It depends, for it to be standalone, it really has to be able to deal with networking. Pretty much all wifi networks these days are password protected and the Watch has no keyboard, although WPS would be an option there. Always-on cellular is another option and used in some watches. That would allow the use of Siri too without the phone being present. The carriers should really let you connect to the same data connection as the phone you have. Most of the data would be for tiny text notifications but that'll have a bad effect on the already poor battery life.
Jony Ive said it marked a move away from consumer electronics, which I suspect meant that it's a move into fashion. The advertising is needed to break into a new demographic. Consumer electronics are more defined by function than form. If your computer or phone looked nice aesthetically but did very little, it wouldn't sell. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces, clothing are hardly ever defined by function. For some people, the time-keeping function of watches is still useful, likewise the tracking of fitness watches and but the time-keeping function of expensive watches is mostly redundant. You don't spend $5k on a watch if your priority is to tell the time. The priority is form and not function, it's an identity and an investment.
For an electronics company to come along and impose the priority of function into a genre defined by form, there's going to be limited appeal but there's a middle ground. The plastic lower-end watches like Casio/G-Shock, Timex are all about features and they look hideous. Their interfaces are also terrible where you have to do all sorts of combinations of button presses to get things done. An Apple Watch is fully programmable and I would again expect a full unix OS underneath. Take a video like this:
These watches vary between $150-300. I don't find the Apple Watch design to be great but it's better than those and can perform far more functions than they ever could with a much less frustrating UI. Not a lot of watches sell at the price point of the Apple Watch, the vast majority are under $100 but there's a clear upsell from lower-end watches.
I think the edition watch will struggle to sell if it's overly expensive (I don't think it will be though) because higher-end watches aren't about functionality. You'd be paying for roughly the same watch people get at $350 and it's not an investment that will hold its value. The good things about products that don't emphasize function is that there's no improved function to devalue the old model significantly. To an extent that should be true of the Apple Watch as it's not an immersive, powerful device so a new model should perform almost the same but Apple isn't out to sell one generation of product so they'll add something to get people to upgrade. I suppose they could add a camera eventually for Face-Time and selfies.
The biggest problem I see for the upsell from cheaper watches is the idea of charging every day. It worked out ok with phones but for the low-end, the watch is such an after thought that it would be a deal-breaker for many and has been for people already with the iPod watch and existing smartwatches.
When it comes to defining it as a success or failure, it's down to what people expect. I don't expect it to be a high volume product so if it sustains 10-20m units per year, I'd say that's successful. If it ends up below 2 million units per year, I'd say that would qualify as a failure. It's all relative of course, that could result in around $300m profit. For most people, I think a $300m 'failure' would be nice to have.
The problem with your explanation is that Apple doesn't really need to do this if the watch was something that people want. When Steve was alive, his formula for success was simple. Keep tight lipped about the product until the big reveal. Let people get into a frenzy talking and waiting for the product. Then sell like crazy. Now, part 2 is missing for the watch.
Something is amiss. Cook and his team no longer have the formula right. I mean, have you ever seen Jony Ive interviewed for ANYTHING before? He was suppose to be the secret guy behind the great designs. The mystery is what creates the halo. The secrecy is what creates the frenzy. Why are they now systematically breaking-down what has worked wonders for the past decade? Could it be because they know that after the big reveal people are luke warm to it? Could it be that they're now worried about the demand and feel that they must go out and try to sell it, even though they've never had to do that before? Everyone who knows about Apple products knows about the watch already. If it was a product that will sell in the millions, they wouldn't be out there trying to sell it. This feels more like an Apple TV.
Why is it that no one I've met, myself included, has said, "oh, I'm definitely going to get one!."? I have owned just about every product Steve has shown me when he was alive. I wanted to be the first in line, the first person to own it on the block. This time around I said, meh...I can wait. Perhaps 2nd gen. That's a problem. When you no longer have products that people lust after even before they're released, it's a huge problem.
Perhaps the problem is that the watch is just not that futuristic enough to peak people's interest? I just can't put my finger on it but I do know that we have a problem on our hands.
