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[riotous]

Part of the problem.

You're free to spend your money however you like, but to complain about a device and then buy it...

The reviews have some concerns, namely performance. It doesn't sound bad enough to warrant me not purchasing it, nor am I really "complaining" about anything.

I also don't considering buying a device I want.. a problem.. if you don't want one, don't buy it. I could just as easily call you "part of the problem" if the device doesn't sell well enough for anyone to bother improving their software.

But I wouldn't do that, because it's silly.

Even sillier is suggesting I shouldn't buy anything I have a complaint about.. only fanboys and shills think products are somehow perfect. I'd own nothing if I didn't buy anything I had a single complaint about.

 

[Fliesen]

Part of the problem.

You're free to spend your money however you like, but to complain about a device and then buy it...

there's a difference between seeing (currently) untapped potential and complaining about a device.

Sure i'd love for it to be better at release, but i think it'll still be a meaningful addition to my gadget landscape and a fun toy to experience. It's a first gen product and comes with the usual growing pains. Those are to be expected in any new kind of device.

Do you think not buying it would create any meaningful impact and would 'teach apple not to release first generation devices that have first generation issues'? do you, really?

 

[Opus Angelorum]

Fair points guys.

 

[mrklaw]

The reviews are sounding almost the same as Android ones in the sense that it's screaming to wait for the second gen.

Hopefully for early adopters, it's a software second gen rather than a hardware. I'd buy an LG Watch R today if they fixed Android Wear for circular screens.

whats wrong with android wear for circular screens? enjoying my G watch R but it was only about £130 so I could justify it as a curio almost.

 

[mrklaw]

really disagree with this. it gives the Apple Watch a pass because it's going in a different direction than most wearables. Every review.. even the verge one.. basically goes on to say "while other wearables are trying to put your phone on your wrist, apple watch is trying to change how we interact with our devices. less intrusive." it seems to mostly get good reviews because they are greatly intrigued and excited by what it's trying to accomplish compared to other wearables, BUT it's clearly a first gen product.
.

I disagree with this disagreement

Android wear and pebble are primarily about surfacing notifications and other information which seems the same as Apple are doing? In fact you could argue that Apple are going further than both in the 'phone on your wrist' direction by allowing you to intiate a phone call from the watch and actually talk through it - both android wear and pebble require you to use your phone for that.

 

[Somnid]

Reading some reviews it's basically turning out as I feared. It's trying to do a bit too much and not really clamping down on the basics. The loading is really disappointing. You cannot release a watch that needs more than a second to load something, it just invalidates the whole premise. I'm guessing background push is probably out because it would hit the battery hard.

 

[Fliesen]

I disagree with this disagreement

Android wear and pebble are primarily about surfacing notifications and other information which seems the same as Apple are doing? In fact you could argue that Apple are going further than both in the 'phone on your wrist' direction by allowing you to intiate a phone call from the watch and actually talk through it - both android wear and pebble require you to use your phone for that.

i'm almost certain this isn't a design choice but merely the fact that it's not as easy to implement for Google as it is for Apple, as they don't control the hardware.

Many of Android's "handoff" features are actually just handing off destinations (like a link to a youtube video, a link to a Google Music Unlimited song) than sending the actual content from device to device.
The same way Chromecast originally worked, it had to pull the content from the cloud and not from your phone.

Phonecalls on Android wear will happen, don't worry.

 

[ayeorkean]

It's still a very compelling product. Yes, we all feared it would be a Gen 1 product.

 

[Hatty]

Jobs would never release a crappy product.

Never

 

[LyleLanley]

I disagree with this disagreement

Android wear and pebble are primarily about surfacing notifications and other information which seems the same as Apple are doing? In fact you could argue that Apple are going further than both in the 'phone on your wrist' direction by allowing you to intiate a phone call from the watch and actually talk through it - both android wear and pebble require you to use your phone for that.

Phone calls on Apple Watch seem kind of like a thrown in feature that they don't really expect many people to use. I assume Apple expects you to initiate or respond to a phone call but actually use earbuds connected to your phone to do the actual talking and listening.

 

[Blackhead]

Some brutal reviews. Wow.

Watch is too slow?

Watch is not for tech novices?

Watch apps work poorly?

Uh oh.

