Benjamin Frost: No doubt about it this was made for women. I hope and pray Apple can sell a few thousand but this will be another failure by Tim Cook.
I didn't know Tim Cook had made a failure yet.
What about the ROKR, the G4 Cube, Mobile Me, Ping, iPod Stereo, etc?
Oh wait, those were all under Steve Jobs. No, Cook has not had a single failure yet, only successes that have destroyed the very definition of success. That won't stop a dishonest troll like BF to imply as such, in order to further his dishonest agenda and strained narrative. In order to paint the most successful CEO on the planet as a "failure", it takes an ocean of lies, and only very special individuals are capable of such flagrant dishonesty.
You have been trained by marketers and now believe that a round watch is more attractive...
But I doubt that the future will hold the round watch shape as anything but traditional. Maybe that will be enough for it to survive.
"Attractive" is subjective. So I disagree with his argument on the face of it.
However, the same marketing argument could be applied to Apple which implies the only correct way to make a smart watch is square, at least that's the inference by many around here. It's the same marketing that told us a 3.5" smart phone was the perfect size, and that a smart phone should be designed to be used one-handed. And now we have 5.5" iPhablets. Marketing.
As for the future, there will most likely always be a place for the "traditional" in general society. For those who value aesthetic considerations like traditional round wrist watches, or gold iPhones and MacBooks, there will always be a market for them. The question seems to be whether Apple will ever market to them. I would suggest given some of the various markets Apple has entered after taking a strong stance against, such as the phablet, and mini tablet, that eventually addressing a segment of the population that prefers round watches is not out of the question, assuming the market for it were big enough.
"Attractive" is subjective. So I disagree with his argument on the face of it.
However, the same marketing argument could be applied to Apple which implies the only correct way to make a smart watch is square, at least that's the inference by many around here. It's the same marketing that told us a 3.5" smart phone was the perfect size, and that a smart phone should be designed to be used one-handed. And now we have 5.5" iPhablets. Marketing.
As for the future, there will most likely always be a place for the "traditional" in general society. For those who value aesthetic considerations like traditional round wrist watches, or gold iPhones and MacBooks, there will always be a market for them. The question seems to be whether Apple will ever market to them. I would suggest given some of the various markets Apple has entered after taking a strong stance against, such as the phablet, and mini tablet, that eventually addressing a segment of the population that prefers round watches is not out of the question, assuming the market for it were big enough.
"Subjective" is manipulated by marketing all the time, and I agree, Apple will be doing this to, albeit in a more refined way than their smart watch competition. My point is that people are trained and acculturated to "beauty" standards, nowadays by media, peer pressure, and marketing. Hence why I described a round watch as traditional, or better, "retro".
For the record, I find nothing particularly attractive about Kim Kardashian, which makes me "old school" I suppose, but the media surely pushes that "look" to the point that women are having plastic surgery to mimic Kim's "look".
A circle is not more attractive. It is just the bias that people have had for decades. Round = Watch.
If a circle is so efficient why are all laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets all use rectangles?
No! You see Benjamin Frost has spake thusly, and verily it is so. Round is more attractive. A guy on the Internet said as much! Is Frosty the Troll Man aware that there are corners around the faux dial that can display different information? If it were just a watch he might have a minor point. There are plenty of octagonal and rectangular watches out there, btw.
You seldom see articles like this for non-apple products. Most other vendors just seem to rush stuff out the door to beat apple to market. Maybe this is why apple succeeds where others fail?
They put more thought into why they're making the product rather than just deciding to make something and figuring out what will sell:
"Along the way, the Apple team landed upon the Watch’s raison d’être. It came down to this: Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us, Ive, Lynch, Dye, and everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz—the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications. “We’re so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now,” Lynch says. “People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much.” They’ve glared down their noses at those who bury themselves in their phones at the dinner table and then absentmindedly thrust hands into their own pockets at every ding or buzz. “People want that level of engagement,” Lynch says. “But how do we provide it in a way that’s a little more human, a little more in the moment when you’re with somebody?”
Our phones have become invasive. But what if you could engineer a reverse state of being? What if you could make a device that you wouldn’t—couldn’t—use for hours at a time? What if you could create a device that could filter out all the bullshit and instead only serve you truly important information? You could change modern life. And so after three-plus decades of building devices that grab and hold our attention—the longer the better—Apple has decided that the way forward is to fight back.
