The two products occupy a very similar space of affordable luxury; they are not world-changing like the Mac or iPhone, but category-defining. Through gradual iteration and segmentation, Apple slowly turned its niche product into a cultural force.
Just wait until the iPod Classic 5G equivalent of the Watch comes out.
The jobs the watch will do aren't as clear cut as it was for the iPod.
The iPod let you listen to music and carried lots of (or all of) your music and had software that made it easy to convert and manage your digital music and buy more over the internet. Those were things basically everyone wanted and it did that better than competitors.
The watch? Well yeah it tells time, but it's worse at that then most watches and everyone already carries a device that tells time which the watch can't replace. Yeah, it gives you slightly faster access to notifications but not everyone needs that. Yeah, it has some good health/tracking benefits but that's not a huge deal to most people. Imho the best use of the watch is for (mobile OS)-Pay/mobile ID but adoption is still weak (unless you're in Tokyo) and it can be delivered with a much smaller wearable.
1. I'm what you'd call a "watch guy." In the time I have had the Apple Watch Series 2, I have barely used my mechanicals (including a Lange & Sohne and a Nomos Glashutte). The Apple Watch comes with me on all but the most formal/elegant occasions, and I now hate changing straps on my mechanical watches in comparison. The Apple Watch may not be as beautiful, but it is far more versatile and useful. When I want to dress it up a bit, I throw a Hermes leather strap on it, which works nicely in just about everything other than a suit (which is essentially the only time I'd jump back to the Lange).
2. You're vastly underestimating the utility of quick replies on the Apple Watch, in particular. I have quick replies for every conceivable response I could give to someone that is fewer than five words or so. This makes a lot of communication much faster because I don't need to take out my phone - I can tap, "congratulations", "cool!", "no", "yes", "I'm in a meeting", "I'm in a movie", etc.
3. Having notifications or synced functionality on the watch is a very frictionless way of enhancing iPhone interaction. As other commenters have said I can quickly glance at a multitude of things, not just the time. If I receive a message on Slack, I don't need to take my phone out if it's not something that requires my attention. When driving, I can have directions on my wrist directly, instead of on my dashboard. I can even have conversations on my wrist, hands free, while cooking. These are all ways it's directly enhanced my life in ways I wouldn't have really thought of without trying it.
4. I run a fair amount - at least 30 miles each week. The Apple Watch is the single most empowering device I've ever had for quantified self tracking and fitness enhancement. Having a pair of Airpods and an Apple Watch is a fantastic combination - I can't even imagine bringing my phone with my on a run anymore. I can look at my wrist to see my pace and split information, and that's just on the native Workout app. I can track my heart rate constantly using something like Cardiogram. I can also track my sleep. There is a massive amount of data enablement that I can now see and monitor as much as I want in the Health app.
I think in a couple more iterations the Apple Watch will be the best fitness tracker out there. At the moment the poor battery life doesn't lend itself well to things like sleep tracking or longer activities.
If the Apple Watch had week long battery life and was waterproof I'd get it over my garmin. When I had the original Apple Watch, I had to charge it every day and couldn't get it wet. Also my garmin always shows the time. None of that turn your wrist or its blank nonsense.
First, you probably meant "analog" watches. There's nothing unreal about the Apple Watch.
Second, one can be an analog watch aficionado AND fascinated/converted to a digital watch like the Apple Watch.
You don't suddenly become a "gadget guy" just because you've stopped wearing the analog watches in your collection in favor of something more practical.
If non-fashion, non-mass market brands targeted at the mid and high tiers of in-house haute horlogerie don't constitute "real watches" for you, what does? Your comment reads like I mentioned the widely recognizable "status" brands like Rolex and Tag Heuer. Nomos (entry-mid) and Lange (high-ultra high) are two of the most well-respected watch houses in the world right now, and probably the most well-respected from Germany (as opposed to Switzerland).
You're right that I'm a "gadget guy", though. I just appreciate both, and my original point is the Apple Watch's raw utility is capable of displacing my passion for mechanical timepieces and their craftsmanship.
No, it qualifies you as Lange & Söhne watch owner. We don't know if he bought it himself or why he did it. Not every Porsche owner is a petrolhead either.
Having said this, I am not disputing that he is a watch guy. I believe he is because he says so. As far as I am concerned this is enough.
I think the health tracking features are the major differentiating feature for wearables. Fit people want to track their exercise and stay fit and the unfit (for the most part) want to get fit. These two groups are 99% of the population. And, as we're finding in the 21st century/age of plenty, fitness takes some work. This thread alone indicates wearable can be a big motivator for fitness.