Topolsky says that the Watch too often interrupts him with notifications while he's trying to do other things. "I’m in a meeting with 14 people, in mid-sentence, when I feel a tap-tap-tap on my wrist… A version of this happens dozens of times throughout the day—for messages, e-mails, activity achievements, tweets, and so much more. Wait a second. Isn’t the promise of the Apple Watch to help me stay in the moment, focused on the people around me and undisturbed by the mesmerizing void of my iPhone? So why do I suddenly feel so distracted?"

This seems like something that could be corrected by the end user.

Yeah I would think you could turn off the "tap tap" if you didn't want it. If you do want it I guess you would love the "tap tap".

Eh, why blame the user? Another reviewer also complained:

Ideally, the watch would automatically kill off notifications during workouts so your arm doesn’t vibrate so much; in reality, you need to put it on Do Not Disturb mode, which requires too much futzing.

FWIW on Android Wear, with and Android Lollipop, you can automatically schedule Priority Mode so the smartwatch doesn't bother you during meetings etc and returns to normal notifications afterwards...

 

[Guess Who]

FWIW on Android Wear, with and Android Lollipop, you can automatically schedule Priority Mode so the smartwatch doesn't bother you during meetings etc and returns to normal notifications afterwards...

Do Not Disturb can be scheduled automatically, as well.

Looking at the reviews, the only kinda harsh one is really The Verge's. All the other Watch reviews have problems, but not really problems you wouldn't expect from a first-gen product. Nothing a few software updates can't sort out, and especially nothing that a second gen product will likely have to worry about.

 

[The Elite]

Eh, why blame the user? Another reviewer also complained:


..

Isn't there a good list of notification toggles in the Apple Watch app?

 

[RedNumberFive]

Never

That was a beautiful, beautiful product. Loved that thing.

 

[Majine]

That was a beautiful, beautiful product. Loved that thing.

Didn't the glass crack easily? I seem to recall that.

Also, the original Macbook Air wasn't so hot either. Another Jobs era dud.

 

[dallow_bg]

Reviews have sealed it.
Not buying the Gold Edition.

 

[Hasney]

whats wrong with android wear for circular screens? enjoying my G watch R but it was only about £130 so I could justify it as a curio almost.

Going specifically by the R Watch initial reviews, it had somemajor issues not displaying everything in Android Wear correctly. If that's been fixed up, I may have to take another look.

 

[Fliesen]

Reading some reviews it's basically turning out as I feared. It's trying to do a bit too much and not really clamping down on the basics. The loading is really disappointing. You cannot release a watch that needs more than a second to load something, it just invalidates the whole premise. I'm guessing background push is probably out because it would hit the battery hard.

the issue isn't really the loading but the bad masking thereof

the original iPhone took screenshots when you closed the app to mimic the app was "still running" when you opened it up again to mask those bad loading times.

http://youtu.be/GDghBkDvToA
(apologies for vertical video shot with iPad ...)

even on the iPhone 6, the fastest Apple Device on the market, apps take a second to load, or more. They just mask it by loading "canvas" first, content later (Facebook) or use a splash screen (like Pulse, Nike Running and Spotify)

The fact that the AppleWatch only shows you a spinning wheel instead of ... SOMETHING just seems like bad user interface design. Or they're so desperate about battery life and the spinning wheel is ever so slightly less drain on the battery than showing a 2 second splash screen. ... Spotify takes a full 4 seconds to load!

Which makes me believe it's even less of an issue with the horsepower of the watch itself but the fact that the Watch has to: "wake" the phone, "wake" the app, wait for it to start up and then receive the data / screen content. It might just be that most of the lag here is from apps just having gone to deep sleep on the phone.
So now i'm even more convinced proper caching of the "last app state" should really help out a lot here.

Going specifically by the R Watch initial reviews, it had somemajor issues not displaying everything in Android Wear correctly. If that's been fixed up, I may have to take another look.

how would you have the option to look at both, Android Wear and an AppleWatch btw? isn't going "cross-OS" gonna be severely limiting the usefulness of either wearable? (less so with AndroidWear and an iPhone, still - it's going to be much more feature rich when paired to an Android device, i'd believe)

 

[Hatty]

That was a beautiful, beautiful product. Loved that thing.

it was before its time thats for sure
got really hot though

The watch seems like they tried to make a gen 2 device without making the original if that makes sense. It tries to do too much and isn't really giving people a reason to want it like the iPad did or the iPhone

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Okay, after reading the reviews more directly, and not just taking the quotes out of context from that Business Insider round-up, it is pretty clear that the Apple Watch functions exactly as I would have expected, minus the mention of some slow response times. If they can get that ironed out with an update prior to launch, I think I'll be happy.