Apple, in large part, created our problem. And it thinks it can fix it with a square slab of metal and a Milanese loop strap."
The problem with the logic here is they are assuming that people don't want to be buried in their phones - it's usually other people (parents, partners) who don't want them buried in their phones. They have to take out their phone to type a detailed reply. There's an infographic here about mobile phone usage and some other stats:
Over 76% of phone usage was for activities the watch can't do. Students spend ages texting each other.
Thinking about the product's purpose leads to important decisions and something like the iPhone wouldn't have come about without that because every one of hundreds/thousands of decisions (app store, install/uninstall, gestures, scrolling, zooming, browsing, unlocking, typing) makes the experience.
The watch is different from any device they've done before because they're trying to offer a solution that the buyer typically isn't asking for, it's a solution requested by people annoyed by the potential buyer. Not only that, it's a product that's designed to barely be used (interaction time of seconds). It's designed to stop people using the phone they purposely designed to be very pleasant to use for long periods. It tries to achieve this by catering to less than 15% of the usage of the phone and for most tasks requires you to have the phone with you.
This need to detach from the phone will resonate with a portion of phone users as it does with themselves and they have a great engineering and design team to pull off the best product experience. They are however selling an expensive unsubsidized watch to a small portion of iPhone users. People buy a $650-750 iPhone 6/Plus because it's $100-200 and a contract they'd be paying anyway. The Sports market is specialized and a $599-1048 steel watch is a lot to pay out upfront for an accessory you are intended to barely use.
omg that thing is ridiculous. thats the thing he thought looked better than an AW? jesus...who would put that hubcap on their arm?!?
It depends on how you photograph it:
The gold ?Watch is a better quality gold obviously but you might never see it. It won't be visible in stores. The vast majority of people will only ever see the sports and steel watches.
And those Huawei photos are showing a faux-analog watch face. Show something else like a notification or app and it looks as geeky as ?Watch supposedly looks. Of course all these Android OEM marking shots only show the watch face because it makes the device look more like a traditional watch. But then why not just buy a traditional watch instead?w
"Benjamin Frost: No doubt about it this was made for women. I hope and pray Apple can sell a few thousand but this will be another failure by Tim Cook. "
The Frost guy seems to have been banned. Too bad. Would be fun to watch him eat his words come April 10 and for some time after. Apple
will sell thousands of watches in the first few hours of pre-order. Not to say this watch is for everyone. I think I'll still be using my Garmin GPS watch/HR monitor strap for running andbike riding, and a Timex in the pool. But Apple has certainly put an interesting mix of functions into the watch, and so I'll definitely be trying one on. I actually like the idea that it works in conjunction with the iPhone, allowing the latter to work more in the background. And the watch should gain functionality as the number of Apps increases. Ability to upgrade the module is a bigger issue to me than battery life. GPS sucks a lot of battery life from my Garmin so you get used to frequent re-charges after heavy use.
The close up shots tell the real story. From afar the Huwei watch looks decent. But close up pictures show its not well made and is a cheap product.
This is to be expected from those manufacturers. The Huawei is priced at 349 euros for black/silver and 399 euros for gold. If Apple designed that watch, it would look better. They are about the same thickness: Apple watch is 10.5mm, Huawei is 11.3mm. The curved edges help hide the thickness.
Apple separated the sensors out a bit which will lift it off the wrist:
The black part on the bottom will be touching the wrist:
Of course all these Android OEM marking shots only show the watch face because it makes the device look more like a traditional watch. But then why not just buy a traditional watch instead?
Some people like the utility of digital with the aesthetic of analog:
Round and square watches are both available in analog but round makes up 80% of the sales, that's just the market deciding which aesthetic they prefer. So far square dominates smartwatches and may continue to as long as the biggest brands only make them square. Samsung won't switch to round until late 2015 apparently:
Round and square watches are both available in analog but round makes up 80% of the sales, that's just the market deciding which aesthetic they prefer. So far square dominates smartwatches and may continue to as long as the biggest brands only make them square. Samsung won't switch to round until late 2015 apparently:
Aesthetics change constantly. Rectangular watches, similar to the Bulova posted above, were quite popular for several decades (1930-50s). I still own one that belonged to my grandfather. I wore it for years myself, and to my eye, it still looks sharp.