In addition, the health tracking will only get better and lead to preemptive sensing for cardiac events, insulin detection, and who knows what else.
I think the market for wearables (watches) is bigger than the iPod market, as wearables solve a real problem (fitness tracking and health monitoring) and are more than an awesome convenience.
I agree with all points except when you assume 'wearables' implies 'watches'. Similarly to payments, the health benefits can be delivered with a much smaller device. If health is the main benefit than that big gorgeous battery-sucking screen is a waste.
True. I would think the watches category will continue to occupy the pretty good/general tracking and health stats market (which should be huge) and, as the tech advances, there will always be smaller, screenless, more accurate detectors for specific use cases.
I am still amazed that my watch can track my laps while swimming (very accurately) and simultaneously track my pulse (less accurately, but that'll improve). And keep my calendar, deliver notifications, etc...
If you want to go beyond just counting steps and track actual activities (running, cycling, swimming, hiking, golf, etc) then you need some kind of display with buttons or touch screen.
In my observation, the most immediate effect of the Apple watch has been that enthusiasts seem to be more willing now to show off their Polars and Garmins in "civilian" settings. To those who have been using HRM straps for years or even decades, the fitness aspects of the Apple watch feel cute at best, much like the minimalistic fitness trackers that recently created a market as always-on step counters.
The actual technology is converging. The latest offerings from all three traditions share the same feature sets: sports HRM/GPS watches now have messaging and background tracking, communication watches have added GPS and HRM and even the minimalistic always-on activity monitors have evolved into full smart watches, e.g. Fitbit Blaze.
With features converged, the key differentiator is image, which has been the main driver of the wristwatch market for almost a century. Back to normal, in a way. Apple for those who identify with business, Garmin or Polar for those who identify with enthusiast level sports and Fitbit etc for those who identify with more casual fitness. Apple feels surprisingly "Microsoft" in this group.
What remains interesting is if the fitness and sports traditions will eventually merge on the image level (with "sports" strictly higher status as in "more serious") or if those brands will end up binned away in a spartan "training geek" category that casuals would go to lengths to avoid being associated with.
Buying a fitness tracker is a way to signal to everyone that you care about fitness without actually sweating. Just like buying "athleisure" clothes or nutritional supplements.
This probably fits with the iPod narrative but for me the current Apple Watches just aren't good enough for sports use.
What do I mean? Well specifically they lack ANT+ support so they won't work sensors I already own. E.g. Cycling power meters, heart rate monitors, electronic groupsets, etc.
Some of those I could replace cheaply with Bluetooth alternatives but not all of them.
In the future I'd like to look at things like blood oxygen monitors, not having Ant+ really cramps your choices.
I don't find Garmin products all that reliable but if it was purely for sports I'd currently buy one of their watches over an Apple Watch.
(I own and really like my Mac and iPhone so I think in other areas I must fit the Apple customer profile).
The lack of ANT+ is bad, but it's not the end of the world. Of the sensors I have currently (HRM, power meter, Stryd, speed sensor), the only one that doesn't have Bluetooth LE is the speed sensor. I note the electronic groupsets as an issue though.
The next WatchOS update will also add the ability to connect to 2 Bluetooth LE devices directly, rather than requiring the phone to do so. (Not sure if this is on top of the existing support for an external HRM or not.)
IMHO what's lacking is purely apps. For someone used to a Garmin or similar, the built-in workout tracking is a joke, and you don't get any useful exports or imports.
If there was a decent app that could give me data screens and a GPX file when done (and auto-upload to Strava probably), I'd use it for 4/5 of my runs/rides and just bring out the Garmin (920XT here) for the longer workouts where battery life is an issue.
I've been using the latest Garmin Forerunner 935 for a couple months and so far it's been reliable. We'll see how long it lasts. But realistically I think we're going to have to consider wearable devices as disposable after a few years.
Like with other tech, they tend to keep on working just fine, but you want to replace them because the new model has better features.
I upgraded from the 910 to the 920 to get the Bluetooth upload. That said, I'm not particularly tempted by the 935 over the 920, and I know people still using the 310XT which was released in 2009...
Fitness tracking is nice, but I believe that for 90% of runners is totally irrelevant. They have other, simpler metrics and work well. Those who want wearables buy specialized equipment (heart rate monitoring, etc.)
Add to all the above that an iPhone with an armband is just as easy to manage.
