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Mugge
Thunderbolt, fuck yeah!
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Denmark
 
2013-02-11, 13:11

Quote:
Originally Posted by Partial View Post
What problem is the watch solving? I carry my phone in my pocket. Sure, I don't when exercising, but I don't want to be distracted by stuff then anyway.
I'm sure there were quite a few gentlemen back in the pocket watch days that thought the same about wrist watches.

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Plugging in headphones to a watch just seems weird because the wire would be all up in my business. In my pocket seems to be much more useable.
Why not just loose the wire and go with Bluetooth? After all the space available inside a watch sized device is so precious that a huge mini-jack plug would use up too much space.

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I *DO* think the potential for a television is insanely huge, but I also think that will be primarily American based and not necessarily a global hit. Imagine the pain of securing content in hundreds of countries. Oye...
Agree, but not necessarily about the America-only thing. I think the Columbus' egg would be a somewhat open, but curated, model akin to the App Store. Simply lay down the law and have some else produce the content and tax them a certain percentage for using the infrastructure. That way different regions can have different offerings and Apple won't be more burdened that it currently is with the App Store. The big challenge would of course be that this would have to happen in direct competition with players like Samsung who are already present on the TV market and not likely to underestimate Apple this time around.

Anyways, I personally prefer the watch idea, so here's some more thoughts about that:

I think the key to success will be to solve several UI problems at the same time and come away with a product that can function independently of other devices.

Minimum feature set required:
1. Phone calls (or VoIP)
2. Messaging (SMS, iMessages, chat, email)
3. Planning (calendar, tasks)
4. Navigation (sat nav, compass)
5. Music player (too small for video)
6. Web browsing (very basic)
7. Being able to talk to other devices and services
8. At least one full days worth of battery
9. Sufficiently durable to resist shocks, bumps and fluids

Well, maybe we could toss a couple of features and still have a success on our hands, but different folks want different stuff, and nine features aren't a lot these days.

Design issues:

1) Phone calls have the issue that if the speaker is located in the watch then you either have to hold it up to your ear, or use an ear piece. I think the hold it up approach is most reasonable. Try and put your watch wearing hands wrist up to your ear, if the speaker was located on the strap/chain on the opposite side than the actual watch then it can quite comfortably be held right next to your ear. The microphones should also be able to work from this position. Which leaves only the question of wether you think this is a more dorky way of talking on the phone than the ear piece.

2) Reading text should be possible on a small screen (1.5”), but entering text will be too inconvenient, but that’s where Siri can help us. An alternative to actually reading your messages could be to have a little electrical pulse emitter on the inside of the watch that could pulse you messages in morse code. That may be too hard to learn for most people, but the old boy scout in me would f***ing love such a gimmick.

3) Same issues as messaging as far as I am concerned.

4) This one is really going to take “pinch and zoom” to a new low level, but I think navigation is such a popular feature these days that leaving it out would compromise its value as an independent device.

5) As mentioned before, no room for the mini-jack so it’s going to be Bluetooth only.

6) I think this feature is the most difficult to implement because the small screen simply can’t help but to make it a tortured experience. Even mobile websites would have to scale down by half to just fit horizontally.

7) Sort of a notification centre for other devices and services relay information to and maybe receive instructions in return.

8) This one is going to be a bit difficult. But by getting rid of things such as the mini-jack the SIM slot and perhaps by fitting battery cells inside the strap/chain it might be possible to get a reasonable battery life. I don’t think rotors like those in mechanical watches can generate nearly enough power compared to the room they would steal away from the batteries.

9) Getting rid of ports and plugs and placing the speaker and microphones away from the main body should allow the main body of the watch to be more or less a sealed piece of hardware. There would probably still need to be a Lightning connector for charging and stuff, though. It’s also pretty much a given that the iFixit rating will be 1 or 0 out of 10.

There's a lot of work in the above, but if anyone can pull it off it will be Apple. I have omitted any talk of apps at this point because I think, like the first iPhone, it will be more important to get the basic user experience right first. None of the existing iOS apps will run on such a small screen anyway, so everyone will have to make new apps at some point anyway. And those apps would also be running on some much weaker hardware, since we are talking about some serious shrinkage coming from an iPhone here.

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