Apple has never worried about transitory aesthetics, though, and this is what sets Apple apart. They were not concerned about how any existing products looked when they designed the iPod, iPhone, or iPad. In fact the goal was to address design flaws found in the existing products by taking a clean slate approach. In each case they created a new design aesthetic, one that everyone else then tried to emulate. It's remarkable to me, after all this time and experience, how so many people still find this approach to be shocking or disturbing, or predict that it's bound to fail this time.
In a sense Apple created their own problem by deciding to call this device a "watch." Even so, applying a little history to the problem, we should not have have a very difficult time seeing through such superficialities.
Apple has never worried about transitory aesthetics, though, and this is what sets Apple apart. They were not concerned about how any existing products looked when they designed the iPod, iPhone, or iPad. In fact the goal was to address design flaws found in the existing products by taking a clean slate approach. In each case they created a new design aesthetic, one that everyone else then tried to emulate. It's remarkable to me, after all this time and experience, how so many people still find this approach to be shocking or disturbing, or predict that it's bound to fail this time.
In a sense Apple created their own problem by deciding to call this device a "watch." Even so, applying a little history to the problem, we should not have have a very difficult time seeing through such superficialities.
They introduced the digital crown to maintain the familiarity of control with a standard watch. They have retained the strap designs of standard watches like buckles and clasps. Ive was studying horology and they went to all the trouble of making an animated solar system watch face and they include round analog watch faces. They even made a Mickey Mouse watch face. Their chronograh watch face was "modelled on the very first analogue stopwatches". There's no analog watches on the iPhone or iPad for primary time-keeping, just in their apps. They call their watch face additions "complications" just like on watches. Why respect all of that legacy if they were starting from a clean slate?
Their choice to use square wasn't shocking, disturbing nor does it indicate failure. I'm just making the case that round is a perfectly sensible style for a smartwatch and IMO it looks nicer.
If Apple had made it round to begin with, nobody would be asking why they didn't make it square. The software would have been designed for it. For similar physical sizes you get about 75% of the area to display square content but the Apple Watch only shows about 20 words at a time, dropping to 15 isn't a deal breaker.
The biggest hurdle for the watch is not the aesthetic but the price. They have a dark version of the sport watch:
which looks ok but I reckon the steel one will be the one people want to wear every day. 3rd parties are already gearing up to sell straps so that can help lower the price:
Round and square watches are both available in analog but round makes up 80% of the sales, that's just the market deciding which aesthetic they prefer. So far square dominates smartwatches and may continue to as long as the biggest brands only make them square. Samsung won't switch to round until late 2015 apparently: ...That would switch the non-Apple watches to majority round but Apple will probably outsell the non-Apple ones combined.
Android makers will likely try to distinguish themselves from Apple by offering round smart watches, just like they did with the 7" tablet against the iPad, and the 'Phablet' against the iPhone. But they will have a high watermark to hit against the production quality of the ?Watch, and most of them will fail. However, if the Swiss and Japanese watchmakers get into the business, their products will rival, if not surpass, Apple's in terms of build quality.
And then history will likely repeat itself as Apple has shown us in the past -- despite assuring us the 3.5" iPhone was the perfect size for a smartphone, and deriding the so-called Phablets, Apple eventually delivered one for its customers. Despite assuring us the 10" iPad was the perfect size for a tablet, and lambasting 7" tablets as needing sandpaper to file your fingers down to use, Apple eventually delivered one for its customers. So too will Apple eventually deliver a round ?Watch for its customers who prefer that shape of wrist worn accessories.
If Apple had made it round to begin with, nobody would be asking why they didn't make it square. The software would have been designed for it. For similar physical sizes you get about 75% of the area to display square content but the Apple Watch only shows about 20 words at a time, dropping to 15 isn't a deal breaker.
Yup. The difference between the software for a round watch and a square watch is no different then the difference between a 3.5" iPhone and a 4" iPhone. On a round watch, the square text area will be centered, and the extra space on the sides to complete the circle will be used for things now that take up space on the square display -- time, temperature, date, etc ... in some respects it will free up more space for text display.
Comments
Watches don't need to be round... not even analog ones.