If the price drops by half, then it might become an interesting proposition, but till then, I don't see the watch as an iPod-like product and I am even considering buying one - I had a pebble before.
Based on what I've seen at a local running club with 60+ members, most regular runners seem to have picked up at least one wearable (although I haven't seen that many Apple watches - most have gone for either Garmin or TomTom). In fact, I'm certainly in the minority as someone who hasn't.
That said - the more professional members are generally also in that minority too - they tend to stick to using their phone or they don't bother tracking their runs at all.
It's been a game changer for me as a life-management aid. The calendaring and task list functions are solid. Pulling your phone out of your pocket (especially a big 6s+) is actually a big barrier to using Siri to jot down a note or set a reminder. I never used to use Siri, but with the watch I use it all the time. I just wish it could do more without telling you to pull out your iPhone.
May have done a poor job of communicating it above but I do think the watch is swell and useful and I'm big on wearables.
But I also don't have a watch for reasons above and long term I'm even more skeptical of the form factor because I think that most of the utility can be replaced by other wearables, and some of those wearables are not replaceable while the watch is. As you mention, things like notes, daily calendar and tasks work great with Siri but if you think about it how necessary is the watch to those interactions? I think most can be done great with just a headset and when that's impractical you can take the phone out of your pocket. If you start with a wearable ecosystem where the headset is core then, as AI and voice assistants continue to improve, we should expect to see a lot of notifications and health tracking migrate there and that whittles the use cases of the watch down considerably.
If you take those away what do you have left? Payments/id, fashion, video playback, games, partial or total phone replacement. Payments seems large but a ring seems superior. Games, video and fashion don't seem like killer apps for the watch form factor. A phone replacement/platform for 4g and wifi radios seems like a killer app but does the watch do that better than other options? Maybe yes but maybe no. If we're talking a total phone replacement you probably want the radios next to wherever the camera migrates to.
We're a long way from where it's acceptable to have a headset with a screen on in a business meeting. Meanwhile, during a meeting I can surreptitiously glance down at my watch to check when my next meeting or a email alert.
It's a surprisingly good form factor, combining voice touch and a display in an accessory that's already socially acceptable to wear everywhere.
Wearing headsets of any sort in a business meeting is pretty unacceptable in most cases. There's a reason the one ear Bluetooth sets largely fell out of fashion. Sure, social conventions can change but they haven't so far.
But on a headset without a screen you can't quickly see and dismiss an email or text that comes in without pulling out your phone. Or you can't glance quickly at it to remember your next appointment. I found that the bit reduced friction actually made me much more likely to rely on my phone to manage my schedule.
Why only in Tokyo?
In London you can use Apple Pay pretty much everywhere, even in the small food stalls on the street or to enter the underground.
I have seen pretty much the same in Australia, and I guess that in a lot of places in the world is no different.
EDIT: And actually last time that I went in Japan it was still pretty difficult to even use credit cards, so I won't bet on a pervasive use of Apple Pay there.
In the Netherlands we have contactless payments everywhere and many places that don't accept cash, but for some reason the banks are being really slow to work with Apple... no sign of ApplePay on the horizon from what I can see.
During the earnings call, Cook mentioned that Apple pay is coming to Denmark, Finland, Sweden and UAE this year so maybe next year for the Netherlands?
Watch + AirPods = killer app. It just needs more storage, but that will come in time. 3-4 generations from now and you won't even need a phone anymore.
and on that day I would buy one. I don't need an accessory for my phone, something that merely extends its screen from my pocket to my wrist and that is all I see the watch as.
I have seen three reasons repeated over and over why people like them and it seems so minimal of reasons. like someone mentioned, no one seems to justify wanting one until they have it but then I just figure they have to justify it.
Airpods are very nice and those I can find every day usage for, exercising and the like. far more than having a watch on my wrist as I tend to sweat a lot while exercising and don't need that.
so when it does not require my phone because it is a phone, I might sign up. but by the time phones get to that size I would just slap it on my shirt like Star Trek
Except if you go out running without your phone you can't call 911 to report a car crash or someone needing medical attention. Has happened twice for me and I'm glad I had a cell phone. Maybe the next generation smart watches will include LTE voice call functionality.
Couldn't disagree more. Not saying it's for everyone, but it's been an actual game changer in my life workflow.
I no longer need to have my phone with me at all times. I can just walk into a space, put my phone down, and only engage with it when I want to. The watch lets me know about anything I actually NEED to know RIGHT NOW (turns out, it's not that much). It's perfectly un-intrusive.
