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No , the market for watches is unchanged. The market for the functional equivalent of a bluetooth remote control for your iPhone has emerged... IT's NOT A WATCH AT ALL , IT's AN ACCESSORY FOR THE iPhone ... NOTHING MORE My prediction is that this non-watch will never perform it's stated function , being a watch , with any success... Face it ... My Seiko tells time perfectly and uses a single $0.99 battery every 5 years or so. The iWatch fails with a dead battery every stinking day. How is that an advancement? It's display is too small to make use of ANY application that you may be able to execute... unless you make the "watch" "phone" sized that will always be the case... This is a FAIL , Apple has jumped the shark with their foray into the jewelry business. I can get a Rolex priced gold band... Can I get it bedazzled? Will it ever be able to tell the time better and with less fuss than your typical $5 Chinese watch from Walmart?
As I like to say, and have many times ... the Apple Watch is not a watch. Once someone understands that, then it will make sense ... :-) ...
It is a wrist computer that has over a thousand apps for it! And in relatively short order there will be THOUSANDS of apps!
“ONE” of those apps just happens to tell time.
And you know all of this exactly how? You've obviously never even used one for even one second, much less a full day. Ergo, you are pulling these criticisms out of your nether orifice. Again, you are assuming it is merely a timepiece, and keep comparing it to a $5 Chinese piece of junk that will fail within two months when the hands fall off, or your wrist turns green with verdigris stains.
YOU want it to be a standalone watch while Apple intended it to be an accessory for the 450 million iPhones that it can be used with. Too bad you don't get to decide that it must be a stand alone watch that only tells the time, then you could call it the Neddermeyer Watch instead of the Apple Watch. By continually harping on its ability to "tell time" better than another watch, you are focussing on a single app out of over a thousand that are already available for a device that merely occupies the location on the body traditionally held by a time piece. . . but while it does provide a quick glance of the current time, it also provides notifications of incoming messages to allow you to know if you have to pay attention to them, alerts, phone messages, answer or initiate a phone call, and monitor your exercise regimen, etc. . . all without having to dig your phone out from your pocket, purse or briefcase. Add the ability to unlock electronic doors, bypass security, and pay for goods and services with Apple Pay, again without digging your phone out, it offers a level of convenience the iPhone or any other phone does not offer.
My Western Electric rotary-dial phone makes calls that always go through. Never a signal problem, it’s pretty much unbreakable, and it never runs out of battery. Why would I want a so-called “smart” phone?
By your own rantings, you must consider that the “smartphone” is an abject failure because it must be charged daily, while the wired landline phone is superior.
“Will it ever be able to tell the time better and with less fuss than your typical $5 Chinese watch from Walmart?”
Um...yes, actually.
Time accuracy: 50ms. Always. DST included. Time zone adjusted as you travel, likely within feet of the official date lines. You’ll never have to set it. That $5 POS is only as accurate as you manually set it, which may be minutes off (ok, starting *RIGHT*NOW* do nothing at all for two minutes, and think about how “close enough” isn’t). (Heck, I’ve still got clocks I haven’t changed for DST because it’s a PITA to do; they’re over an hour off.)
Presentation: what kind of watch face do you want? change it with a tap and a flick. Classic clock? Mickey? Digital? Analog? World sunlight map? Exotic? Heck, I imagine someone will integrate calendar & GPS functions in, so it will change face to what’s most useful for your circumstances: normal clock for most times, countdown as you approach a scheduled event, hour-generalized for nighttime, ETA when obviously traveling in a common direction, etc. Hard-press the face, flick to preferred watch face style.