In fact, most of the reviews are very, very good and offer little to complain about for the most part. If they are to be believed, this is going to easily be the best smartwatch available, and no, not just from build quality and ascetics.

 

[Jill Sandwich]

Aye, they haven't deterred my purchase, it's really just the beginning and it can only get better.

 

[TxdoHawk]

Reviews are pretty much where I expected. It's a smartwatch, technology that is still figuring out what it wants to be...and it's a first-gen Apple product, which means it's not quite fully-baked.

I think Nilay's review summary pretty much nailed it: Buy a Sport model if you want one now, otherwise wait a year or two for revisions to work their magic. Coming from Android + Android Wear, I am down with buying in just to get back on the convenience of on-wrist notifications, but I have no delusions that the next one is likely going to be miles better, between tech improvements and software updates.

 

[LeleSocho]

Never

You take that back immediately, the G4 Cube was a thing of beauty... the frigging thing had no fans!

 

[Hasney]

how would you have the option to look at both, Android Wear and an AppleWatch btw? isn't going "cross-OS" gonna be severely limiting the usefulness of either wearable? (less so with AndroidWear and an iPhone, still - it's going to be much more feature rich when paired to an Android device, i'd believe)

Well if someone can nail a good looking watch that makes my life easier, then it's going to sway me to their phone generally. Admittedly the Apple Watch would have to be seriously good to consider me moving back to iOS now I have my Nexus 6, but they may have had my attention last year since I was open to anything after coming off a shitty Samsung.

Still, everything from both ends from reviews just screams to me to wait until the next generation as this is sounding junky and unless things have improved in the Android world, that was feeling pretty half baked since the LG R was the only good looker and initial reviews were talking about how the OS wasn't optimised for circular displays.

I agree with the sentiment of tech companies trying to force these that I read earlier though. The Moto 360 was fairly well reviewed despite its hilarious battery life and shitty architecture.

 

[jts]

Reviews are pretty good if you ask me.

Best smartwatch and best looking smartwatch around is all I'm getting.

Bit on the expensive side. Bit as first gen as every first gen device ever.

Hype for next Friday!

 

[Blackhead]

really disagree with this. it gives the Apple Watch a pass because it's going in a different direction than most wearables. Every review.. even the verge one.. basically goes on to say "while other wearables are trying to put your phone on your wrist, apple watch is trying to change how we interact with our devices. less intrusive." it seems to mostly get good reviews because they are greatly intrigued and excited by what it's trying to accomplish compared to other wearables, BUT it's clearly a first gen product.

I also disagree that "jobs would have never let it release in this state". From the sounds of it.. first party stuff and UI and whatnot work great. It seems to mostly be third party stuff that is having growing pains. now granted jobs may have taken a different approach.. like the OG iphone and no app store with VERY limited third party apps (i.e. google maps, etc) or what have you. it just sounds like once this is actually released to the public developers will have to tweak their apps to allow for a good user experience.

I mean how many MODERN iphone apps come out with: bad load times, sluggish/poor UI, crashing, etc.? I'm not dismissing that this is a first gen product that will likely have some performance issues, especially compared to the next iteration. But at the same time it's a COMPLETELY unreleased product that most devs haven't had a lot of time with while still releasing apps for. I'm guessing a lot of these app problems (like the Evernote example) will be resolved in the week or so after launch, not having to wait for Apple Watch 2.



again, ridiculous. it's not black and white. It's silly to believe that you are 100% satisfied with any device you own. I mean I am a major apple geek, but even still have complaints about iPhone and iOS.. and even if I went to Android.. hey, I'd have complaints over there as well.

There is nothing wrong with buying a product, enjoying or even loving it, but having issues/annoyances with parts of it at the same time.

Every review.. even the verge one.. basically goes on to say "while other wearables are trying to put your phone on your wrist, apple watch is trying to change how we interact with our devices. less intrusive."

Lol, wut? Which reviews are you referring to? Nilay Patel literally says the exact opposite in the Verge video review: "the Apple Watch feels like an entire little computer on your wrist"

 

[DECK'ARD]

Okay, after reading the reviews more directly, and not just taking the quotes out of context from that Business Insider round-up, it is pretty clear that the Apple Watch functions exactly as I would have expected, minus the mention of some slow response times. If they can get that ironed out with an update prior to launch, I think I'll be happy.

In fact, most of the reviews are very, very good and offer little to complain about for the most part. If they are to be believed, this is going to easily be the best smartwatch available, and no, not just from build quality and ascetics.

