Posted on 03/09/2015 11:26:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s been some time since Apple introduced the world to the Apple Watch, it’s first wearable ever. Few devices could hold our attention for so many months without losing their allure, but because it’s Apple, we’ve been following every move since it first appeared onstage in September. Now, the time has finally come to meet Apple Watch. Here’s what we know so far.
A note on updates: We’re updating this post with all the news from the March 9 reveal, so keep checking back.
Tim Cook relieved a lot of people today when he announced that the Apple Watch will tell time accurately. He said it’s within 50 milliseconds of UTC, so you’re never behind. Cook also showed off watch face widgets for the first time, which can be anything from a stopwatch, calendar events, world clock, or other tools. The Glances feature was also explained. All you have to do is swipe up from bottom of watch to see Glances such as weather, calendar, music, heart rate, and other key information that you only need to see for a second or two at a time.
Cook claimed the Apple Watch offers brand-new ways to communicate immediately and intimately with your family and friends. Thanks to what Apple calls Digital Touch, you can send animated sketches scribbled on the screen to a friend’s Watch, in real time, or send a tap from your watch to get your their attention. It’s even possible to send your digital heartbeat.
Unlike Android Wear, the Apple Watch will have a home screen that’s full of app icons. The app icons look like small, brightly colored bubbles, resting on a black field. You’ll be able to choose which app to open at will. However, we’ve also heard that the watch will be contextually aware and bring up appropriate apps when you need them most. You’ll receive notifications, calls, texts, and other alerts on your wrist, which you can glance at, answer, or dismiss.
Related: The Apple Watch must succeed for smartwatches to surrvive
The watch will supposedly know when you’re looking at it and turn off when you’re not, so you don’t have to worry about pressing the power button every five minutes. Apple says the screen will be sensitive enough to recognize a “force touch” press from a light tap, so you’ll have yet another way to interact with the watch. Meanwhile, the digital crown will handle all the zooming, scrolling, and so on. Additionally, Siri will be there for voice commands, dictation, and other functions.
Apple always puts a lot of focus on design, but it has really put the emphasis on style for the Apple Watch. The watch comes in three versions, each made of different materials. All three watches will come with several strap options at the start, though many third-party manufacturers are expected to jump in with their own straps, too.
The entry-level Apple Watch Sport is made out of anodized aluminum and comes in space gray or silver. You can choose from a variety of strap options, including brightly colored silicon. The Sport has an ion-X strengthened glass screen to protect it from scratches. Meanwhile, the mid-range Apple Watch comes in stainless steel with a hadr-wearing sapphire crystal face, and you can choose between the space gray or standard silvery finish options. A variety of metal, leather, and other kinds of straps are available for this model.
Related: Get a virtual pet on your Apple Watch
Finally, the premium and likely most expensive version of the Apple Watch, called Edition, comes in 18-karat yellow and rose gold. The watch face is made of sapphire crystal, and you can choose from several fancy leather and metal strap options.
So far, wearables have been one-size fits all, but that’s not the case with Apple Watch. It will come in two sizes, 38mm and 42mm, so as to fit a wider range of wrists more comfortably. For reference, the 38mm Apple Watch will be smaller than the 1.56-inch wide Moto 360, as well as the 42mm Huawei Watch. It will also be much shorter than the Samsung Gear 2, which measures 58.4mm tall. Theoretically, this will make it ideal for smaller wrists, while those who can sport a Moto 360 and look natural can have the larger 42mm version.
According to Apple’s WatchKit developer information, the 42-millimeter Apple Watch model will feature a screen with 390 × 312-pixel resolution, and the 38-millimeter model will pack a 340 × 272 pixel resolution.
Jeremy Kaplan/Digital Trends
As with any smartwatch, one the Apple Watch’s biggest features is fitness. Tim Cook says it’ll even give you a tap on the wrist if you sit for too long. The watch has a built in heart rate monitor, which should give it accurate fitness tracking and an awareness of how many calories you’ve burned. It will track your steps, the intensity of your workouts, and other fitness metrics. The accelerometer and GPS are also sure to draw gym rats, as are the personalized fitness goals in the workout app.
Just like the latest iPhones, the Apple Watch will work with Apple Pay, thanks to built-in NFC. Tap-to-pay will undoubtedly become much easier once you’re doing it from your wrist instead of your phone. Reports hint that it’ll be secure, thanks to sensors in the Apple Watch that know it’s on your wrist when you pay.
