It is designed to look at photos, so it should be wider than narrower to address that need as well since most photos tend to be landscape, following this argument.
Portraits would be either square or closer to a 4:3 height to width ratio, and likely more commonly viewed on a small wearable than landscapes.
This round vs rectangle debate is hilarious. It's a great looking watch. Rectangle is a very mid century modern look for a watch. My grandmother has a rectangular Bulova from the 50s. It's not super common, but it's a perfectly classy look and it makes sense for the use case. Will they go round in the future? Who knows? I doubt it, but I've been way wrong before. I'd say they'll keep the style similar but go continually thinner, this is Apple after all.
Considering all the advantages purported by the advocates of the circle over the rectangle -- I expect that we'll see some round smart phones ... Real soon now ...
The big question is who will make the first round smart prone that sells (or ships) 1 million units ?
Maybe they could give it a razor-sharp edge and call it the [B][I] OddJob S7[/I][/B]
Round isn't easy perhaps as easy on the OS as it is on the mathematics.
That's a very good point -- it is a more processor-intensive calculation to, say, zoom a circular image than a square image ...
With current 3rd-party developer watch apps, the calculations are done on the iPhone, then the zoomed image is transmitted to the Watch via BTLE -- so, circular would be a bigger drain on the batteries of both the iPhone and the Watch.
I suspect that Apple-supplied apps do the rectangular zooming calculations on the on the watch, itself ...
No way to really jnow, though, at this stage -- Apple has not released any Watch APIs that let the developer do any thing but use the Watch as an external display for the iPhone.
In the current SDK, Apple discourages adding or removing items from a list (table) -- as that would require the table to be refreshed on the iPhone and then resent to the Watch -- causes poor performance and battery drain.
Round isn't easy perhaps as easy on the OS as it is on the mathematics.
IMHO the typical Apple Watch user will settle on their primary screen as a watch face with added notifications and statuses like battery level. How would a round face be at a disadvantage for them? Even Apple's own apps like contacts and even their app launcher screen are designed as tho they were meant for a round face.Keep in mind that by Apple's own use case statements the
Apple Watch is intended for tiny snippets of data that you interact with for only a few seconds. The battery doesn't even allow for heavy usage. Heavy users of Facebook, lengthy we-browsing or 100+ texters who need the larger line item real estate will pull out their smartphone for that. So why do some thread contributors comment as tho the Apple Watch will be used a primary computer and thus have to use a rectangular screen?
Seems more and more like a silly argument which serves only to only to dismiss others who chose a different watch display rather than any legitimate use-limiting issue.
Considering all the advantages purported by the advocates of the circle over the rectangle -- I expect that we'll see some round smart phones ...
Well, it's all about context isn't it? If the advantages of presenting information on a circular display outweigh the disadvantages of choosing the shape itself, then I would expect it to be used, where fashion and style are not also considerations.
But how does a round smart phone seem practical? For starters, people watch movies and play HD video games on smartphones, so in order to get a screen the same size as a current smartphone, the phone would have to be substantially larger. Now I realize the trend is toward carrying around tablets now, but even so, over a certain size, something like a round DVD isn't very easy to pocket, and that's about the size we're talking to match the screen space of just a 3.5" screen, much less a 5.5" screen. So the circle quickly begins to lose its appeal over a certain size, not to mention the limitations of what the device will be used for.
So why is round arguably better for a smart watch then? Well, the screen is necessarily small to fit on a wrist. And by default the wrist has more horizontal space then vertical. So a portrait oriented rectangle is probably the worst way to present anything on a display, aside from text. If anything they should have chosen a horizontal orientation for the wrist, or gone with a neutral square. But a circle offers a unique compromise on the wrist, it offers width when needed, and height when needed, all with a slightly slimmer profile, given there are no corners. Since the ?Watch is designed to do so many things, from viewing landscape photos, text, and analogue watch faces, the most versatile display shape for the size is what's warranted.
What's so amusing about all of this is that for all the debate over which shape is best for reading text, everybody seems to be overlooking the obvious -- how easy is the text to read on such a small display? If reading text were really so important, wouldn't everyone be opting for the 42mm watch for the largest display size possible regardless of how it looks on the wrist? I mean the way it looks is a style and fashion concern. Oversized watches have been around for decades, so that's a style choice. But when it comes to a practical choice, shouldn't the display be as large as possible if one is going to use it for text? If a rectangle is the best way to read text, then surely the size of the rectangle is no more an issue than the shape of the display, since fashion is not a concern. Right? If customers want to wear an ?Watch, they will have to accept it only comes in one size that is optimal for presenting text, especially if fashion plays no part of the equation. Women's watches range from 18mm to 34mm, so the ?Watch is already larger than most standard women's watches. So customers are already having to make a concession to wear one, at the cost of the optimal display size for reading text.