It feels as though we are in Middle Earth. The elves (the Apple of Jobs and Ive) have had their last great heyday and are fading away into the Grey Havens. The strong but dull men (Cook's Apple) are taking over.
We should be grateful that we were lucky to live through a golden age of technology and be happy to gather up any crumbs that may come our way in the coming lean years.
I don't think there'll be another revolution in tech until energy management is transformed.
The problem with your explanation is that Apple doesn't really need to do this if the watch was something that people want. When Steve was alive, his formula for success was simple. Keep tight lipped about the product until the big reveal. Let people get into a frenzy talking and waiting for the product. Then sell like crazy. Now, part 2 is missing for the watch.
Why is it that no one I've met, myself included, has said, "oh, I'm definitely going to get one!."? I have owned just about every product Steve has shown me when he was alive. I wanted to be the first in line, the first person to own it on the block. This time around I said, meh...I can wait. Perhaps 2nd gen. That's a problem. When you no longer have products that people lust after even before they're released, it's a huge problem.
Perhaps the problem is that the watch is just not that futuristic enough to peak people's interest? I just can't put my finger on it but I do know that we have a problem on our hands.
I think that's partly down to the watch market, which isn't an impulse buyer's market and many people have given up on watches, I probably haven't worn one for 20 years and have little to no intention to start again, the phone (including dumbphone) replaced the watch for me but the design they went with has something to do with it. I've seen a few online polls where they've asked about which watch people would prefer and over 60% tend to favor the Moto 360, it seems to be around 10-20% would be interested in the Apple Watch but they aren't based on holding them side by side and there's compatibility limitations that people won't be aware of.
Microsoft released a video recently showing a handwriting input for Android Wear:
They just won't give up on handwriting but it actually looks like it would be useful there as there's no keyboard and it's not stylus-based and auto-complete makes it more efficient. Some people say you get more room with a square display but you can see in that video, the square one actually looks cramped. It's because of the padding, text isn't supposed to go right to the edge of a display. You can see this between the iPhone and Apple Watch with texts:
Some UI designs look ok like at the following link so it will really come down to how developers/designers make use of the space:
As to why they need to bother making a watch if it's not something people want anyway, the alternative would be not doing anything. The same will be true of the TV market. They can't change buying habits in every category. They went after the big markets first and there just isn't a huge market left to put electronics into. I think adding tactile touch / haptic feedback to iOS devices (not the watch kind of haptics, I mean proper touch sensation) will spark a large upgrade cycle.
The watch market is large at over 1 billion units per year but it doesn't look like it's too big in Western countries. This site says around $7-8b in the US:
The overall market is around $54b. It also mentions that the high-end watches are averaging $2500 so only 3m units would make that revenue. The overall US average is mentioned there as $290, which suggests it's not the high volume market as the worldwide average is far lower. I don't think it's a market that Apple's failed to impress as much as it is just not an enthusiastic market but they could have gone with a nicer design. We'll get a better assessment once it's on sale but in general I agree with you that it's not an item that there seems to be a lot of excitement about.
Something is amiss. Cook and his team no longer have the formula right. I mean, have you ever seen Jony Ive interviewed for ANYTHING before? He was suppose to be the secret guy behind the great designs. The mystery is what creates the halo. The secrecy is what creates the frenzy. Why are they now systematically breaking-down what has worked wonders for the past decade? Could it be because they know that after the big reveal people are luke warm to it? Could it be that they're now worried about the demand and feel that they must go out and try to sell it, even though they've never had to do that before? Everyone who knows about Apple products knows about the watch already. If it was a product that will sell in the millions, they wouldn't be out there trying to sell it. This feels more like an Apple TV.
Steve was the go-to guy before though. Sometimes Tim takes on the interviewers but he can't explain the design process. Steve could give details on both the operation and the design, now that has to be split between the two. I wouldn't say it's a sign of desperation, it's more that this role had to be filled and they don't have an individual who can cover every area. If I recall correctly, Steve also liked to keep employees out of the spotlight to avoid them being head-hunted by other companies, it was only when he knew a transition would be needed that he brought them forward. Now that he's gone, they have no choice but to step forward. I'd rather listen to Ive than some PR person.
