The circle has a square area inside it for displaying text blocks. The available space on a similarly sized round watch for the main body text would be about 75% of the square one and the remaining segments would be used for status info to make up the difference:
In some ways, that would be functionally better because it means that while scrolling vertically, your finger wouldn't come close to hitting the back button so you can swipe all the way up the watch face whereas on the square one, you'll probably do lots of very small swipes making sure to avoid going over the top line. It displays pretty much the same information. I'd say the square one looks more cramped too.
By having the body text fit into a center box and fade it out before it hits the edge, you wouldn't experience any cutoff text either if that's preferred. In the following, the Apple Watch will crop off the buttons so you scroll to input the action and possibly hit one of the action buttons by mistake but on the round one you can crop the text inside the notification bubble leaving the actions at the bottom and you also have room for forward and back arrows to move through the messages:
Notice how your pseudo round watch has writing going right up to the top with almost no internal bezel. While your internal bezel for your Pseudo Apple watch is huge. Even with that, your text is still smaller on the round display... The watch is smaller in real life than on my desktop screen btw, even slightly smaller text and space makes a big difference to legibility.
BTW, anything that makes me take 5-10% more time in development is 10% less in my pocket. There is no fix to that. You could work on delivering info in a round form... But, what the point? If they can develop a responsive design that easily make this possible (developing for square and it flows well for a round design) it may eventually happen, otherwise the watch will remain square.
As for "tradition" of round watches, there is no such thing really. The first ones were mostly that way because it was cheaper and easier (they converted existing equipment for pocket watches) to do so. As I showed, there were rectangle watches by top watch makers right from the start. There may be an esthetic preference of some people for round. But, from a functional point of view I'd say it is mostly disadvantages.
Notice how your pseudo round watch has writing going right up to the top with almost no internal bezel. While your internal bezel for your Pseudo Apple watch is huge. Even with that, your text is still smaller on the round display... The watch is smaller in real life than on my desktop screen btw, even slightly smaller text and space makes a big difference to legibility.
Not only that, the current crop of round smart-watches have what is termed a flat tire display, where a bottom section of the screen cannot display any content.
Notice how your pseudo round watch has writing going right up to the top with almost no internal bezel. While your internal bezel for your Pseudo Apple watch is huge. Even with that, your text is still smaller on the round display... The watch is smaller in real life than on my desktop screen btw, even slightly smaller text and space makes a big difference to legibility.
The sizes can be adjusted and the content would be formatted for the round display. Like I said, the text area is about 75% of the square one but you get the extra area for controls and padding. The Watch is designed for notifications so there won't be a lot of text. I don't even think you'll be able to read many emails on it - the Apple Watch only shows about 12 words at a time. Are people going to scroll through 15 pages to read an entire email? It'll be more like a notification that you got an email and maybe a snippet of text and you take the phone out to read it.
BTW, anything that makes me take 5-10% more time in development is 10% less in my pocket. There is no fix to that. You could work on delivering info in a round form... But, what the point? If they can develop a responsive design that easily make this possible (developing for square and it flows well for a round design)
It didn't take much to put the square content over. Most of the center part of the round watch is square. These apps are designed to be used for a few seconds at a time. The watch isn't intended to run full blown iPhone apps so apps will be like a couple of screens.
That's just the Moto 360, the LG G Watch and Huawei are completely round.
The sizes can be adjusted and the content would be formatted for the round display. Like I said, the text area is about 75% of the square one but you get the extra area for controls and padding. The Watch is designed for notifications so there won't be a lot of text. I don't even think you'll be able to read many emails on it - the Apple Watch only shows about 12 words at a time. Are people going to scroll through 15 pages to read an entire email? It'll be more like a notification that you got an email and maybe a snippet of text and you take the phone out to read it.
It didn't take much to put the square content over. Most of the center part of the round watch is square. These apps are designed to be used for a few seconds at a time. The watch isn't intended to run full blown iPhone apps so apps will be like a couple of screens.
Point taken. And if people such as yourself are as passionate about round, there may be one as some point
if people such as yourself are as passionate about round, there may be one as some point
Apple's design with the crown wouldn't fit well with a round watch. They purposely offset it from the center so that it wouldn't seem like a standard crown on a watch. On a round design, it would have to go at the side and it's huge.
The smartwatch market is a bit strange just now. The 2nd best selling smartwatch looks like this (Pebble):
Quite a few people must be buying the Steel model in the 2nd image as their ASP is around $150.