Apple isn’t a miracle worker, and it probably still hasn’t solved the eternal smartwatch battery life conundrum. The Apple Watch will almost certainly need charging every night in its box, or with the company’s MagSafe charger. Luckily, it seems there’s a power saving mode, which should keep the most basic watch functions alive when the battery’s running low.
Tim Cook even says you can wear it in the shower, while you’re running in a rainstorm, or sweating through a hot yoga class. There’s no mention of swimming with it, though.
We’ve heard that pricing will start at $350 and go up from there, perhaps into the thousands of dollars. Tim Cook previously said the Watch will arrive in April, but we’ll keep you updated in the meantime.
I wouldn’t have that crap as a gift!
2 things i’m never without, my watch and my pen.
I could go my entire life without a phone!!!
What’s more the date of the change is arbitrary. It was shifted some years back (I suspect to do away with the extra Halloween Saturday ‘party hour’).
Gubmint talks, people march in step.
I prefer the extra hour of daylight in the evening. Keep it like this all the time. I hear that kids go to school ‘in the dark’. In the shortest days of winter, they STILL go to school in the dark. OR shift the hours of the school day. No sense in affecting EVERY timetable for someone waiting at a bus stop.
I wonder, is it waterproof? Or are the wearers only going to wash their right hands?
Perhaps you should go back further in the history of Apple.
Prior to Steve Jobs, Apple was mired in dysfunction, couldn't get a relevant product released and all sorts of other issues. So, Apple, without Steve Jobs, has NOT been the most successful company ever. Far from it. So, Apple has a lot to prove post-Jobs. This product is the first to be released under Cook.
In 2001, there were not "hundreds of Mp3 players. In fact, the early Ipod was one of the first. (http://gizmodo.com/5437243/mp3-players-in-the-year-2000-were-not-so-good-but-we-still-loved-them) At the time, I had a Archos Jukebox and after the ipod was announced, quickly moved to the original 30gb Ipod.
In 2007, there were not "hundreds" of smartphones. Apple CREATED that market. There were some early iterations of Android that could not even come close to competing with the smartphone Apple created. (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jan/24/smartphones-timeline).
Prior to the Ipad, very few were trying to make tablets. i had a version of a resistive touch screen using Android and it sucked. It wasn't usable. Again, I am the epitome of adoption at the bleeding edge. And I was one of the only techies I knew trying a tablet. There were Hundreds and thousands of computers, in different form factors at the time, but not Tablets. Apple CREATED the market. Apple also CHANGED how users interact with their computers in a massive way. I remember getting my first and second Ipads. Man - a game changer.
Now we come to the Apple Watch. Apple will sell a bunch. But, in wearables, there are literally thousands of competitors and options. At CES this year, I walked past hundreds of booths of manufacturers of wearables all with a different slant. Apple did not create this market. Their offering *seems* to be a "me too" offering and will count on the large number of iPhone users who want a watch in perfect sync. I don't blame those users at all and think they will sell a ton.
But this isn't a market mover product. Moreover, watches, unlike phones and computers, are a very personal decision. Unless you go back to Swatch, where you could make a plastic $30 watch unique, watches are personal and are not akin to mass adoption.
I also believe Tim Cook's Apple, while growing and profitable right now, still benefits from Steve Jobs. That will wear off more and more with each release. I think Apple is missing a massive market opportunity in tablet computers - where the Surface Pro and others have captured an important mix of full laptop capability but with touch screen, writing, etc. I cannot figure out why Apple didn't go after that space as they would have dominated from the user experience they brought to iPad's and macbooks.
So, I will happily hold on my posiiton that the Apple Watch is a "me too" offering that will be heralded by its sales in the first year but ultimately signal the first product released post-Jobs that didn't move a market.
Does that mean Apple sucks? Not in the least. But in this market, they are very vulnerable and that hasn't been the case since Apple Lisa.
I'm holding out for the bluetooth smartpen.
The reason why others (and myself) like Apple is because of it’s very strong ecosystem and inter-ties between products, having them work together so well. It’s not like you have different products, but that you have “one system” working “one way” and several products delivering that experience. That’s the “Power of Apple” as far as I can see, plus the fact of devliering quality products and products with the best user interface around. They all work together to make Apple the great success that it is.