For an electronics company to come along and impose the priority of function into a genre defined by form, there's going to be limited appeal but there's a middle ground. The plastic lower-end watches like Casio/G-Shock, Timex are all about features and they look hideous.
These watches vary between $150-300.
Those watches are as dead as dumb phones were in 2006.
Quote:
I think the edition watch will struggle to sell if it's overly expensive (I don't think it will be though) because higher-end watches aren't about functionality. You'd be paying for roughly the same watch people get at $350 and it's not an investment that will hold its value.
A replacement of the movement will make a 2015 apple watch into a 2017 apple watch in terms of functionality. So a more expensive edition watch can retain its value over time with a $200-$300 replacement of the internals. I don't think that this is something that Apple has overlooked for a demographic that obviously can afford to spend money on luxury items.
Those watches are as dead as dumb phones were in 2006.
The only real advantages they offer are battery life of 0.5-1 year vs < 24 hours and they're a bit cheaper but the functionality of those watches is much more limited and the UI is terrible. I think for people who might go hiking or camping, smartwatches with < 24 hour battery life would be no good. There are portable chargers but the watch isn't a necessary item. I'd say these watches represent the best target audience for smartwatches and not Cartier/Rolex/Omega.
A replacement of the movement will make a 2015 apple watch into a 2017 apple watch in terms of functionality. So a more expensive edition watch can retain its value over time with a $200-$300 replacement of the internals. I don't think that this is something that Apple has overlooked for a demographic that obviously can afford to spend money on luxury items.
If they go with gold plating, there's no point in offering an upgrade. If it's solid gold like these:
I suppose there's more incentive to do it but there's also going to be far less volume of buyers. The route they normally go is to have you sell it second-hand and get a new one. If it's solid gold, most of the cost would be the gold itself so they could also offer a trade up to the new one, which would likely be slimmer and they can melt the old one down.
I reckon there will be people who buy the entry model and get 3rd parties like anostyle to make it look like the edition one for $200-300 and then fool buyers on eBay into thinking it's the edition model. Apple could use a marking system that can be verified online to avoid this like engrave an id into the back.
Will people who normally spend thousands on a watch want to spend similar amounts for a bulkier charge-daily smartwatch? There's a demo here that shows the UI running a bit more smoothly and it's the smaller model (interactive starts around 1:00):
[VIDEO]
There must be a market for anything made of solid gold but is that high-end watch market crying out for the digital functionality? The watch faces shown off there don't look very good. Hopefully they'll let users add their own and allow them to use a parallax/shadow for moving hands to give the appearance of depth, maybe even reflections.
edit: that video raised a good point about allowing Watch users to interact with nearby users. They said it would let people contact others in their contact list only but there could be 3rd party apps that do location-based contact additions. The biggest downside to the contact part I think is how many couples, friends, co-workers are going to buy the same watch? For a couple, the man's going to be thinking, 'great another device my wife can use to annoy me all day long' and the woman will be thinking 'that's all I need, a screen for my immature husband to send me dick drawings all day long'. On stage they demoed the chat with simple queries but people are going to get annoyed when they hit a point in the conversation that can't be summarized with a scribble and just end up sending a text. Being able to type would help a lot and the following is faster than Microsoft's scribble input:
I think I might vomit after watching that. That appears to be a digital version of how we used to type with non-smartphones back in the day (unless you were using T9). You simply take the number multiple times within a certain time frame to select the right letter.
I think I might vomit after watching that. That appears to be a digital version of how we used to type with non-smartphones back in the day (unless you were using T9). You simply take the number multiple times within a certain time frame to select the right letter.
There's no multiple taps for letters, it's doing predictive typing. You tap on groups of letters once and it can tell roughly what you meant to type by the order of the taps. He swipes to the right to insert a space, back to delete. The parts where he holds down the letter are for special characters.
