Pre-Order The Apple Watch | Hacker News Reader

Pre-Order The Apple Watch

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17 pointsmiiiiiike20 comments

At first I was kind of excited about the Apple watch but I don't normally wear a watch. I was mainly interested in the health tracking features and notifications.

I just started using a Fitbit watch and have realized it's a much cheaper alternative that meets most of my requirements.

I guess you don't have to charge it every f..n day too.

As far as I can see this just works for call and push notifications from the Fitbit app. For me a very big part of the Apple Watch are notifications from all apps e.g. if my server is down or I receive a bank deposit etc.

But is there really a 500 dollar difference between moving your hand from your pocket to your eyeline, and moving your hand from 1 inch away from your pocket to your eyeline?

Try a Pebble sometime. It's a full-featured smartwatch and it also has activity tracking features.

Except for swimming (which is quite rare for activity trackers and great win for Pebble) we have to wait for 'smart bands'. HRM are getting more and more popular and without it Pebble can't really compete with fitness trackers.

I personally think that HRM in watches will have the same fate as 3D in televisions. For most people HRM is a gimmick, not something they'll use every day.

I'm not sure if I agree. I have optical HRM on a activity tracker and knowing my resting HR is very cool. Its good enough for 23h a day. I do use chest strap HRM for cycling where my tracker fails to record high intensity properly (like hills).

> For most people HRM is a gimmick, not something they'll use every day.

HRM is a key to frictionless calorie consumption estimation; HRM may not directly be something a lot of users use every day, but frictionless calorie consumption estimation has a pretty wide audience, and HRM is the enabling technology for that.

Women's watches have been a hard sell since as long as I can recall.(20-30 years?) I don't know why, but high end women's watches(Rolex, even Patek) are a bargain in the secondary markets.

I feel the Iwatch will eventually be very popular with women. I think it might be the Swatch of the millennial--even baby boomer generation.

I'm usually wrong on predicting anything, but why would Apple push this product through(without any redesigns) after all the backlash it has received since they introduced this product?

(In all honesty, I really wanted to like this watch. I'm a self taught Horologist who has been working/buying mechanical watches for at least 15 years.)

If Apple cared about backlash we would not gave iPod, iPhone, iPad, MackBook Air…

This point-of-view has been browbeaten into submission, but: Those products were made under the heavy influence of Steve Jobs, and it showed. Read the history, Steve had the vision and was intimately involved in every detail of those products and the business around them, in addition to staffing them with world class people.

Apple without Steve Jobs is a very different beast, a completely unknown quantity that has yet to prove itself. So far it is not doing too well IMHO.

I don't think that's true at all. A lot of brands do very well with Women, for example Cartier and their Tank line. Brands such as Chopard also do very well by offering exquisite design and material but uses a Quartz movement.

Many women's watch brand don't really market with "fancy in house movements with x complications", that's nerdy stuff for men, they market with material, design, and sell for the jewelry aspect of it, instead of the horology aspect.

For example, the Chanel (not even a traditional watch brand) J12 sold very well. I think it uses an ETA 2892 movement but goes for over $25k for the diamond version.

Interesting to see that they do not have technical specs on their store pages (e.g, http://store.apple.com/us/buy-watch/apple-watch-sport?produc...)

"Apple Watch Edition".

Now that's just confusing.

Edit: I just saw the price and it cleared up any confusion immediately. (Around $10-17k)

In my opinion, Apple is a software company.

Hardware is neither here nor there. The general population do not care about the tech specs/hardware of general computers (e.g. PC, or MAC). They only care about how fast and easy and nice it is to use software (e.g. different OSs).

It really is kind of embarrassing to see Apple going for a cash grab such as this. They know people who have the money will buy these extremely expensive products, because they 1. don't care about the technology behind it, and 2. they don't even have the patience, and/or time, to use the product enough to access its full potential.

People who have the money to buy those expensive watches; likely won't care about how it works, or how to work it.

Sorry, no. Apple is a device company. Both hardware and software are instrumental to the success of any of their devices.

How could you say the creator of the modern-day smartphone is not a hardware company? iPod? iMac? MacBook Air? iPad? Their hardware may even be their biggest differentiator. Samsung's new Galaxy S6 is a perfect indication that competitors are far behind Apple's innovation in terms of hardware design. Same goes for the Google / TAG partnership for creating a new watch. Any time Apple releases a new device, competitors follow, primarily in terms of hardware.

Apple is not a spec company, sure, but many of their key innovations show up in their hardware's form factor, aesthetics, and finish.

"Available to ship: June"

Likewise. 42mm sport grey. No point ordering.

Some models. Others are shipping on schedule.

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