The best-selling one is this (Galaxy Gear):
The overall market is about 2.6 million squareish and 1.1 million round and activity bands making up the rest. Samsung is supposed to be considering making a round one (called Orbis) and using the bezel for control vs a crown but it hasn't shown up yet:
The advantage they have is they use Tizen so they can make the software work better than Android Wear. None of these manufacturers put in the effort that Apple does so while they have a nicer shape, they are still not going to be designed and manufactured nearly as well as Apple's products.
Apple is pricing their nicer designs higher though. The Pebble is way down at about $99-199 and Samsung has been bundling their watch with their phones. Apple is starting at $349 and that's for the sport one, which looks like this:
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
That doesn't seem like a watch you'd wear every day because it's not very classy looking. Steel looks a bit nicer but could well be $500+:
[VIDEO]
These watches are all quite thick (12.2mm/0.47"). A Macbook Air is 17mm/0.68" at the thickest point. This isn't huge relative to standard watches but Apple's one doesn't bend around the wrist and doesn't taper at the ends.
People would have to be convinced to move from things like:
to this:
The whole smartwatch concept isn't going to appeal to every watch wearer out there. Designs like the Withings model would be more appealing to that market with 1 year battery life:
I watched all three videos of the Apple Watch. It's horrible. It looks huge on the wrist. Never mind the design, though; it's the interface which is so awful. Those icons are tiny, and even using the zoom, they don't get very big. I noticed that sliding the finger didn't always register a response on the third video. Using the crown looks pretty fiddly. What do the staff show off? Badly drawn pictures and your heartbeat. The colours are garish. Oh boy. I’ll just be amazed if this catches on. As a shareholder, I want it to be a huge success, of course, but I can't see it happening at all.
I noticed that sliding the finger didn't always register a response on the third video. Using the crown looks pretty fiddly.
The capacitive display is an example of hardware having a direct digital mapping, the crown is probably the only new hardware control like this Apple has added since then. The crown in a standard watch is physically connected to the clock hands so there's a direct relationship between action and reaction. It'll be harder to keep it consistent from one scenario to another - zooming a map, scrolling a page, adjusting a dial. They are having to balance the UI smoothness with battery life too. Too much power to the GPU can mean too little battery life and too little power means stuttering UIs. The wheel resistance isn't something that can be adjusted in software unfortunately so has a bit more complications than the capacitive input.
I’ll just be amazed if this catches on. As a shareholder, I want it to be a huge success, of course, but I can't see it happening at all.
It doesn't have to catch on in a big way. The ASP would likely be $450. Even matching other watch sales should make it a billion dollar business. If 2m are buying Pebbles and Galaxy Gears, the Apple Watch should have no problem appealing to a similar audience. Some people can use it as a replacement for an iPod Shuffle with 4GB of space for music:
They can pair it up with Bluetooth headphones and go out running. If it provides wireless audio for a long enough time then it would be a neat iPod. If they can get the Beats headphones to store the music and the Watch to control them, the Watch doesn't have to be draining its battery at all except when changing tracks, volume and so on.
Comments
The circle has a square area inside it for displaying text blocks. The available space on a similarly sized round watch for the main body text would be about 75% of the square one and the remaining segments would be used for status info to make up the difference:
In some ways, that would be functionally better because it means that while scrolling vertically, your finger wouldn't come close to hitting the back button so you can swipe all the way up the watch face whereas on the square one, you'll probably do lots of very small swipes making sure to avoid going over the top line. It displays pretty much the same information. I'd say the square one looks more cramped too.
By having the body text fit into a center box and fade it out before it hits the edge, you wouldn't experience any cutoff text either if that's preferred. In the following, the Apple Watch will crop off the buttons so you scroll to input the action and possibly hit one of the action buttons by mistake but on the round one you can crop the text inside the notification bubble leaving the actions at the bottom and you also have room for forward and back arrows to move through the messages:
Notice how your pseudo round watch has writing going right up to the top with almost no internal bezel. While your internal bezel for your Pseudo Apple watch is huge. Even with that, your text is still smaller on the round display... The watch is smaller in real life than on my desktop screen btw, even slightly smaller text and space makes a big difference to legibility.
BTW, anything that makes me take 5-10% more time in development is 10% less in my pocket. There is no fix to that. You could work on delivering info in a round form... But, what the point? If they can develop a responsive design that easily make this possible (developing for square and it flows well for a round design) it may eventually happen, otherwise the watch will remain square.
As for "tradition" of round watches, there is no such thing really. The first ones were mostly that way because it was cheaper and easier (they converted existing equipment for pocket watches) to do so. As I showed, there were rectangle watches by top watch makers right from the start. There may be an esthetic preference of some people for round. But, from a functional point of view I'd say it is mostly disadvantages.