Benjamin Frost: No doubt about it this was made for women. I hope and pray Apple can sell a few thousand but this will be another failure by Tim Cook.
I didn't know Tim Cook had made a failure yet.
What about the ROKR, the G4 Cube, Mobile Me, Ping, iPod Stereo, etc?
Oh wait, those were all under Steve Jobs. No, Cook has not had a single failure yet, only successes that have destroyed the very definition of success. That won't stop a dishonest troll like BF to imply as such, in order to further his dishonest agenda and strained narrative. In order to paint the most successful CEO on the planet as a "failure", it takes an ocean of lies, and only very special individuals are capable of such flagrant dishonesty.
You have been trained by marketers and now believe that a round watch is more attractive...
But I doubt that the future will hold the round watch shape as anything but traditional. Maybe that will be enough for it to survive.
"Attractive" is subjective. So I disagree with his argument on the face of it.
However, the same marketing argument could be applied to Apple which implies the only correct way to make a smart watch is square, at least that's the inference by many around here. It's the same marketing that told us a 3.5" smart phone was the perfect size, and that a smart phone should be designed to be used one-handed. And now we have 5.5" iPhablets. Marketing.
As for the future, there will most likely always be a place for the "traditional" in general society. For those who value aesthetic considerations like traditional round wrist watches, or gold iPhones and MacBooks, there will always be a market for them. The question seems to be whether Apple will ever market to them. I would suggest given some of the various markets Apple has entered after taking a strong stance against, such as the phablet, and mini tablet, that eventually addressing a segment of the population that prefers round watches is not out of the question, assuming the market for it were big enough.
"Attractive" is subjective. So I disagree with his argument on the face of it.
However, the same marketing argument could be applied to Apple which implies the only correct way to make a smart watch is square, at least that's the inference by many around here. It's the same marketing that told us a 3.5" smart phone was the perfect size, and that a smart phone should be designed to be used one-handed. And now we have 5.5" iPhablets. Marketing.
As for the future, there will most likely always be a place for the "traditional" in general society. For those who value aesthetic considerations like traditional round wrist watches, or gold iPhones and MacBooks, there will always be a market for them. The question seems to be whether Apple will ever market to them. I would suggest given some of the various markets Apple has entered after taking a strong stance against, such as the phablet, and mini tablet, that eventually addressing a segment of the population that prefers round watches is not out of the question, assuming the market for it were big enough.
"Subjective" is manipulated by marketing all the time, and I agree, Apple will be doing this to, albeit in a more refined way than their smart watch competition. My point is that people are trained and acculturated to "beauty" standards, nowadays by media, peer pressure, and marketing. Hence why I described a round watch as traditional, or better, "retro".
For the record, I find nothing particularly attractive about Kim Kardashian, which makes me "old school" I suppose, but the media surely pushes that "look" to the point that women are having plastic surgery to mimic Kim's "look".
A circle is not more attractive. It is just the bias that people have had for decades. Round = Watch.
If a circle is so efficient why are all laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets all use rectangles?
No! You see Benjamin Frost has spake thusly, and verily it is so. Round is more attractive. A guy on the Internet said as much! Is Frosty the Troll Man aware that there are corners around the faux dial that can display different information? If it were just a watch he might have a minor point. There are plenty of octagonal and rectangular watches out there, btw.
They put more thought into why they're making the product rather than just deciding to make something and figuring out what will sell:
"Along the way, the Apple team landed upon the Watch’s raison d’être. It came down to this: Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us, Ive, Lynch, Dye, and everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz—the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications. “We’re so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now,” Lynch says. “People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much.” They’ve glared down their noses at those who bury themselves in their phones at the dinner table and then absentmindedly thrust hands into their own pockets at every ding or buzz. “People want that level of engagement,” Lynch says. “But how do we provide it in a way that’s a little more human, a little more in the moment when you’re with somebody?”
Our phones have become invasive. But what if you could engineer a reverse state of being? What if you could make a device that you wouldn’t—couldn’t—use for hours at a time? What if you could create a device that could filter out all the bullshit and instead only serve you truly important information? You could change modern life. And so after three-plus decades of building devices that grab and hold our attention—the longer the better—Apple has decided that the way forward is to fight back.
Apple, in large part, created our problem. And it thinks it can fix it with a square slab of metal and a Milanese loop strap."