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
On a smartphone where you have the space, it's not necessary but on a smartwatch, the choice is pretty much use a novel input method or voice, which might not be appropriate at the time.
For me. It seemed immediately evident that the "drawing" function on the Apple Watch was meant for the Asian markets. It's perfect for instant pictogram-based communication and I wonder why Apple didn't specifically show that function.
For me. It seemed immediately evident that the "drawing" function on the Apple Watch was meant for the Asian markets. It's perfect for instant pictogram-based communication and I wonder why Apple didn't specifically show that function.
Very well could be. I still think teens and especially the girls are gonna love it, and still consider it "at the moment" the killer app.
In the video above the lady says it's only for the Apple Watch to communicate back and forth.... and of course she made a point of demoing it. I'm guessing Apple thinks this is the "cool" app too and could lead to a "trend"... even Jony demoed it as a "compelling personal and fun way of communicating ideas and emotions, quickly and efficiently. However, I hope they don't plan on sending those messages EVER to an iDevice with something like, "Suzy sent you an iChat Emoji, only available on ?Watch."... that would be "pushing it" far too heavy and would surely backfire(!)
With that said, if it does become a trend, how long before...
a) competitors or even Apple devs create an App*** to do the same across devices,
and/or
b) Apple does it themselves?
*** I see DrawChat, DrawCast and Draw-n-Chat in other App Stores including Apple's... but I'm thinking something simpler and basically what the ?Watch does.... which is nothing else.
I still think teens and especially the girls are gonna love it, and still consider it "at the moment" the killer app.
It seems too limited to me. There's an app out that just lets you communicate with emojis:
[VIDEO]
"I'm a man of so many words, I don't know if there are enough emojis to say what I want to say".
Scribbling your own drawings might expand the communication a bit but you don't get much time to do detailed drawings and you can't talk about topics that way. There's a smartwatch been designed recently to target women for $169 with gold/silver body and sapphire-coated glass and links with both iOS and Android:
I can see young people going for inexpensive watches like these (or rather parents/grandparents will buy them inexpensive watches) and they'll use whatever apps let them engage in silent conversations during classes. You can see even the official demo of the sketch feature was very limited at 1:26:59 - they call it Digital Touch:
[VIDEO]
They had to make a code first so they know that 3 taps means go to lunch. Then the reply is a question mark, which he says meant what's for lunch but how would you know it wasn't asking why they were tapping? Then he draws a fish, which he would have to know before-hand meant sushi and that was the conversation. How would you say Chinese, Thai, Indian food or even just coffee? Time can be scribbled but not location.
In a recent interview, Aziz Ansari joked about his plans to write a movie based on the lives of the mysterious Emoji icons, and he already has the cast in mind. Along with Jennifer Lawrence as the Woman Dancing In A Red Dress
Comments
I would say less than 10 million is failure, 10-15 is okish, 15-20 is success and over 20 is a triumph.
It depends, for it to be standalone, it really has to be able to deal with networking. Pretty much all wifi networks these days are password protected and the Watch has no keyboard, although WPS would be an option there. Always-on cellular is another option and used in some watches. That would allow the use of Siri too without the phone being present. The carriers should really let you connect to the same data connection as the phone you have. Most of the data would be for tiny text notifications but that'll have a bad effect on the already poor battery life.
Jony Ive said it marked a move away from consumer electronics, which I suspect meant that it's a move into fashion. The advertising is needed to break into a new demographic. Consumer electronics are more defined by function than form. If your computer or phone looked nice aesthetically but did very little, it wouldn't sell. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces, clothing are hardly ever defined by function. For some people, the time-keeping function of watches is still useful, likewise the tracking of fitness watches and but the time-keeping function of expensive watches is mostly redundant. You don't spend $5k on a watch if your priority is to tell the time. The priority is form and not function, it's an identity and an investment.