Notice how your pseudo round watch has writing going right up to the top with almost no internal bezel. While your internal bezel for your Pseudo Apple watch is huge. Even with that, your text is still smaller on the round display... The watch is smaller in real life than on my desktop screen btw, even slightly smaller text and space makes a big difference to legibility.
Not only that, the current crop of round smart-watches have what is termed a flat tire display, where a bottom section of the screen cannot display any content.
That's just the Moto 360, the LG G Watch and Huawei are completely round.
The sizes can be adjusted and the content would be formatted for the round display. Like I said, the text area is about 75% of the square one but you get the extra area for controls and padding. The Watch is designed for notifications so there won't be a lot of text. I don't even think you'll be able to read many emails on it - the Apple Watch only shows about 12 words at a time. Are people going to scroll through 15 pages to read an entire email? It'll be more like a notification that you got an email and maybe a snippet of text and you take the phone out to read it.
It didn't take much to put the square content over. Most of the center part of the round watch is square. These apps are designed to be used for a few seconds at a time. The watch isn't intended to run full blown iPhone apps so apps will be like a couple of screens.
Point taken. And if people such as yourself are as passionate about round, there may be one as some point
Apple's design with the crown wouldn't fit well with a round watch. They purposely offset it from the center so that it wouldn't seem like a standard crown on a watch. On a round design, it would have to go at the side and it's huge.
The smartwatch market is a bit strange just now. The 2nd best selling smartwatch looks like this (Pebble):
Quite a few people must be buying the Steel model in the 2nd image as their ASP is around $150.
The best-selling one is this (Galaxy Gear):
The overall market is about 2.6 million squareish and 1.1 million round and activity bands making up the rest. Samsung is supposed to be considering making a round one (called Orbis) and using the bezel for control vs a crown but it hasn't shown up yet:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/wearable-tech/3594494/samsung-orbis-round-smartwatch-no-show-at-mwc/
The advantage they have is they use Tizen so they can make the software work better than Android Wear. None of these manufacturers put in the effort that Apple does so while they have a nicer shape, they are still not going to be designed and manufactured nearly as well as Apple's products.
Apple is pricing their nicer designs higher though. The Pebble is way down at about $99-199 and Samsung has been bundling their watch with their phones. Apple is starting at $349 and that's for the sport one, which looks like this:
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
That doesn't seem like a watch you'd wear every day because it's not very classy looking. Steel looks a bit nicer but could well be $500+:
[VIDEO]
These watches are all quite thick (12.2mm/0.47"). A Macbook Air is 17mm/0.68" at the thickest point. This isn't huge relative to standard watches but Apple's one doesn't bend around the wrist and doesn't taper at the ends.
People would have to be convinced to move from things like:
to this:
The whole smartwatch concept isn't going to appeal to every watch wearer out there. Designs like the Withings model would be more appealing to that market with 1 year battery life:
I watched all three videos of the Apple Watch. It's horrible. It looks huge on the wrist. Never mind the design, though; it's the interface which is so awful. Those icons are tiny, and even using the zoom, they don't get very big. I noticed that sliding the finger didn't always register a response on the third video. Using the crown looks pretty fiddly. What do the staff show off? Badly drawn pictures and your heartbeat. The colours are garish. Oh boy. I’ll just be amazed if this catches on. As a shareholder, I want it to be a huge success, of course, but I can't see it happening at all.
The capacitive display is an example of hardware having a direct digital mapping, the crown is probably the only new hardware control like this Apple has added since then. The crown in a standard watch is physically connected to the clock hands so there's a direct relationship between action and reaction. It'll be harder to keep it consistent from one scenario to another - zooming a map, scrolling a page, adjusting a dial. They are having to balance the UI smoothness with battery life too. Too much power to the GPU can mean too little battery life and too little power means stuttering UIs. The wheel resistance isn't something that can be adjusted in software unfortunately so has a bit more complications than the capacitive input.
It doesn't have to catch on in a big way. The ASP would likely be $450. Even matching other watch sales should make it a billion dollar business. If 2m are buying Pebbles and Galaxy Gears, the Apple Watch should have no problem appealing to a similar audience. Some people can use it as a replacement for an iPod Shuffle with 4GB of space for music:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/22/rumor-apple-watch-to-feature-512mb-of-ram-4gb-of-storage
They can pair it up with Bluetooth headphones and go out running. If it provides wireless audio for a long enough time then it would be a neat iPod. If they can get the Beats headphones to store the music and the Watch to control them, the Watch doesn't have to be draining its battery at all except when changing tracks, volume and so on.