The forthcoming Apple Watch is the highest-profile smartwatch yet
Posted on 04/26/2015 10:43:19 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Smartwatches, at their core, are notification machines—devices aimed at allowing you to filter through the firehose of alerts and beeps and vibrations that come from an app-filled phone, so that you only spend your time tackling the important ones. . .
This is a basic mission, but one that many smartwatches do a pretty lousy job of tackling. One particular problem I’ve repeatedly encountered: These devices tend to indiscriminately light up my wrist with every alert, forcing me to pull up my sleeve or quickly activate ”Mute” so as to keep them from drawing the gazes of everybody around me. If you’re in a movie theater or dimly lit bar, your lit-up wrist might as well be the sun, drawing stares and “harumphs” from those around you. While these devices seek to dial down the distractions, they end up being one themselves. This is one reason why, up until now, the Pebble smartwatch has been perhaps the best one on the market—its use of E-Ink or the display (as opposed to the more-common LCD screens) keeps it from being a big, bright distraction to those around you. A smartwatch should dissapear. Very few actually do.
The Apple Watch is the first LCD smartwatch that actually handles this issue in a sensible manner. With the Apple Watch, notifications cause your wrist to vibrate, but the screen does not light up at first. The genius touch: Thanks to clever use of an internal accelerometer, the screen only comes alive when you turn your wrist towards your face, so as to look at it. If you’re locked in conversation and you find yourself on the receiving end of a bunch of alerts, nobody else has to know. .
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Yeah, we all drive - but driving is irrelevant, at best, to FReeping. Consumer digital tech is sine qua non for FReeping. Which is why it is relevant to me when Swordmaker provides technical information regarding Macs.
>IF< he stayed with tech updates. But, there is an endless stream of new product and sales announcements that amount to advertising. Regardless, why do Apple users need all these tech announcements? No one else seems to need them.
Oh yeah, thanks for a reasoned reply, pleasant change from what I usually get when questioning things on this topic.
APPLE promo alert.
Frankly, because of FUD.When I was a Windows user, I suckered for a phishing attack. Why did I sucker for it? Because I wasn’t using antivirus - which I found to be burdensome back in those days because it was cantankerous and hard to use, and because I didn’t have broadband - and consequently I was paranoid about virus contamination. The phishing attack practiced on my fears, and caused me to do something I shouldn’t have done. So when Apple came out with OS X based on Unix, I took refuge in the greater robustness of Unix and got a Mac, figuring that I didn’t need to nearly so concerned with virus attacks on a system which was designed to continue running even if a program crashed.
And so it has proved, with the exception of the FUD. Chiefly, “Macsweeper” ads which try to promote the idea that a Mac needs antivirus. And if it needs antivirus, it follows that even if you do have antivirus, someone gets hit by the virus before the new virus is detected and categorized. So if I am credulous of “Macsweeper,” I am right back where I started with Windows. Insecure, and vulnerable to the phishing attack practicing on that insecurity.
Enter Swordmaker and his ping list. I trust him, what he says has the ring of truth, and I am a happier computer user because of his pings. So if it’s all the same to you, I prefer to have access to Swordmaker’s pings. Even if they get to be more numerous than usual. Which I admit is the case at present, for reasons I have gone over before.
I am certain that it can. . . and that someone will come up with an Apple Watch that will do exactly that.
Originally used Norton, got sick of the bloat, used free stuff for years now, no problems on my or wife's machines.
Dunno why you are so paranoid. Just never open attachments from odd sources or at all. I run free Avast and do a scan every so often along with real time protection. No infections, no drama.
Which is why I wanted a frickin' laser on a watch before getting one. That would be awesome, aim and press the button and fry an attacker. I'll have to build my own.
never open attachments from odd sources or at all. I run free Avast and do a scan every so often along with real time protection. No infections, no drama.
Dunno why you are so paranoid.
See, that’s the point. I run OS X without all of that rigamarole you have “just” been doing. When I click on a link I don’t worry about “attachments from odd sources” - if anything tries to run that I didn’t ask for, OS X will straitly warn me about it. I don’t go looking for “odd source” free stuff, of course. And I don’t run as a admin privileged user unless I’m loading software intentionally.You talk about the things you “just” do that I am trusting that I don’t have to do under Unix/OS X - and then you call me paranoid.But to do all that trusting I have to see through the FUD which everyone who actually is functionally paranoid (including you) has a motive to throw at Unix users out of, basically, jealousy.
And to help me see thru that FUD I trust Swordmaker. A lot. That’s why it is well worth my while to be on his ping list. At least one reason . . .
Thanks for that trust, CIC, I appreciate it. I try to provide the unvarnished truth, not the FUD, and explain why it is the truth.
Computers are scary, got it.
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