making this argument for Apple specifically is that their stock price seems to figure in revolutionizing an industry every few years.

They could stay a major player for a long time and do just fine, but they'd go from being "Apple under Jobs" to "Microsoft post-Gates." It's a long, slow sunset, and you sleep fine at night, but you don't win it all.

With that said: yup, the Apple Watch does put off the final sunset a few years.

> The only problem with making this argument for Apple specifically is that their stock price seems to figure in revolutionizing an industry every few years.

Not really. http://financials.morningstar.com/valuation/price-ratio.html... - Apple's P/E ratio has never exceeded 20 during the years of peak iPhone growth.

Compare with say, Facebook, which has a ~85 P/E ratio currently. Do investors expect a 300B market cap company to expand at the rate of 2010 Apple?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com