Apple Watch revealed: A wrist-worn, personalized communications & fitness device with 'digital crown

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  • Reply 161 of 267
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    I think so, but then again freezing.




    By the way, this was a big botch. I mean the live stream, or at least what I could get of it. Here in France, although I have a FTTH access with more than 100 Mb/s bandwidth, I couldn't follow more than thirty seconds in a row at best. After that it froze, sometimes rewinded back to the beginning (bars and slate), sometimes to a random point before. Once I had a Chinese voice doing live translation while Schiller was speaking. Once it was a Russian voice I think. traceroute to apple.com yielded loops and strange ways. Eventually I got fed up and decided to have dinner. A big flub. 

  • Reply 162 of 267
    antkm1antkm1 Posts: 1,441member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jfc1138 View Post

     

    Hell why not just buy one of those little iPods if ALL you want is lightweight music?

     

    Nano, Nano?

     

    Or just do the Shuffle?


    So i want a fitness tracker and and iPod nano in one device.  Gps tracking and maps...without having to take my iPhone with me.  THere's enough to think about while on a bike ride (keys, wallet, water).  I really don't care about notifications at all.  Especially if i'm on a longer ride (40 miles+).  I can leave most of that in the car or at home if the watch did NFC, Music and Maps.  The Apple Watch does those things, but cannot be used without the iPhone.  Which is pointless.  Especially for runners.  Most runners just want a tiny device but have enough functionality that they can leave everything else at home.  Apple Watch doesn't do that.

  • Reply 163 of 267
    Because it’s barely mentioned. One sentence.

    Oh, perfect! I did not see that. Yes!
  • Reply 164 of 267
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    The watch demo was pretty awful. Way too much time spent on silly features, like zooming to the moon, sending goofy smileys, and navigating photo libraries, instead of showing features that you'd actually want on your wrist. Kevin Lynch wasn't a bad presenter, he spoke very clearly, but whoever wrote the script has a few things to learn.
  • Reply 165 of 267
    calicali Posts: 3,494member
    Coming from a huge Apple fan, I was disappointed.

    When the iPod was revealed, did ur look like an mp3 player? NO.

    When the iPhone was revealed did it look like a cell phone? NO.

    When iPad was revealed did it look like those ugly useless tablets of the day?.....

    This thing, it looks like a watch. It looks like something I've already seen over a decade ago. Heck it looks like a Galaxy Gear!!

    Revolutionary crown? Is Apple f****ing kidding me!??! The first thing I thought of is this:
    http://jim-goldstein.photoshelter.com/image/I0000_RaLPnb0QW0
    I INSTANTLY thought of a revolutionary alternative. Less fidgety, less confusing, nicer watch profile. A smooth band on the side of the watch, slide finger forward to Zoom in and slide backward to zoom out. DONE. Need a home button? Touch ID. The digital crown reminds me of something Jobs would have made fun of.

    Needs an iPhone to work.....
    I don't even know where to start. If iPhone had %90 marketshare this would make PERFECT sense. But it doesn't. So in the US iPhone has about %40 marketshare. Now let's assume %30 are AppleWatch compatible. From there how many people are gonna run out and buy an AppleWatch? even assuming a third of them will, only %10 of people who own a smartphone will own AppleWatch and that's best case scenario. This leaves open a HUGE market for Android and others to take smartwatch share. Even though Apple could sell millions more they're just saying "no thanks". If an Android owners think Apple Watch is the greatest thing ever, they need to invest an additional $200 to own one, had the iPhone not been a requirement, AppleWatch would have been a nice bridge into other Apple products. Now it's more like a ladder on top of a building. Maybe we can have a repeat of the iPod and they'll change their minds later because this sounds as ridiculous as having to own a Mac to use an iPod.

    ApplePay is a revolutionary new way to make purchases secured with Touch ID! GREAT!
    AppleWatch works with ApplePay! but lacks Touch ID... So it's either less secure or you have to pull out your phone anyway to scan your fingerprint and then lean your wrist to NFC capable machines. INTUITIVE!!!

    Don't you people DARE tell me about doubters during the iPod/iPhone/"it's just a giant iPod touch" days!! Because back then I saw Apples innovation and defend those products to this day. This watch has so much wrong with it I'm literally for the FIRST TIME wondering if Apple is lost without Steve Jobs and that's a heartbreaking thought.
  • Reply 166 of 267
    Originally Posted by cali View Post

    This thing, it looks like a watch.

     

    See here.

     

    Because back then I saw Apples innovation and defend those products to this day.


     

    And yet somehow can’t see it here?