I don’t BEGRUDGE Apple its success like I see a certain group of FReepers do on this Free Republic forum (the APPLE-HATER CULT and TROLL GROUP).
Those guys actually HATE that Apple gets better, gets more customers everyday, is a super success as a company ... and ... they also HATE APPLE’S ECOSYSTEM. You hear them say that they do NOT want to be “in Apple’s ecosystem” ... that is DEATH to them, and thus they try to force their viewpoint on others by jumping into threads that they actually HATE BEYOND BELIEF, and insist that all those people “talking it up” about Apple are either fools or idiots or stupid or misled or they believe false adverstising or they believe things that are not true according to them. They do this over and over again, on threads that have nothing to do with them and their choice of products.
It’s quite amazing and I do believe it’s a DISEASE with them! They truly need psychiatric help!
“IF” there is a market for it, you better believe that Apple will develop it and promote it and MAKE GOBS OF CASH with it.
If Apple doesn’t do that, then there isn’t a market for it. That’s the way it works with Apple.
Not everything that someone can WILDLY IMAGINE in the minutes between being asleep and awake ... is something for Apple to develop ... LOL ...
Does it play iTunes of U2?
LOL
The problem here on Free Republic is that there DOES EXIST a group ... that I call the “APPLE-HATER CULT” and “APPLE-HATER TROLLS”.
These Free Republic posters are few, but they have a PSYCHOLOGICAL DISEASE ... some kind of Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder ... in which they cannot resist going onto threads that they actually HATE THE COMPANY and the PRODUCTS and proceed to tell everyone there why they are idiots, they are stupid, they have been snookeered, or if they have money in Apple, that they are about to “lose their shirts” and that Apple is “going out of business” any day now, and they are the “evil empire” for putting together an “ecosystem” in which (according to them) everyone is TRAPPED INSIDE and cannot get out ... LOL ...
You can easily see who these posters are, as they are definitely Obsessive/Compulsive, in that they “come into” threads that they HATE and proceed to tell everyone else on that thread “how wrong they are”. Just look for THOSE TYPES ... and you’ve found the APPLE-HATER CULT GROUP MEMBER on Free Republic.
There are others who simply discuss something that they would like from Apple, but maybe Apple hasn’t done it for them, and they have one or two complaints about this or that. We’re not talking about them. We’re talking about the HARD-CORE and persisten APPLE-HATER CULT MEMBER on Free Republic.
There is a difference between the two ... and you can easily see WHO IT IS by reading the posts and see who fits that description and criticizes everyone who has Apple Products and anyone who likes Apple and anyone who thinks Apple develops excellent products.
Only IF you want it ... LOL ...
Was that showing “Iraq time”? ... :-) ...
I doubt that anyone will give it to you ... LOL ...
HOWEVER ... if there was ANYONE who was merely “considering” giving one to ‘dalereed’ ... please consider me as an ALTERNATE! ... :-) ...
In a more serious tone, actually I’d thought of such a device (and an eyeglass contraption with a ‘monitor’).
That was back in the mid 90s.
No patent. No prototype. Just an idea (some of which I sketched out) and didn’t bother to share with much of anyone.
The display addresses the issue of making something readable without having to have that glass panel (alternatively some people are working on fiberoptic cloth ‘screens’). The pen (wireless) also solves the clunky mouse input (you can write and draw with a pen/stick).
Some of these ideas are not unique, which is why others arrive at them (especially as new technologies in microsizing, processing power, etc. arise).
With the progress being made in brain technology (electronic eyesight to the blind), you may one day have something plugged into a port on your head and no ‘monitor/display’ at all (except maybe a simple status/error code).
U2 will give it to you first and then ask permission later.
Will the public be so forgiving if Apple had agreed to do this with a new album from Justin Bieber, Ke$ha, or Michael Bolton?
I do believe that’s the only hand that Muslms wash ... LOL ...
As for me, since I’m not a Muslim, I do wash both hands, and take a bath or shower ... :-) ... and ... I do intend to get one. But, it’s “on a list” right now and there’s some other Apple equipment coming first ... :-) ...
Just like the new iPhone the apple watch will have features that the Samsung watch has had for at least a year but apple and the media will act like it is new technology
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