Of course, my contention is that it isn't all about reading text, and I keep going back to Ives statement about the watch being designed for quick "glances", if someone wants to read something more in depth, they will choose a more appropriate means -- say the iPhone in their pocket. From my perspective, the watch is about telling you 'Mom sent an e-mail' requiring me to pull out my iPhone, read and respond, versus seeing that notification alert was a marketing e-mail from Amazon, which I can ignore. And a circle is just as good for that kind of information as a square, or a rectangle, and in fact better, because it can be larger in a smaller size than with a rectangle. If you've ever seen a campaign button, you realize the power of that medium -- why aren't campaign buttons square if that's a better format for text?
That's a very good point -- it is a more processor-intensive calculation to, say, zoom a circular image than a square image ...
With current 3rd-party developer watch apps, the calculations are done on the iPhone, then the zoomed image is transmitted to the Watch via BTLE -- so, circular would be a bigger drain on the batteries of both the iPhone and the Watch.
And this is certainly a very good reason for why Ive also said the rectangular shape was to obvious choice for the launch of this product. This is practical reason for confining the shape of the display to a rectangle. At least at first.
Since I have demonstrated graphically that a virtual text box could be overlaid on a circle without losing any size, the round shape could be easily accommodated by restricting the peripheral spaces to static information only, allowing dynamic resizing in the rectangular section only. That should address processor related battery concerns. And of course battery life will likely steadily improve year after year, along code optimization.
The round watch is fundamentally driven by a rotary output mechanism. That was the primary driver for any of the original watch designs. That the manufacture was fundamentally easier turned than milled was obvious then and now.
The Apple Watch suffers neither of those constraints.
The argument for a round watch today is typically a style or stasis one; this is how it was historically and this is how it should continue to be. Apple has the opportunity to change that culture.
As I have pointed out a number of times in other threads on this most tiresome subject, historically speaking timepieces are not necessarily round. A great many watch and clock dials are rectangular or square, and others are neither round, square, or rectangualr. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge about clocks to know that the inherency argument for any dial shape simply does not exist. It never has and it never will. A vast amount of this debate is little more than arbitrary personal preferences being expressed as some kind of logical certainty. The irony is that Apple had to make a design decision for the shape of Apple Watch based on criteria a bit more deep and complicated than arbitrary personal preference, a decision that these instant experts on timepiece design are now criticizing on the entirely superficial basis of what shape they personally prefer. I am not going to argue aesthetic preferences with anyone, but I will tell the round watch obsessors that they doing Don Quixote one better. At least he tilted at a windmills that actually existed.
And this is certainly a very good reason for why Ive also said the rectangular shape was to obvious choice for the launch of this product. This is practical reason for confining the shape of the display to a rectangle. At least at first.
Since I have demonstrated graphically that a virtual text box could be overlaid on a circle without losing any size, the round shape could be easily accommodated by restricting the peripheral spaces to static information only, allowing dynamic resizing in the rectangular section only. That should address processor related battery concerns. And of course battery life will likely steadily improve year after year, along code optimization.
All you've shown there is that it is possible to surround a box shape with a circle. I don't think that is in dispute. It's still a waste of space though. All controls, and text would have to fit in that box or be clipped (if not immediately then on scrolling) except for the clock face and maybe other circular back grounds. In general though that's just a black background so it's just empty space.
As I have pointed out a number of times in other threads on this most tiresome subject, historically speaking timepieces are not necessarily round. A great many watch and clock dials are rectangular or square, and others are neither round, square, or rectangualr. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge about clocks to know that the inherency argument for any dial shape simply does not exist. It never has and it never will. A vast amount of this debate is little more than arbitrary personal preferences being expressed as some kind of logical certainty. The irony is that Apple had to make a design decision for the shape of Apple Watch based on criteria a bit more deep and complicated than arbitrary personal preference, a decision that these instant experts on timepiece design are now criticizing on the entirely superficial basis of what shape they personally prefer. I am not going to argue aesthetic preferences with anyone, but I will tell the round watch obsessors that they doing Don Quixote one better. At least he tilted at a windmills that actually existed.