The problem with the logic here is they are assuming that people don't want to be buried in their phones - it's usually other people (parents, partners) who don't want them buried in their phones. They have to take out their phone to type a detailed reply. There's an infographic here about mobile phone usage and some other stats:
http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-2013-mobile-growth-statistics/
http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/08/31/new-study-finds-cell-phone-addiction-increasingly-realistic-possibility/74312.html
Over 76% of phone usage was for activities the watch can't do. Students spend ages texting each other.
Thinking about the product's purpose leads to important decisions and something like the iPhone wouldn't have come about without that because every one of hundreds/thousands of decisions (app store, install/uninstall, gestures, scrolling, zooming, browsing, unlocking, typing) makes the experience.
The watch is different from any device they've done before because they're trying to offer a solution that the buyer typically isn't asking for, it's a solution requested by people annoyed by the potential buyer. Not only that, it's a product that's designed to barely be used (interaction time of seconds). It's designed to stop people using the phone they purposely designed to be very pleasant to use for long periods. It tries to achieve this by catering to less than 15% of the usage of the phone and for most tasks requires you to have the phone with you.
This need to detach from the phone will resonate with a portion of phone users as it does with themselves and they have a great engineering and design team to pull off the best product experience. They are however selling an expensive unsubsidized watch to a small portion of iPhone users. People buy a $650-750 iPhone 6/Plus because it's $100-200 and a contract they'd be paying anyway. The Sports market is specialized and a $599-1048 steel watch is a lot to pay out upfront for an accessory you are intended to barely use.
It depends on how you photograph it:
The gold ?Watch is a better quality gold obviously but you might never see it. It won't be visible in stores. The vast majority of people will only ever see the sports and steel watches.
A circle is not more attractive. It is just the bias that people have had for decades. Round = Watch.
If a circle is so efficient why are all laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets all use rectangles?
Except when they don't of course.
Because they don't display only a round clock face most of the time? I thought that would be common sense.
Except when it isn't.
And those Huawei photos are showing a faux-analog watch face. Show something else like a notification or app and it looks as geeky as ?Watch supposedly looks. Of course all these Android OEM marking shots only show the watch face because it makes the device look more like a traditional watch. But then why not just buy a traditional watch instead?w
"Benjamin Frost: No doubt about it this was made for women. I hope and pray Apple can sell a few thousand but this will be another failure by Tim Cook. "
The Frost guy seems to have been banned. Too bad. Would be fun to watch him eat his words come April 10 and for some time after. Apple
will sell thousands of watches in the first few hours of pre-order. Not to say this watch is for everyone. I think I'll still be using my Garmin GPS watch/HR monitor strap for running and bike riding, and a Timex in the pool. But Apple has certainly put an interesting mix of functions into the watch, and so I'll definitely be trying one on. I actually like the idea that it works in conjunction with the iPhone, allowing the latter to work more in the background. And the watch should gain functionality as the number of Apps increases. Ability to upgrade the module is a bigger issue to me than battery life. GPS sucks a lot of battery life from my Garmin so you get used to frequent re-charges after heavy use.
This is to be expected from those manufacturers. The Huawei is priced at 349 euros for black/silver and 399 euros for gold. If Apple designed that watch, it would look better. They are about the same thickness: Apple watch is 10.5mm, Huawei is 11.3mm. The curved edges help hide the thickness.
Apple separated the sensors out a bit which will lift it off the wrist:
The black part on the bottom will be touching the wrist:
Some people like the utility of digital with the aesthetic of analog:
http://www.amazon.com/Casio-AE1000W-1BVCF-Silver-Tone-Black-Digital/dp/B003DZDYMU
Round and square watches are both available in analog but round makes up 80% of the sales, that's just the market deciding which aesthetic they prefer. So far square dominates smartwatches and may continue to as long as the biggest brands only make them square. Samsung won't switch to round until late 2015 apparently:
http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/samsung-orbis-won-t-be-troubling-apple-watch-just-yet-1288511
That would switch the non-Apple watches to majority round but Apple will probably outsell the non-Apple ones combined.