For an electronics company to come along and impose the priority of function into a genre defined by form, there's going to be limited appeal but there's a middle ground. The plastic lower-end watches like Casio/G-Shock, Timex are all about features and they look hideous. Their interfaces are also terrible where you have to do all sorts of combinations of button presses to get things done. An Apple Watch is fully programmable and I would again expect a full unix OS underneath. Take a video like this:
These watches vary between $150-300. I don't find the Apple Watch design to be great but it's better than those and can perform far more functions than they ever could with a much less frustrating UI. Not a lot of watches sell at the price point of the Apple Watch, the vast majority are under $100 but there's a clear upsell from lower-end watches.
I think the edition watch will struggle to sell if it's overly expensive (I don't think it will be though) because higher-end watches aren't about functionality. You'd be paying for roughly the same watch people get at $350 and it's not an investment that will hold its value. The good things about products that don't emphasize function is that there's no improved function to devalue the old model significantly. To an extent that should be true of the Apple Watch as it's not an immersive, powerful device so a new model should perform almost the same but Apple isn't out to sell one generation of product so they'll add something to get people to upgrade. I suppose they could add a camera eventually for Face-Time and selfies.
The biggest problem I see for the upsell from cheaper watches is the idea of charging every day. It worked out ok with phones but for the low-end, the watch is such an after thought that it would be a deal-breaker for many and has been for people already with the iPod watch and existing smartwatches.
When it comes to defining it as a success or failure, it's down to what people expect. I don't expect it to be a high volume product so if it sustains 10-20m units per year, I'd say that's successful. If it ends up below 2 million units per year, I'd say that would qualify as a failure. It's all relative of course, that could result in around $300m profit. For most people, I think a $300m 'failure' would be nice to have.
The problem with your explanation is that Apple doesn't really need to do this if the watch was something that people want. When Steve was alive, his formula for success was simple. Keep tight lipped about the product until the big reveal. Let people get into a frenzy talking and waiting for the product. Then sell like crazy. Now, part 2 is missing for the watch.
Something is amiss. Cook and his team no longer have the formula right. I mean, have you ever seen Jony Ive interviewed for ANYTHING before? He was suppose to be the secret guy behind the great designs. The mystery is what creates the halo. The secrecy is what creates the frenzy. Why are they now systematically breaking-down what has worked wonders for the past decade? Could it be because they know that after the big reveal people are luke warm to it? Could it be that they're now worried about the demand and feel that they must go out and try to sell it, even though they've never had to do that before? Everyone who knows about Apple products knows about the watch already. If it was a product that will sell in the millions, they wouldn't be out there trying to sell it. This feels more like an Apple TV.
Why is it that no one I've met, myself included, has said, "oh, I'm definitely going to get one!."? I have owned just about every product Steve has shown me when he was alive. I wanted to be the first in line, the first person to own it on the block. This time around I said, meh...I can wait. Perhaps 2nd gen. That's a problem. When you no longer have products that people lust after even before they're released, it's a huge problem.
Perhaps the problem is that the watch is just not that futuristic enough to peak people's interest? I just can't put my finger on it but I do know that we have a problem on our hands.
Alas, yes.
It feels as though we are in Middle Earth. The elves (the Apple of Jobs and Ive) have had their last great heyday and are fading away into the Grey Havens. The strong but dull men (Cook's Apple) are taking over.
We should be grateful that we were lucky to live through a golden age of technology and be happy to gather up any crumbs that may come our way in the coming lean years.
I don't think there'll be another revolution in tech until energy management is transformed.
I think that's partly down to the watch market, which isn't an impulse buyer's market and many people have given up on watches, I probably haven't worn one for 20 years and have little to no intention to start again, the phone (including dumbphone) replaced the watch for me but the design they went with has something to do with it. I've seen a few online polls where they've asked about which watch people would prefer and over 60% tend to favor the Moto 360, it seems to be around 10-20% would be interested in the Apple Watch but they aren't based on holding them side by side and there's compatibility limitations that people won't be aware of.