Do you deny the mechanism is rotary output? Would you deny that manufacture is easier in a round format?
Do you deny the mechanism is rotary output? Would you deny that manufacture is easier in a round format?
I deny everything. I am in denial. Wait, does this argument make one flipping bit of difference? Of course not. Okay, I'd be in denial if it wasn't so full of people who'd gotten there ahead of me.
I deny everything. I am in denial. Wait, does this argument make one flipping bit of difference? Of course not. Okay, I'd be in denial if it wasn't so full of people who'd gotten there ahead of me.
From a historical standpoint, yes. I also stated that Apple has no such constraints.
As per many of my other posts throughout the forum, I don't advocate for a round watch.
From a historical standpoint, yes. I also stated that Apple has no such constraints.
As per many of my other posts throughout the forum, I don't advocate for a round watch.
From a historical standpoint, the designers of timepieces have never been constrained by the mechanism. This is what I say to those who argue that round is somehow inherently more logical or historically consistent. The support for this argument simply does not exist.
All you've shown there is that it is possible to surround a box shape with a circle. I don't think that is in dispute. It's still a waste of space though. All controls, and text would have to fit in that box or be clipped (if not immediately then on scrolling) except for the clock face and maybe other circular back grounds. In general though that's just a black background so it's just empty space.
You're not looking closely enough. The point of that example graphic is there's no difference at all over what Apple is currently implementing. The ?Watch currently has a border that results in "clipped" text and images, specifically implemented by Ive as a conscious design choice (he could have taken the display to the edge). In fact this is a style choice that compromises the display size.
The "waste of space" is filled with information from the original screen, thus giving more room to the text than possible on the ?Watch. My graphic clearly demonstrates this. Since I used an existing screen grab, there were only two bits of information on the screen to move for demonstration purposes: the name of the contact and the time, which I moved to the top and right side quadrants respectively. Yes there's two more quadrants of the circle that have not been filled, but that's the beauty of it, it's extra space to display even more information without sacrificing size. At the moment this is no different than the situation that existed when the iPhone 5 first came out, and developers had not made use of the extra screen space, and black bars appeared on either side of the app.
Just look at all this so-called "wasted space" until the developers took advantage of it!
From a historical standpoint, the designers of timepieces have never been constrained by the mechanism. This is what I say to those who argue that round is somehow inherently more logical or historically consistent. The support for this argument simply does not exist.
And yet the predominance of early chronographs, pocket watches, and later wristwatches had round faces and round dials due to ease of manufacture. Certainly most of the movement ever built are round configurations, driven by the application of round dials and faces.
I agree that it wasn't exclusively so, just predominately due to ease of manufacture.
And this is certainly a very good reason for why Ive also said the rectangular shape was to obvious choice for the launch of this product. This is practical reason for confining the shape of the display to a rectangle. At least at first.
Since I have demonstrated graphically that a virtual text box could be overlaid on a circle without losing any size, the round shape could be easily accommodated by restricting the peripheral spaces to static information only, allowing dynamic resizing in the rectangular section only. That should address processor related battery concerns. And of course battery life will likely steadily improve year after year, along code optimization.
All you've shown there is that it is possible to surround a box shape with a circle. I don't think that is in dispute. It's still a waste of space though. All controls, and text would have to fit in that box or be clipped (if not immediately then on scrolling) except for the clock face and maybe other circular back grounds. In general though that's just a black background so it's just empty space.
If you consider that a useful function of a smart watch (or any computing device) is to select items from a scrollable list -- the rectangular shape is more suited for that.
Also, the rectangular shape is more efficient in processing, transmission and battery use (from my earlier post).
Additionally there are manufacturing costs -- case, glass, display ...
For example, the sapphire screen is cut from a slice of sapphire cut from a round ingot. Say you need sapphire to cover displays of a square of 1.5 x 1.5 inches. Many more 1.5 x 1.5 squares can be cut from the slice than the larger circles needed to contain the 1.5 x 1.5 squares.
Same for slices from silicon ingots.
Even more so for glass and metal which are manufactured into rectangular sheets.
I suspect there is at least a 50% premium to manufacture a round watch vs a square or rectangular watch.
I suspect that Apple will use a circular watch display when they get ,,,
[QUOTE] [B][SIZE=4][U]How the 'original' Apple watch compares to the real thing [/U][/SIZE][/B] By Mike Wehner Mar 11, 2015, 3:48pm CT
Apple predicted the smartwatch a long time ago. The release of the sixth generation iPod Nano in 2010 gave users a very small taste of what it was like to have a smart device on your wrist, and now that the official Apple Watch is just weeks from availability, it's perfect timing to see how far the design has really come.
