John Gruber wrote about his initial thoughts and observations after the Apple Watch was announced. You might have noticed the consecutive Daring Fireball articles. I’m clearing the back log on my reading list.
He shared a quote from Andy Warhol:
“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”—Andy Warhol
And this concept of Coke for everyone applies to Apple:
That’s what the iPhone and iPad are like. There are hundreds of millions of people who have bought these products, and they now own the best phones and tablets in the world. A few years ago at SXSW in Austin, I saw Michael Dell waiting outside a restaurant. The thought that popped into my head: He’s a billionaire, but I know for a fact that I have a better phone than he does. Not everyone can afford an iPhone, not by a long shot, but everyone who can knows they’re getting the best phone in the world.
So what to expect from Apple?
Apple only enters markets where they can be a market leader in quality. They unabashedly claim to make the world’s best computers (portable and desktop), the best phones, the best tablets, and the best MP3 players. The best. Of course not everyone agrees with that. But many of us do, and even those who prefer, say, Lenovo laptops or Google’s Nexus phones and tablets, would agree, if they’re at all reasonable or have any sense of taste, that Apple’s products are in the running for “best”.
The Apple Watch only works for Apple if it is, in some sense, the best watch in the world. Not the best smartwatch. That’s not enough. The best watch, period. The best thing you can wear on your wrist. It doesn’t have to pass that test for everyone. It may well be targeted more at people who’ve stopped wearing or have never worn a watch than at those who love fine mechanical watches. But it has to pass that test for many people.
How does it compare to existing competitors?
My impression of Android Wear is that it’s best thought of as a wrist-worn terminal for your Android phone and for Google’s cloud-based services. An extension for your phone, not a sibling device. Android Wear devices are almost useless other than for telling time when out of Bluetooth range from your phone. I don’t think that’s a device that many people want; it’s a solution in search of a problem. Call me biased if you want, but I think Android Wear is simply the result of the rest of the industry trying to get out in front of Apple, out of fear of how far behind they were when the iPhone dropped in 2007. On the surface, they do look like the same basic thing: small color LCD touchscreens on your wrist. But all Android Wear devices are larger and clunkier than the larger 42mm Apple Watch, and none of them are even close to the smaller 38mm one. Is there anyone who would dispute that Apple Watch is far more appealing to women than any other smartwatch on the market?
About that button:
The most intriguing and notable thing about Apple Watch’s design, to me, is the dedicated communication button below the digital crown. The entire watch is fully operational and navigable using just the digital crown and touchscreen. You can go anywhere and do everything using taps, force presses, or turning and pressing the digital crown. There is no need for that extra button (which, in the unveiling video, Jony Ive described only as “the button below the digital crown”). Add to that the fact that Apple is notorious for minimizing the number of hardware buttons on its devices, and the fact that the existence of that button keeps the crown from being centered, and my attention is piqued. The only explanation is that Apple believes that the communication features triggered by that button are vitally important to how we’ll use the device.
These are just some parts of Gruber’s article that caught my attention. It is a long piece but definitely worth reading the full article if you are interested in the Apple Watch.
We are now in the early parts of early 2015. Exciting times.
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