Microsoft released a video recently showing a handwriting input for Android Wear:
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=230860
They just won't give up on handwriting but it actually looks like it would be useful there as there's no keyboard and it's not stylus-based and auto-complete makes it more efficient. Some people say you get more room with a square display but you can see in that video, the square one actually looks cramped. It's because of the padding, text isn't supposed to go right to the edge of a display. You can see this between the iPhone and Apple Watch with texts:
Some UI designs look ok like at the following link so it will really come down to how developers/designers make use of the space:
http://gizmodo.com/these-concepts-show-what-apple-watch-apps-will-look-lik-1645267092
As to why they need to bother making a watch if it's not something people want anyway, the alternative would be not doing anything. The same will be true of the TV market. They can't change buying habits in every category. They went after the big markets first and there just isn't a huge market left to put electronics into. I think adding tactile touch / haptic feedback to iOS devices (not the watch kind of haptics, I mean proper touch sensation) will spark a large upgrade cycle.
The watch market is large at over 1 billion units per year but it doesn't look like it's too big in Western countries. This site says around $7-8b in the US:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-watchs-time-isnt-up-2013-07-01
The overall market is around $54b. It also mentions that the high-end watches are averaging $2500 so only 3m units would make that revenue. The overall US average is mentioned there as $290, which suggests it's not the high volume market as the worldwide average is far lower. I don't think it's a market that Apple's failed to impress as much as it is just not an enthusiastic market but they could have gone with a nicer design. We'll get a better assessment once it's on sale but in general I agree with you that it's not an item that there seems to be a lot of excitement about.
Steve was the go-to guy before though. Sometimes Tim takes on the interviewers but he can't explain the design process. Steve could give details on both the operation and the design, now that has to be split between the two. I wouldn't say it's a sign of desperation, it's more that this role had to be filled and they don't have an individual who can cover every area. If I recall correctly, Steve also liked to keep employees out of the spotlight to avoid them being head-hunted by other companies, it was only when he knew a transition would be needed that he brought them forward. Now that he's gone, they have no choice but to step forward. I'd rather listen to Ive than some PR person.
"2 big reasons" why I should add you to my ignore list... because that is just plain Cruelty to Animals... because she drives me wild!
But what about the other woman?
For an electronics company to come along and impose the priority of function into a genre defined by form, there's going to be limited appeal but there's a middle ground. The plastic lower-end watches like Casio/G-Shock, Timex are all about features and they look hideous.
Those watches are as dead as dumb phones were in 2006.
A replacement of the movement will make a 2015 apple watch into a 2017 apple watch in terms of functionality. So a more expensive edition watch can retain its value over time with a $200-$300 replacement of the internals. I don't think that this is something that Apple has overlooked for a demographic that obviously can afford to spend money on luxury items.
The only real advantages they offer are battery life of 0.5-1 year vs < 24 hours and they're a bit cheaper but the functionality of those watches is much more limited and the UI is terrible. I think for people who might go hiking or camping, smartwatches with < 24 hour battery life would be no good. There are portable chargers but the watch isn't a necessary item. I'd say these watches represent the best target audience for smartwatches and not Cartier/Rolex/Omega.
If they go with gold plating, there's no point in offering an upgrade. If it's solid gold like these:
http://www.bernardwatch.com/Watches/metal/18k-Gold
I suppose there's more incentive to do it but there's also going to be far less volume of buyers. The route they normally go is to have you sell it second-hand and get a new one. If it's solid gold, most of the cost would be the gold itself so they could also offer a trade up to the new one, which would likely be slimmer and they can melt the old one down.
I reckon there will be people who buy the entry model and get 3rd parties like anostyle to make it look like the edition one for $200-300 and then fool buyers on eBay into thinking it's the edition model. Apple could use a marking system that can be verified online to avoid this like engrave an id into the back.
