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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I think the friction can come across to some customers as good service, and help launch a category.

The Apple Watch was initially sold at fitting appointments in store, and I think that was important in establishing it as a normal thing to wear and even a fashionable thing to wear in some cases, and helped cement the product in the mainstream.

Tailored suits is another case where there’s a premium price, premium service, but a lot of friction. It’s not always bad.

They’re also probably supply constrained enough that the friction doesn’t matter for the first version or two.

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> I think that was important in establishing it as a normal thing to wear

Apple did not need to normalize the wearing of watches. Watches have been luxury fashion items for hundreds of years.

Apple absolutely needed to normalise the idea that a £300 black puck was Luxury Fashion. See what happened to Google Glass for when a company fails to make a wearable product fashionable, and we've been wearing expensive glasses for hundreds of years. Watch nerds still shun it today, although Apple has managed to break through as much as they needed to make it a success.

No, they didn't

They absolutely did. Smartwatches were mostly seen as tacky before the Apple Watch. That’s part of why they chose a different form factor and partnered with luxury brands for bracelet. For Apple to make wearing them seems normal was not a given at all.

Absolutely did not. Only thing they needed to convince people of is accepting less than a days worth of battery life.

The Pebble was absolutely seen as tacky. Only worn by people who cared more about tech than visuals.

The Moto 360 was out before the Apple watch. I know that for a fact because I got one on the release date. They were pretty hard to find when they came out.

Apple was late to the game with smartwatches and didn't do a single thing to convince people to wear them.

> The Moto 360 was out before the Apple watch.

And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.

I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.

> And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.

Source please! That's not how I remember the release, I recall it was very well recieved and sold out everywhere with the battery life being the biggest complaint.

> I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.

I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else. Your opinion is not the general consensus or a source for anything so find a reliable 3rd party to back you up that isn't a random blogpost by Joe nobody.

> I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else.

Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same world than some of the commenters here.

Here is The Verge review of the Moto360: [https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review]. A few selected quotes by me: “It’s designed to prove that smartwatches don’t have to be ugly.”, “It’s not a gadget, it’s a watch”, “At 11.5mm, it’s a little thick”, “ Everything before it was a screen on your wrist”. And that’s the Verge being incredibly nice with the 360. Truth is it was very much still seen as a tacky piece of technology bolted to your wrist.

It took me two minutes to find by the way because this kind of reviews were literally everywhere in the years leading to the release of the Apple Watch.

> Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same world than some of the commenters here.

I'm wondering the same thing.

You are arguing with people because you think Apple invented wearing watches as a fashion statement with their release of the Apple watch in 2015.

> you think Apple invented wearing watches as a fashion statement with their release of the Apple watch in 2015.

No, I said that Apple successfuly turned smartwatches from something seen as gadget into something seen as a proper acceptable watch, which they most definitely did as I have proved to you with my previous message (which you are conveniently ignoring by the way).

The watch industry is very fashion conscious. Swatch Group managed to turn mechanical watches - a clearly inferior product which not only can't keep time properly but has to be serviced every couple of years - into something of seen as timeless and the embodiment of success so clearly Apple was walking a well paved road.

The first reviews I found from versions circa 2014.

https://www.cnet.com/reviews/motorola-moto-360-review/

https://www.alphr.com/motorola/32669/motorola-moto-360-revie...

Criticisms of how much the OS sucks

https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review

Username fits. You're right. Remember this is the same crowd that thought the iPhone wouldn't sell. Some things never change!

It only fits because if you consider Android a nerd OS (I suspect this user does) then your perception will be that everything Android does is for nerds.

It doesn't prove anything at all and Apple definitely did not make watches fashionable in 2015.

Before the Apple Watch, no mainstream celebrities were photographed wearing smart watches. After the Apple Watch, celebrities are regularly photographed wearing just one type of smart watch – the Apple Watch.

Whether you like it or not, for most people, celebrity culture drives luxury culture, and even in the top end markets it's still a leading indicator even if it's not driving it.

I'm open to hearing constructive arguments against this, but it seems very clear to me.

some people wear them, most of them clueless I-wear-it-too crowd. I see a lot of people around me / commuting wearing Garmin watches (ie fenix 7 pro), now that's a conversation starter.

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