Round and square watches are both available in analog but round makes up 80% of the sales, that's just the market deciding which aesthetic they prefer. So far square dominates smartwatches and may continue to as long as the biggest brands only make them square. Samsung won't switch to round until late 2015 apparently:
Aesthetics change constantly. Rectangular watches, similar to the Bulova posted above, were quite popular for several decades (1930-50s). I still own one that belonged to my grandfather. I wore it for years myself, and to my eye, it still looks sharp.
Apple has never worried about transitory aesthetics, though, and this is what sets Apple apart. They were not concerned about how any existing products looked when they designed the iPod, iPhone, or iPad. In fact the goal was to address design flaws found in the existing products by taking a clean slate approach. In each case they created a new design aesthetic, one that everyone else then tried to emulate. It's remarkable to me, after all this time and experience, how so many people still find this approach to be shocking or disturbing, or predict that it's bound to fail this time.
In a sense Apple created their own problem by deciding to call this device a "watch." Even so, applying a little history to the problem, we should not have have a very difficult time seeing through such superficialities.
"Not unless round is funny."
The close up shots tell the real story. From afar the Huwei watch looks decent. But close up pictures show its not well made and is a cheap product.
...
That massively thick Android watch looks like a urinal deodorizer cake.
They introduced the digital crown to maintain the familiarity of control with a standard watch. They have retained the strap designs of standard watches like buckles and clasps. Ive was studying horology and they went to all the trouble of making an animated solar system watch face and they include round analog watch faces. They even made a Mickey Mouse watch face. Their chronograh watch face was "modelled on the very first analogue stopwatches". There's no analog watches on the iPhone or iPad for primary time-keeping, just in their apps. They call their watch face additions "complications" just like on watches. Why respect all of that legacy if they were starting from a clean slate?
Their choice to use square wasn't shocking, disturbing nor does it indicate failure. I'm just making the case that round is a perfectly sensible style for a smartwatch and IMO it looks nicer.
If Apple had made it round to begin with, nobody would be asking why they didn't make it square. The software would have been designed for it. For similar physical sizes you get about 75% of the area to display square content but the Apple Watch only shows about 20 words at a time, dropping to 15 isn't a deal breaker.
The biggest hurdle for the watch is not the aesthetic but the price. They have a dark version of the sport watch:
which looks ok but I reckon the steel one will be the one people want to wear every day. 3rd parties are already gearing up to sell straps so that can help lower the price:
http://www.amazon.com/Baseus-Genuine-Leather-Replacement-Classic/dp/B00U5K5TG0
http://www.amazon.com/MyCell-Milanese-replacement-Apple-Watch/dp/B00UGHK7SM
but a $650 starting point with a decent strap is high. The only way some people can afford iPhones is by paying monthly and over 2 years.
Round and square watches are both available in analog but round makes up 80% of the sales, that's just the market deciding which aesthetic they prefer. So far square dominates smartwatches and may continue to as long as the biggest brands only make them square. Samsung won't switch to round until late 2015 apparently: ...That would switch the non-Apple watches to majority round but Apple will probably outsell the non-Apple ones combined.
Android makers will likely try to distinguish themselves from Apple by offering round smart watches, just like they did with the 7" tablet against the iPad, and the 'Phablet' against the iPhone. But they will have a high watermark to hit against the production quality of the ?Watch, and most of them will fail. However, if the Swiss and Japanese watchmakers get into the business, their products will rival, if not surpass, Apple's in terms of build quality.
And then history will likely repeat itself as Apple has shown us in the past -- despite assuring us the 3.5" iPhone was the perfect size for a smartphone, and deriding the so-called Phablets, Apple eventually delivered one for its customers. Despite assuring us the 10" iPad was the perfect size for a tablet, and lambasting 7" tablets as needing sandpaper to file your fingers down to use, Apple eventually delivered one for its customers. So too will Apple eventually deliver a round ?Watch for its customers who prefer that shape of wrist worn accessories.
If Apple had made it round to begin with, nobody would be asking why they didn't make it square. The software would have been designed for it. For similar physical sizes you get about 75% of the area to display square content but the Apple Watch only shows about 20 words at a time, dropping to 15 isn't a deal breaker.
Yup. The difference between the software for a round watch and a square watch is no different then the difference between a 3.5" iPhone and a 4" iPhone. On a round watch, the square text area will be centered, and the extra space on the sides to complete the circle will be used for things now that take up space on the square display -- time, temperature, date, etc ... in some respects it will free up more space for text display.