The one thing most people dont realize about why the iPod was popular was because it was actually the fastest device to transfer music to. At the time, music devices were using serial connections if you can believe that, and FireWire was the fastest thing on the market, only available with iPods. This, combined with having the most space (10gb vs 256 mb), combined with windows support on the third version, made the iPod take off.
At the time, music devices were using serial connections if you can believe that, and FireWire was the fastest thing on the market, only available with iPods.
Can't remember that. Mine had usb, was available before iPod and the speed never bothered me.
I remember it. I had some Philips MP3 player and I remember the software being horrible and the transfers taking hours at a time. The first time I saw iTunes and an iPod I was sold. iTunes used to be pretty incredible at the time...
Exactly, the average person didn't care how they were connecting their MP3 player to their computer, as long as they could connect it and the player itself was convenient size and looked nice.
The original iPod was 5 Gigs, which you filled over a 400Mbps Firewire connection. USB was limited to only 12Mbps at that time, so it only managed 3% of Firewire's transfer speed.
Filling the iPod's drive took a couple of minutes over Firewire, but a similarly sized device would take more than an hour using USB.
It was a significant technical advantage until the 480Mbps version of USB came along.
>The watch? Well yeah it tells time, but it's worse at that then most watches and everyone already carries a device that tells time which the watch can't replace. Yeah, it gives you slightly faster access to notifications but not everyone needs that.
How is it worse at telling time than most watches? It works fine for me except when the battery is dead. Is that what you mean? Bad battery life?
I don't use the watch to see my notifications faster at all. I use the watch so that I can respond/react to certain notifications as needed. If my phone buzzes in my pocket without me wearing a watch, I won't know if it's just a new calendar invite I don't need to see right away or an important text from a friend. This is why I use my watch, among other reasons. It's a great filtering mechanism.
I love my Apple Watch, but it's worse at telling time for me because the screen isn't always on. I can't just glance at it casually, I have to move my wrist in a very specific way to make it wake up.
True, sometimes the screen doesn't turn on without the right movement.
But how is tapping the screen lightly to turn the display on any different from using a regular analog/digital watch in darkness and needing to press a button for its light to turn on?
It's helpful socially to be able to check the time subtly. A tap or large wrist motion makes it look like you're trying to tell whoever you're with that they should be paying attention to the time.
I understand what you're saying. However, I don't see how that's much different from glancing at any number of clocks: for instance at the office when I glance at the time in the corner of my computer screen, when I'm in a meeting room and glance at the clock on the wall, etc. People notice that motion all the time.
I notice when people do this to me as well. Either way you'd need to glance at your watch, which means your eyes move somewhere else and you lose eye contact with whoever you're with/speaking to.
I don't have any watches with lights (mine are all mechanical; a few have glow in the dark features), so that's not something I ever did in the past.
How is it different? I don't know how to describe it really. But as someone who has worn a watch all my adult life, and has now been wearing the Apple Watch for a year (not every day, but fairly frequently; other days I wear different watches), it still feels totally different in a very annoying way. Did you wear a watch before you got the Apple Watch? I wonder if it's really just a difference of what you're used to. I can't articulate it well, but for me it's very different. The question of "how is it different" is like asking "why don't you like the color brown?" I dunno, I just don't.
Every time I take my Watch off during the day and my phone starts buzzing in my pocket it annoys the hell out of me.
And Apple has done a great job improving performance and user experience even in the Series 0. The only reason I'll want a new one in the Fall is a battery that's starting to lose efficiency after two+ years of heavy use & the potential for better phone-free use with AirPods, which as someone mentioned up thread is a killer combination.
A major reason, yes, but not the only reason. Apple’s infamous “hell freezes over” announcement of iTunes for Windows came in October 2003. As you can see on the graph, sales didn’t really take off until 2005.
So while lack of Windows compatibility was certainly an obstacle to the iPod's popularity, gaining it was not the single catalyst to its success.
That's because in 2003 it still required firewire which basically 0 PCs had. Furthermore 2005 was when they released significantly lower-priced models like the nano and shuffle.
And the 4th gen iPod with the click wheel came out in 2004 which is when the larger iPod models really hit their stride. The iPod was not an obvious world-beater out the gate.
Except not really, because the installed base of Macs at the time was a few million, while the iPhone installed base is around a billion. Being Mac-only in the early 2000s was orders of magnitude more limiting to potential sales than being iPhone-only today.
