JJ Abrams and his Apple Watch at Star Wars Celebration

They should call Google Glass "Douche Glass" because that's what you look like when you wear it.

 

I definitely agree with you that popularity does NOT equal greatness. I would bet that Brittany Spears has sold more records than Mozart and that more Pepsi is drank every year than Chateau Latour Bordeaux. My point in my first post about products still in use was not about their greatness or their popularity. What I was simply trying to point out (ineffectively, apparently) was that products like the iPad and iPhone were met initially with skepticism that anyone would ever want to use them. Just like the mouse, 'the perfect device for anyone with three hands". We don't always initially envision the many uses for a product that will occur to people once the product is in the market. When Steve Wozniak put slots in the Apple computer, he had no idea what people would do with them. The PC revolution made huge use of slots (and still does). All I'm saying about the Watch is that people may wonder what kind of utility such a device brings with it, and think they would never need it, only to find a few years later that everyone is using one because of the extraordinary benefits that were discovered once the product hit the market. That's pretty cool, and it's very risky, and Apple is just one company among others that has done this successfully. I think it's also fair to say that Apple has a pretty good track record at this kind of thing.

Again, I'm really not an Apple fanbois and I don't care to use Macs or promote the company. I just have to honestly recognize that they've done a pretty damned good job of delivering products to the market that wound up creating new market spaces where people were previously skeptical any existed. Maybe it's because of their marketing, maybe it's their packaging, maybe it's just mass hypnosis and the rabid fanaticism of Apple fans across the world, but whatever it is, the stock market has responded and made them the most valuable company in the world because their products actually sell, and phenomenally well. I won't buy their Macs, but I will give them that credit.

 

JJ > Star Wars > Lucasfilm > Disney > Apple > Watch

Why this surprise?

 

The difference with the iPad is that I saw it as an electronic sketchpad. The iPad effectively replaces tons of paper that you'd be carrying; not to mention pens and/or pencils. On top of that it adds more functionality to satisfy your basic computing needs (e-mail, web browsing, etc).

The Apple Watch seems like it's merely an addon to the iPhone. What it replaces was already relatively light, shares the same inconveniences (water) and will most likely drain your iPhone battery more than ever considering most of its "cool" functionality requires a bluetooth connection. The only real difference is that you can recharge the battery (most likely every day/week) instead of going to a store to buy those awkward pill-sized batteries (once every 5 years).

We also thought that the Magic Mouse was dumb, and sure enough... it was. There's only one way to hold it and, while it supports multiple buttons, it only registers a single button at a time... and it's still mechanical. So it doesn't really do anything other than allowing you to scroll sideways (which is awkward to use).

How are those Google glasses? No clue but from what I can tell they're not catching on either.

 

iPads have a healthy enough market and are a source of revenue for Apple, but still only have about half as much in sales as iPhones. As devices, they're most useful in business, where I see them the most in the wild, where some business might either have an iPad set up as a terminal, or bring it over to you for a transaction; or some doctors carry them with them. As consumer devices? I don't know, I haven't done the research; but, like I said, they have a smaller market than iPhones and some portion of their market is with business.

Which isn't really that important as long as some people want them and find them useful. Some products have bigger markets and some have smaller markets.

Smart watches also have their market. One use that is actively being pitched is for athletics; so for example, Microsoft has a smart watch called Microsoft Band, and one of the selling points is the software behind it, Microsoft Health, which actively tracks your heart rate, steps, calorie burn, and sleep quality. One version of the Apple Watch is geared towards sport purposes, and it carries a heart rate sensor and also monitors your steps.

So there's a market. Whether that's a huge market, I don't know.

 

I'm wondering how the glare is with the watch; one of the things I appreciate about my analog watch is its easy to read in full sun.

 

Watches have always been the ultimate troll weapon. No gaze is safe from the careful redirection of sunlight! }:-D

 

I'm waiting for the iSundial.