  • Reply 167 of 267
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    cali wrote: »
    Coming from a huge Apple fan, I was disappointed.

    Blah blah blah

    This thing, it looks like a watch. It looks like something I've already seen over a decade ago. Heck it looks like a Galaxy Gear!!

    This leaves open a HUGE market for Android and others to take smartwatch share.

    Blah blah blah

    Apple is lost without Steve Jobs and that's a heartbreaking thought.

    Apple will be taking market share from Android (and others), you even mentioned the gear, a part of that market of which Apple currently has zero share.

    The only way is up.

    Thanks for the false concern I'm sure no-one here cares about your drivel.
  • Reply 168 of 267
    crowley wrote: »
    The watch demo was pretty awful. Way too much time spent on silly features, like zooming to the moon, sending goofy smileys, and navigating photo libraries, instead of showing features that you'd actually want on your wrist. Kevin Lynch wasn't a bad presenter, he spoke very clearly, but whoever wrote the script has a few things to learn.

    Yes. But I think Kevin presented badly, too. He spoke much too fast; he didn't explain things clearly, but presumed too much knowledge from an ignorant audience, an understandable mistake when you are intimately acquainted with the product; and he never got enthusiastic, but sounded far too casual—this was the biggest and most important flaw, and the one which contrasted him severely against Steve Jobs.
  • Reply 169 of 267
    hill60 wrote: »
    cali wrote: »
    Coming from a huge Apple fan, I was disappointed.

    Blah blah blah

    This thing, it looks like a watch. It looks like something I've already seen over a decade ago. Heck it looks like a Galaxy Gear!!

    This leaves open a HUGE market for Android and others to take smartwatch share.

    Blah blah blah

    Apple is lost without Steve Jobs and that's a heartbreaking thought.

    Apple will be taking market share from Android (and others), you even mentioned the gear, a part of that market of which Apple currently has zero share.

    The only way is up.

    Thanks for the false concern I'm sure no-one here cares about your drivel.

    I know cali tends to be negative, but I'm afraid I'm sympathetic to his view here. The iPhone dependency is a mistake.
  • Reply 170 of 267
    I know cali tends to be negative, but I'm afraid I'm sympathetic to his view here. The iPhone dependency is a mistake.

    I guess it's up to the marketplace to decide if it's ready for this product.
  • Reply 171 of 267
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost View Post



    I know cali tends to be negative, but I'm afraid I'm sympathetic to his view here. The iPhone dependency is a mistake.

     

    The alternatives are what?  To have very limited functionality because there's no GPS, no connectivity, limited storage and limited processing power?

     

    The iPhone does all the heavy lifting.  Remove it and it's essentially an updated 2010 iPod nano on a watch band.

     

    http://gigaom.com/2013/03/16/why-i-stopped-wearing-my-ipod-nano-as-a-watch/

     

    He also spammed this exact whine across 3 articles.

  • Reply 172 of 267
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by nht View Post

     
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost View Post



    I know cali tends to be negative, but I'm afraid I'm sympathetic to his view here. The iPhone dependency is a mistake.

     

    The alternatives are what?  To have very limited functionality because there's no GPS, no connectivity, limited storage and limited processing power?

     

    The iPhone does all the heavy lifting.  Remove it and it's essentially an updated 2010 iPod nano on a watch band.

     

    http://gigaom.com/2013/03/16/why-i-stopped-wearing-my-ipod-nano-as-a-watch/

     

    He also spammed this exact whine across 3 articles.


     

    There's nothing wrong with it being an accessory to the iPhone; it's more that it has to be used that way. I fear that a lot of fitness nuts will pass due to this inhibiting factor.

  • Reply 173 of 267
    eauvive wrote: »

    By the way, this was a big botch. I mean the live stream, or at least what I could get of it. Here in France, although I have a FTTH access with more than 100 Mb/s bandwidth, I couldn't follow more than thirty seconds in a row at best. After that it froze, sometimes rewinded back to the beginning (bars and slate), sometimes to a random point before. Once I had a Chinese voice doing live translation while Schiller was speaking. Once it was a Russian voice I think. traceroute to apple.com yielded loops and strange ways. Eventually I got fed up and decided to have dinner. A big flub. 

    I was one of the first to comment on the threads here about this. My 100mb line... Speedtested at 94mb to continent servers in Germany, Luxembourg, France and Netherlands... went down to 2mb when testing servers across the Atlantic (Boston, New York... and Carolina).... and not much better at times to the UK (cross channel).