The iPhone install base is certainly not a billion, there have only been 1.2 billion ever sold. Estimates for the install base vary wildly, with the upper estimates at about 3/4 of a billion and more reasonable estimates at half a billion.
In any case, iPhones have about 15%-25% of the global smartphone install base (with the US being the big outlier). I certainly count that as very limiting. Maybe not on quite the same magnitude as Macs were for early iPods, but Apple Watches so far also did a lot better than early iPods.
> iPhones have about 15%-25% of the global smartphone
> install base
I would like to know how much of the remaining 75%-85% are used as smartphones and not just dumbphones with an smartphone OS on them. I am sure the many of the cheapest models are used this way.
Except not really, because number of Apple Watches sold in first month was in the millions whereas number of iPods sold was less than 100,000! I think OP is talking about rate of growth being like iPod, not absolute numbers https://www.lifewire.com/number-of-ipods-sold-all-time-19995...
I don't think so. As was mentioned, a lot of people didn't have Macs so it took iTunes on Windows to increase sales. A lot of people have iPhones. Enough, that Apple doesn't have to care about 'droids.
In the original days of iPhone, you could really only use it if you had a computer (to sync through iTunes, and to activate it if you didn't buy it in the store). iCloud got rid of all of that. I don't see why Apple wouldn't do similar with the Watch, especially since more of their services (Messages, Health) are being moved into iCloud services in iOS 11/watchOS 4.
The requirement was FireWire. Me and my brother both had iPods synchronizing with our Windows PC through a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live sound card with FireWire using the MusicMatch software distributed by Apple with the iPod.
The iPod happened during a perfect storm of young people suddenly accumulating fileshared boatloads of unsorted MP3s that they desperately wanted to take away from their computers (then mostly clunky desktop systems), all while carrying significantly less cash into record stores than before. I see nothing that could come even close to that for the watch. To people spending many of their waking hours pondering the cultural relevance of the different strains of pop music (back then: almost everybody under 25), the iPod, together with the underlying file-sharing boom was world-changing, much like having a car is world-changing.
The analogy between iPod and watch might still hold of you look exclusively at buyers of the "minor iPods" at the time when the classic was still dominant (in other words: when the classic was still known as just the iPod). The distinction between people who wanted a portable music player and got the iPod (because it was the best), vs people who wanted an iPod and therefore got a portable music player (because that's what iPods were). The latter pattern could repeat itself with the watch just fine, but I don't know if that can happen with the former pattern happens before. The iPod started as a life changer (for a certain group/generation) that only later turned into a wealth indicator novelty. The watch is taking a bet to skip the first stage, because moving notifications from phone to wrist is a much smaller step than making the wondrously huge filesharing MP3 libraries of the day pocketable.
iPad 1 got little traction, it was slow, had no camera, couldn't play HD mp4, etc. iPad skyrocket with iPad 2 which was so much better in every regard. The same with Watch, the Watch 1 (series 0) one had no GPS and was to limited. Watch 3 (series 2) has a dual-core processor, GPS, is water-proof and is a decent device.
The question is do I want to carry a smartphone and a watch? I switched from a digital watch to a smartphone like a decade ago, I don't need a watch. I can imagine switching back to a watch as soon as phone functionality gets inbuilt in Apple Watch and no additional iPhone is required.
It has been pretty much the same with pretty much every Apple product since Job's return. The initial version is a good implementation of the basic idea, but it always has a few drawbacks and is too expensive for the limited use cases it enables. Successive iterations then improve the product until it's amazing a few years later. iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, McBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac... They all went through this.
There are of course products that they didn't manage to improve in this way, e.g. the Mac mini or the XServer. So I will reserve judgement on the Watch for a while yet.
Imho the Pebble style makes the most sense to me. Focus on notifications and directions to the wrist as the core feature. Everhthing else is heavy and I should only be implemnted as low-hanging fruit.
Then watches are a fun little accessory like a Bluetooth headset but it's just not that big of a deal like the iWatch. Simple non-illuminated LCD screen and low power processor means it can run for a week and is smaller than the heavier competitors.
It's a shame Pebble folded. I hope we'll see Garmin and FitBit provide successor devices.
I had my old one sitting in a dock for years. I'd just hit shuffle when I needed some music. Like turning on the radio, but with only good music. It was stolen.
The two products occupy a very similar space of affordable luxury; they are not world-changing like the Mac or iPhone, but category-defining. Through gradual iteration and segmentation, Apple slowly turned its niche product into a cultural force.
Just wait until the iPod Classic 5G equivalent of the Watch comes out.