I dunno, sluggishness on something whose main selling-point is making things more convenient is a bit of a breaking-point. Could get really irritating and just push you back to the phone.

I'd be sceptical about any performance updates till they hit, as I think that's all about maximising battery-life. I don't think Apple would have overlooked it otherwise.

 

[SuperPac]

It's not just the Watch, notification center on the iPhone/iPad is often sluggish to update. And if the phone has to update and then push out the new info via bluetooth - there's your big lag.

In hindsight the original iPhone and iPad were kinda dogs of products that got better over revisions. This will be no different, but our expectations of what a first-generation device can do has changed since the time of those product launches. Understandable, and those items should be called out since I'm sure they'll be noticeable.

 

[mrklaw]

Eh, why blame the user? Another reviewer also complained:


FWIW on Android Wear, with and Android Lollipop, you can automatically schedule Priority Mode so the smartwatch doesn't bother you during meetings etc and returns to normal notifications afterwards...

I don't think it can? You can schedule it on a fixed timer to eg go into priority mode at 11pm until 6am the next day, every day. But it won't go into priority mode automatically when you have meetings - I had to install Agent to do that. This was something I missed because windows phone does do that.



The comparisons with android wear are kind of pointless tbh. Smart watches aren't something so desirable that you'd make a smartphone platform choice based on it. You'll choose your phone and then optionally decide if you want a watch. At that point you basically only have two choices - ios=apple watch or pebble, android=android wear or pebble.

 

[jts]

The aluminium one is looking cheaper and cheaper by the day though. I can see a lot of wear and tear in its future

Also, I prefer the black one but it's much less playful with other bands and colours. I don't know anymore.

 

[Frank Serpico]

was it?

the fact that it doesn't even have its own GPS chip seems to indicate location based apps are somewhat of an afterthought.

An actual focus, the fitness app, seems to be working really well and really accurately.

The apple watch is supposed to be more then a really good fitness band, there are already a flood of fitness bands on the market that do what the apple watch does at the fraction of a price

 

[Somnid]

the issue isn't really the loading but the bad masking thereof

the original iPhone took screenshots when you closed the app to mimic the app was "still running" when you opened it up again to mask those bad loading times.

http://youtu.be/GDghBkDvToA
(apologies for vertical video shot with iPad ...)

even on the iPhone 6, the fastest Apple Device on the market, apps take a second to load, or more. They just mask it by loading "canvas" first, content later (Facebook) or use a splash screen (like Pulse, Nike Running and Spotify)

The fact that the AppleWatch only shows you a spinning wheel instead of ... SOMETHING just seems like bad user interface design. Or they're so desperate about battery life and the spinning wheel is ever so slightly less drain on the battery than showing a 2 second splash screen. ... Spotify takes a full 4 seconds to load!

Which makes me believe it's even less of an issue with the horsepower of the watch itself but the fact that the Watch has to: "wake" the phone, "wake" the app, wait for it to start up and then receive the data / screen content. It might just be that most of the lag here is from apps just having gone to deep sleep on the phone.
So now i'm even more convinced proper caching of the "last app state" should really help out a lot here.

Less loading means less masking. It doesn't matter if it masks it, to be useful and not resort to using a phone it needs to be fast. I don't know if that's because there's lots of bitmap assets or what but the experience needs to be fast, because it's annoying on a phone but it's crippling on a watch.

 

[Jill Sandwich]

The leftmost Glance includes Airplane Mode, Mute, Find My iPhone and Do Not Disturb shortcuts.

 

[dallow_bg]

The aluminium one is looking cheaper and cheaper by the day though. I can see a lot of wear and tear in its future

Also, I prefer the black one but it's much less playful with other bands and colours. I don't know anymore.

Have you seen real life pictures? I only read 3 of the reviews.
I've been waiting for them.

 

[Zalman]

I'm interested in seeing what this can do in 3-5 years. I don't think I'll seriously consider one of these until then.

 

[Rockstar Beaver]

The apple watch is supposed to be more then a really good fitness band, there are already a flood of fitness bands on the market that do what the apple watch does at the fraction of a price

To be honest it is a mediocre fitness band (watch) when you do not have GPS functionality built into the watch at the price Apple is selling for. The Microsoft Band and the Fitbit Surge are a lot better for the purpose of a "fitness" band/watch. They are a lot cheaper as well.

 

[LyleLanley]

I'm interested in seeing what this can do in 3-5 years. I don't think I'll seriously consider one of these until then.

