Market Trends: Apple Watch
Posted by overmanwarrior 9 years, 10 months ago to Entertainment
This article is an interesting one. It is sympathetic to Garmin and Fossil watches because of the new Apple Watch.
Personally, I love my Garmin, but, it's already like an ancient relic. Innovation is far more important. I'm looking forward to an Apple Watch!
Personally, I love my Garmin, but, it's already like an ancient relic. Innovation is far more important. I'm looking forward to an Apple Watch!
Not too sure about the watch - I like my analogue Seiko too much - but from a confirmed IBM-aholic, who suffered under various perturbations of the WIN OS's (all the way back to 2.0), the virii attacks and the various generations of "BSoD"s, not to mention hardware that, regardless of manufacturer, was prone to failure, you could never get me, or (with the exception of Visio above) my shop, to go back. no way, no how, unh-unh!
Finally I got tired of wrestling with the combination of recalcitrant hardware and code. I already had an iPhone and IPad, so got a MB. So much less frustrating to use.
Both companies are arrogant and tend to ignore user issues, but Apple products are less painful to live with day to day.
Example (1): Several years ago, I was the webmaster for a lady who had an Apple, and she asked me to do something about her site - a slide show I programmed for her didn't work on her computer. So I downloaded a version of Safari that was supposed to be PC-compatible. I brought up her website, and there was nothing wrong. I told the lady, and she said she still could not see the slideshow. I then spent days on forums asking why my version of Safari didn't work like it did on an Apple. All I got for answers were rude suggestions that I should buy an Apple. Eventually a representative of Apple told me point blank that they would not do anything about it, because they didn't care about people who owned PCs.
Example (2): I am the webmaster for a boat captain, and have been out fishing with him several times. One time, he brought along his Apple camera, and recorded a video of me catching a huge kingfish. He emailed me a copy, but I could never get it to show as video on my PC. Again, I went to the forums, and again people were rude, and refused to help me at all.
These are just two examples of the type of arrogance I cannot stomach. The Apple company refuses to consider making their products compatible with PCs. I cannot understand this attitude, since Apple still has a very small percentage of computer users. Why do they purposely alienate the majority of users???
I hate that Apple has utter disregard for people who can think like Spock and Commander Data, and that they have never provided any budget minded offering.
I hate that MSFT has turned their backs on the needs of people who have supported them for 20+ years. When I say 'supported' I mean it. Most of the nitty gritty debugging of windows OS happens via time donated by customers. MSFT being willing to support a wide variety of hardware (allowing a wide range of budget to computerphile pricing) has been their greatest feature and headache.
Until I am willing to do it myself, I will praise and complain ;^)
I used to be a huge apple advocate, back when PCs really were junk, and Macs really better. Back when that complete idiot John C Dvorak was arguing about "power users" using the command line. What an idiot! Not yet required to eat his words. Then came iphone and iPads. Breakthrough!
Not sure when Apple will innovate again. They have lots of fertile ground, but they are paralyzed by aesthetics over usefulness. Jonny Ive is not Steve Jobs, and there are f e w Steve Jobs!
The original MacIntosh, particularly after the Mac II, were infinitely superior to DOS and the lame Windows-on-DOS of the day. The segmented memory, x86 was junk compared to the lovely 680x0, with support for paged memory management. The Mac was faster (business and floating point), far more user friendly and simply far more productive. Yet, like Ayn Rand, the media bashed Mac's.
Are you attributing the user interface (UI) to the category of ID?
Also iTunes is a business model, probably as integral to iPod/iPhone success as the ID. Sony has tried with a more proprietary approach a couple of times and failed.
You do have a good point regarding mature technology/markets. Don't think we are there yet either. I think the UI has another couple of generations until computers' value is really reaped by people (voice, gestures, etc). The bottleneck in value is the pathetic data rate from human-to-computer.
Interesting, for those technophiles who like a good watch, though. I prefer a well crafted analogue watch to the digital, rubber banded watches as well.
I can't tell Bitchita "Get me home, right now" and have her jump. Siri - has yet to send me on a wild goose chase. Over some "interesting" routes, for certain - but she works. The downside of Siri is she's net-connectivity dependent... which is why "B" has an irreplaceable place in my heart. It takes a minute or 2 to type in the location, but I don't need 3 bars on my iphone to get it to work.
Weâve used PCâs since mid-80âs âcause our software was built on that system.
We switched from Otis to iPod when Audible.com quit supporting Otis for their audio books and have been VERY impressed with the quality of those Apple products (we now have three iPods).
I read Jobsâ biography a few years ago & consider him & Woz to be geniuses. Yes, he appeared to be arrogant ⌠probably was ⌠& with good reason. He was a quality-oriented perfectionist, down to the most minute detail and I think he insisted on NOT making his stuff compatible with MS, etc. because he believed that he could control the quality and reliability of his products better if his software would only operate on his hardware & v.v..
When our clam-shell phones finally gave out at the time the iPhone 5 was introduced, we switched to those & yes, weâre amazed with the performance of Siri to guide us to destinations & answer silly questions. & on rare occasions when does screw up, like bringing up Joeâs Pool Hall when we asked for directions to the closest Marriott & we scream obscenities at her, sheâll reply with something like âOh, my, I bet you wouldnât talk like that to your mother!â.
Our only Garmin products are GPS units that we use for hiking, kayaking & geocaching. Theyâre more rugged than our iPhones and donât depend on Internet connection.
On closer inspection of the Apple watch their is something to it. It looks good and is perhaps not a proof of concept being sold as a product (google watch comes to mind) but a product that is refined and ready for use.
I wont be first in line, but I am an optimistic skeptic that I will end up with one once I see it and play with it a bit.