Will people who normally spend thousands on a watch want to spend similar amounts for a bulkier charge-daily smartwatch? There's a demo here that shows the UI running a bit more smoothly and it's the smaller model (interactive starts around 1:00):
[VIDEO]
There must be a market for anything made of solid gold but is that high-end watch market crying out for the digital functionality? The watch faces shown off there don't look very good. Hopefully they'll let users add their own and allow them to use a parallax/shadow for moving hands to give the appearance of depth, maybe even reflections.
edit: that video raised a good point about allowing Watch users to interact with nearby users. They said it would let people contact others in their contact list only but there could be 3rd party apps that do location-based contact additions. The biggest downside to the contact part I think is how many couples, friends, co-workers are going to buy the same watch? For a couple, the man's going to be thinking, 'great another device my wife can use to annoy me all day long' and the woman will be thinking 'that's all I need, a screen for my immature husband to send me dick drawings all day long'. On stage they demoed the chat with simple queries but people are going to get annoyed when they hit a point in the conversation that can't be summarized with a scribble and just end up sending a text. Being able to type would help a lot and the following is faster than Microsoft's scribble input:
[VIDEO]
I think I might vomit after watching that. That appears to be a digital version of how we used to type with non-smartphones back in the day (unless you were using T9). You simply take the number multiple times within a certain time frame to select the right letter.
There's no multiple taps for letters, it's doing predictive typing. You tap on groups of letters once and it can tell roughly what you meant to type by the order of the taps. He swipes to the right to insert a space, back to delete. The parts where he holds down the letter are for special characters.
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
On a smartphone where you have the space, it's not necessary but on a smartwatch, the choice is pretty much use a novel input method or voice, which might not be appropriate at the time.
Very well could be. I still think teens and especially the girls are gonna love it, and still consider it "at the moment" the killer app.
In the video above the lady says it's only for the Apple Watch to communicate back and forth.... and of course she made a point of demoing it. I'm guessing Apple thinks this is the "cool" app too and could lead to a "trend"... even Jony demoed it as a "compelling personal and fun way of communicating ideas and emotions, quickly and efficiently. However, I hope they don't plan on sending those messages EVER to an iDevice with something like, "Suzy sent you an iChat Emoji, only available on ?Watch."... that would be "pushing it" far too heavy and would surely backfire(!)
With that said, if it does become a trend, how long before...
a) competitors or even Apple devs create an App*** to do the same across devices,
and/or
b) Apple does it themselves?
*** I see DrawChat, DrawCast and Draw-n-Chat in other App Stores including Apple's... but I'm thinking something simpler and basically what the ?Watch does.... which is nothing else.
It seems too limited to me. There's an app out that just lets you communicate with emojis:
[VIDEO]
"I'm a man of so many words, I don't know if there are enough emojis to say what I want to say".
Scribbling your own drawings might expand the communication a bit but you don't get much time to do detailed drawings and you can't talk about topics that way. There's a smartwatch been designed recently to target women for $169 with gold/silver body and sapphire-coated glass and links with both iOS and Android:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/14/omate-lutetia-smartwatch-for-women/
The male one looks bad and very bulky but it does get 7 day battery life:
http://www.omate.com/index.html
The following 99 euro watch looks nicer - it's not running Android:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/04/alcatel-hero-2-hero-8-smartwatch/
I can see young people going for inexpensive watches like these (or rather parents/grandparents will buy them inexpensive watches) and they'll use whatever apps let them engage in silent conversations during classes. You can see even the official demo of the sketch feature was very limited at 1:26:59 - they call it Digital Touch:
[VIDEO]
They had to make a code first so they know that 3 taps means go to lunch. Then the reply is a question mark, which he says meant what's for lunch but how would you know it wasn't asking why they were tapping? Then he draws a fish, which he would have to know before-hand meant sushi and that was the conversation. How would you say Chinese, Thai, Indian food or even just coffee? Time can be scribbled but not location.
Someone actually asked a teenager about it here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-teens-use-emojis-to-talk-2013-10
They use the emojis to accentuate the conversation same as people do on the forum ????, you can't get rid of the conversation. ????
It used to be lol, rofl, gtfo but an emoji is worth a thousand acronyms.
lol
Have you seen this?
http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/62020/emoji-tuesday/