In 3-5 years I imagine smart watches will be doing what they do now except they'll be faster and have better battery life.

 

[digitalrelic]

Sounds to me like it's exactly like all the other smart watches, except even poorer performance & the same mediocre battery life. I'll pass. I'll check into this again in 5 years, when the tech might actually be ready for it.

 

[jts]

Have you seen real life pictures? I only read 3 of the reviews.
I've been waiting for them.

Unfortunately not. Only steel models so far.

 

[borghe]

Lol, wut? Which reviews are you referring to? Nilay Patel literally says the exact opposite in the Verge video review: "the Apple Watch feels like an entire little computer on your wrist"

Again. a quote out of context. We KNOW that it's NOT a computer on your wrist despite a misconstrued comment. I mean we KNOW what this device is and the reviews pretty explicitly confirm that. It's about notifications and quick access to the most important information from third party apps (in theory)

 

[shira]

Animated emojis are nightmare fuel

 

[Blackhead]

Again. a quote out of context. We KNOW that it's NOT a computer on your wrist despite a misconstrued comment. I mean we KNOW what this device is and the reviews pretty explicitly confirm that. It's about notifications and quick access to the most important information from third party apps (in theory)

¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Maninthemirror]

Read all the reviews and here is the summary:

+ it is the best smartwatch available
+ beautiful
+ native apps work well and ui is responsive

- offline apps (apps which connect to iphone to get data) are sluggish in performance
- there is a learning curve
- ui is odd in some places


I see no solution to make it very fast for offline apps. The only solution is native apps built

 

[mrklaw]

Again. a quote out of context. We KNOW that it's NOT a computer on your wrist despite a misconstrued comment. I mean we KNOW what this device is and the reviews pretty explicitly confirm that. It's about notifications and quick access to the most important information from third party apps (in theory)

and calling people like you're Dick Tracy. And sending people your heartbeat or a squiggle or a weird smiley face. And browsing through your photos on a 1" display.


But yeah, totally not a phone on your wrist.

 

[Epix]

Lol at the reviews complaining about being taken "out of the moment" by getting taps on the wrist. Don't buy a smartwatch, go ahead and sell your phone, and free yourself to live in the moment.

I want connection to the rest of the world, that's why I bought a phone and that's what I'm looking forward to the most. Invest 3 min in setting up which applications trigger notifications and let the device do what's it's designed to do, elegantly and passively keep people connected with the world and provide contextual and timely information in an accessible manner.

 

[Fliesen]

Less loading means less masking. It doesn't matter if it masks it, to be useful and not resort to using a phone it needs to be fast. I don't know if that's because there's lots of bitmap assets or what but the experience needs to be fast, because it's annoying on a phone but it's crippling on a watch.

i agree with you. notifications and glances need to be as fast as possible. Any app glance that takes 5 seconds to fetch data is a failure. I just thought it was worth the post to point out that it's kind of a misconception that the apps on the Watch take dramatically longer to load than on your phone and that i would even argue our phones maybe being part of the bottleneck of slow loading watch apps, as opposed to the watch itself being utterly underpowered.

Read all the reviews and here is the summary:

+ it is the best smartwatch available
+ beautiful
+ native apps work well and ui is responsive

- offline apps (apps which connect to iphone to get data) are sluggish in performance
- there is a learning curve
- ui is odd in some places


I see no solution to make it very fast for offline apps. The only solution is native apps built

i think this will be a huge improvement. It's a similar change to "webapps only" to "native apps of iOS 2.0"

people are just worrying that the gen 1 watch won't be able to handle native apps too well, which i don't think is fair, as the current native apps seem to work pretty fluidly

 

[The_Inquisitor]

To be honest it is a mediocre fitness band (watch) when you do not have GPS functionality built into the watch at the price Apple is selling for. The Microsoft Band and the Fitbit Surge are a lot better for the purpose of a "fitness" band/watch. They are a lot cheaper as well.

Fitbit surge user here. I'm holding onto it until second or third gen apple watch.

 

[SlowRevolution]

The design for that review by The Verge is so far up its own ass.

 

[victreeb3l]

Regarding the notifications, that seems like a simple problem to solve. Just disable them. Sure it takes a few minutes to customize it but after that its essentially set it and forget it.

The design for that review by The Verge is so far up its own ass.

Yeah, I guess they tried to write a sketch at the same time or something. But that Sonia chick was cute so it was worth the watch.

 

[Fletcher]

Next years iteration will be better once they fix all the issues.