    When that happens the backbones try different routes to get to the server you're trying to reach. In fact, the very foundation of the Internet is designed to work this way and why it was built in the first place from ARPANET, so that in the case of an attack anywhere, lines of communication could be restored seamlessly just by re-routing the packets. *Too lazy to look it up, but I believe DARPANET was the network later that facilitated national defense communications in case of an attack(?)

    So yes... that means going through Russia, China, Asia... and through the underground Pacific pipes. Since those were also congested from all of Asia NEEDING to know what Apple was doing, it became the huge traffic jam that it was.

    BTW: I predicted this was going to happen hours before the event went live, so I was prepared and was hoping to record the fact... knowing full well that everyone was going to blame this on Apple. See my time stamps on my posts: Post #177 ... and here 11 minutes before kick-off... Post #204

    HELP REQUEST: I still haven't found a "live view" website to see internet traffic information. Anyone have a good tip? I would've liked to follow this closer, or even record it. Considering I wasn't getting the feed I wanted, I was mainly watching 3 Twitter tags on an iPad... and amazingly AI's live blog. AI's feed came in delayed refreshes, and often in huge bunches... but between the two I could at least follow the big news.... and drop a few unnecessary comments of my own... :smokey:
  • Reply 174 of 267
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post





    I was one of the first to comment on the threads here about this. My 100mb line... Speedtested at 94mb to continent servers in Germany, Luxembourg, France and Netherlands... went down to 2mb when testing servers across the Atlantic (Boston, New York... and Carolina).... and not much better at times to the UK (cross channel).



    When that happens the backbones try different routes to get to the server you're trying to reach. In fact, the very foundation of the Internet is designed to work this way and why it was built in the first place from ARPANET, so that in the case of an attack anywhere, lines of communication could be restored seamlessly just by re-routing the packets. *Too lazy to look it up, but I believe DARPANET was the network later that facilitated national defense communications in case of an attack(?)

     

    Yup, the Internet was made to be resilient. But that possibility of dynamically routing via BGP weighting factors raises a question: different routes mean different ping times, that in turn translate into non-sequential packet delivery. I am not sure, but in case of a TCP connexion, if a packet arrives out of order, it is discarded and the whole set from the last in-sequence packet is re-requested. If this retry does itself produce out of sequence packets, the whole mechanism can quickly submerge the network with retransmission requests.

     

    I surmise somehow Apple broadcast different flows according to the destination, supposing that any connexion arriving, e.g., from Japan would originate in Japan. But since the routing machines had gone haywire, we got the dubbed video from Japan instead of the English one we ought to get.

     

    Quote:

     BTW: I predicted this was going to happen hours before the event went live, so I was prepared and was hoping to record the fact... knowing full well that everyone was going to blame this on Apple. See my time stamps on my posts: Post #177 ... and here 11 minutes before kick-off... Post #204

     

    HELP REQUEST: I still haven't found a "live view" website to see internet traffic information. Anyone have a good tip? I would've liked to follow this closer, or even record it. Considering I wasn't getting the feed I wanted, I was mainly watching 3 Twitter tags on an iPad... and amazingly AI's live blog. AI's feed came in delayed refreshes, and often in huge bunches... but between the two I could at least follow the big news.... and drop a few unnecessary comments of my own... image


     



    I am not sure there is a website representing the BGP total traffic in real time.

    Normally, Apple uses a cache infrastructure (Akamai) that catches the requests and divert them to a local server. It’s a kind of multicast. It avoids traffic congestion, but obviously it just fizzled.

  • Reply 175 of 267
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post



    BTW: I predicted this was going to happen hours before the event went live, so I was prepared and was hoping to record the fact... knowing full well that everyone was going to blame this on Apple. See my time stamps on my posts: Post #177 ... and here 11 minutes before kick-off... Post #204



    HELP REQUEST: I still haven't found a "live view" website to see internet traffic information. Anyone have a good tip? I would've liked to follow this closer, or even record it. Considering I wasn't getting the feed I wanted, I was mainly watching 3 Twitter tags on an iPad... and amazingly AI's live blog. AI's feed came in delayed refreshes, and often in huge bunches... but between the two I could at least follow the big news.... and drop a few unnecessary comments of my own... image

     

    It was likely apple's fault. 

     

    "Unlike the last live stream Apple did, this time around Apple decided to add some JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) code to the apple.com page which added an interactive element on the bottom showing tweets about the event. As a result, this was causing the page to make refresh calls every few milliseconds. By Apple making the decision to add the JSON code, it made the apple.com website un-cachable. By contrast, Apple usually has Akamai caching the page for their live events but this time around there would have been no way for Akamai to have done that, which causes a huge impact on the performance when it comes to loading the page and the stream. And since Apple embeds their video directly in the web page, any performance problems in the page also impacts the video."

     

    http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/09/why-apples-livestream-failed.html

     

    The analysis here seems sound given my admittedly limited knowledge on CDNs.  When I did networking stuff it was on the backbone not the traffic.

     

    This has some interesting analysis (linked from the article above) as well

     

    http://perf.fail/post/97144331419/learning-from-apples-livestream-perf-fiasco

  • Reply 176 of 267
    [@]nht[/@] - Thanks for the reply! I will definitely look into that, and also from my limited knowledge... it sounds very likely this added to the drop out. I'm still reading the article within the article and a number of the comments.

    One note though: my stream started about 14 minutes before the event automatically... and was stable a good 2 minutes in HD, although with a doubled music track. Then around the 12 minute mark, the stream started to degrade... but actually fluctuated between HD and standard. It didn't "die until" 2 minutes in.

    Just stating my observance, and why *I* assumed it was everyone in the world tuning in at the same time.


    [@]EauVive[/@] - Thank You also for your reply. But I still think your mostly negative comments "across the board" regarding the products and event itself are full of "merde". Just sayin'... :p
  • Reply 177 of 267
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by nht View Post

     

     

    It was likely apple's fault. 

     

    "Unlike the last live stream Apple did, this time around Apple decided to add some JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) code to the apple.com page which added an interactive element on the bottom showing tweets about the event. As a result, this was causing the page to make refresh calls every few milliseconds. By Apple making the decision to add the JSON code, it made the apple.com website un-cachable. By contrast, Apple usually has Akamai caching the page for their live events but this time around there would have been no way for Akamai to have done that, which causes a huge impact on the performance when it comes to loading the page and the stream. And since Apple embeds their video directly in the web page, any performance problems in the page also impacts the video."

     

    http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/09/why-apples-livestream-failed.html

     

    The analysis here seems sound given my admittedly limited knowledge on CDNs.  When I did networking stuff it was on the backbone not the traffic.


     

    Probably the page contained at the same time the JSON data (the slides) and the JavaScript responsible for displaying them on the page. Or maybe not, since the addition of a new slide triggered an animation, suggesting a live reception.

     

    Could the addition of JSON tokens interspersed in the video stream make it un-cacheable? It’s somewhat hard to believe. 

  • Reply 178 of 267
    Now that I've had time to sleep on it I think I see the method to Apple's madness vis a vis the Apple Watch/iPhone 6 nexus. Apple has deduced most users will find the iPhone 6 cumbersome compared to previous models. Apple Watch is a new interface to shield users from the unwieldy size of the iP 6 by negating the need too handle it doing rudimentary tasks. I may be wrong but that's my opinion.
  • Reply 179 of 267
    mj web wrote: »
    Now that I've had time to sleep on it I think I see the method to Apple's madness vis a vis the Apple Watch/iPhone 6 nexus. Apple has deduced most users will find the iPhone 6 cumbersome compared to previous models. Apple Watch is a new interface to shield users from the unwieldy size of the iP 6 by negating the need too handle it doing rudimentary tasks. I may be wrong but that's my opinion.

    Truly bizarre thinking.

    Apple deliberately made an annoyingly large iPhone so that people would feel obliged to also purchase a minuscule screen on the Apple Watch to balance it?

    It's so mad that you may just be right.
  • Reply 180 of 267
    To PixelDoc: you did indeed anticipate the keynote dropping out. For the record, so did I.

    My experience of the live keynote:

    Turned on about five minutes early. Live picture of auditorium. The sound was in two tracks of two different pieces of music, one slightly louder than the other. This got me worried, so I decided to refresh Safari (on an iMac). Then I got a static picture of coloured bars and a display screen of timings for the keynote accompanied by the same double music track. Help! Another refresh restored the live feed.

    Keynote started. Everything was accompanied by a Chinese VoiceOver, which made for extremely irritating listening. Intro vid. Within a minute, picture froze. Refreshed Safari. Live feed back. This kept happening for about 30 minutes. I was typically refreshing between five seconds and one minute. The behaviour on refresh was varied and would result in any of the following:

    Restoration of the live feed.
    Live feed minus sound.
    The static display screen.
    A rewind to the keynote from seconds or minutes earlier.
    A Safari page but no video.
    An 'Access Denied' page.

    At about 30 minutes, the Chinese woman mercifully stopped. The feed settled down and the gaps between freezing became longer. The freezing got worse again in the last third of the keynote.

    Well, that was cathartic if nothing else.
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