The sixth generation iPod Nano wasn’t designed specifically as a watch, but since the tiny device came with a variety of watchfaces built right in, it wasn’t long before third-party accessory makers jumped at the opportunity to turn it into the first iWatch. The Apple Watch, of course, is designed to be exactly what its name suggests, which means it should be more suited to everyday usage scenarios than its less powerful predecessor.
But that isn’t entirely true.
These are the features that both the iPod Nano 6G and the Apple Watch share:
Can tell you the time Downloadable watchfaces Built-in pedometer Calorie tracker Music playback Audiobook support Podcast support Custom Wallpaper Voice memo recording Photo viewing Stopwatch Touch controls Swappable watchbands That's not even counting the Mickey Mouse watchface. It’s a pretty impressive list for the out-of-production, five-year-old Nano.
Of course, the Apple watch can do a few things the iPod Nano can’t, and they are significant:
Apple Pay Phone calls Heart rate monitor Social touch functionality ResearchKit Third-party apps
But the Nano does a few things better than its update.
Battery Life (music playback)
Apple Watch: 6.5 hours iPod Nano: 24 hours
Storage space
Apple Watch: 8GB (music restricted to 2GB, photos to 75MB) iPod Nano: 8GB or 16GB (no restrictions on usage)
Price
Apple Watch: Starting at $349 iPod Nano: $129 (8GB), $149 (16GB) [/QUOTE]
Comments
It is designed to look at photos, so it should be wider than narrower to address that need as well since most photos tend to be landscape, following this argument.
Portraits would be either square or closer to a 4:3 height to width ratio, and likely more commonly viewed on a small wearable than landscapes.
It was either announce in Sept. 2014, or 9 months' worth of Chinese parts leaks.
Considering all the advantages purported by the advocates of the circle over the rectangle -- I expect that we'll see some round smart phones ... Real soon now ...
The big question is who will make the first round smart prone that sells (or ships) 1 million units ?
Maybe they could give it a razor-sharp edge and call it the [B][I] OddJob S7[/I][/B]
Edit:
Oops ... Already been done:
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/57819/width/500/height/1000[/IMG]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakram
That's a very good point -- it is a more processor-intensive calculation to, say, zoom a circular image than a square image ...
With current 3rd-party developer watch apps, the calculations are done on the iPhone, then the zoomed image is transmitted to the Watch via BTLE -- so, circular would be a bigger drain on the batteries of both the iPhone and the Watch.
I suspect that Apple-supplied apps do the rectangular zooming calculations on the on the watch, itself ...
No way to really jnow, though, at this stage -- Apple has not released any Watch APIs that let the developer do any thing but use the Watch as an external display for the iPhone.
In the current SDK, Apple discourages adding or removing items from a list (table) -- as that would require the table to be refreshed on the iPhone and then resent to the Watch -- causes poor performance and battery drain.
Apple Watch is intended for tiny snippets of data that you interact with for only a few seconds. The battery doesn't even allow for heavy usage. Heavy users of Facebook, lengthy we-browsing or 100+ texters who need the larger line item real estate will pull out their smartphone for that. So why do some thread contributors comment as tho the Apple Watch will be used a primary computer and thus have to use a rectangular screen?
Seems more and more like a silly argument which serves only to only to dismiss others who chose a different watch display rather than any legitimate use-limiting issue.
Considering all the advantages purported by the advocates of the circle over the rectangle -- I expect that we'll see some round smart phones ...
Well, it's all about context isn't it? If the advantages of presenting information on a circular display outweigh the disadvantages of choosing the shape itself, then I would expect it to be used, where fashion and style are not also considerations.
But how does a round smart phone seem practical? For starters, people watch movies and play HD video games on smartphones, so in order to get a screen the same size as a current smartphone, the phone would have to be substantially larger. Now I realize the trend is toward carrying around tablets now, but even so, over a certain size, something like a round DVD isn't very easy to pocket, and that's about the size we're talking to match the screen space of just a 3.5" screen, much less a 5.5" screen. So the circle quickly begins to lose its appeal over a certain size, not to mention the limitations of what the device will be used for.
So why is round arguably better for a smart watch then? Well, the screen is necessarily small to fit on a wrist. And by default the wrist has more horizontal space then vertical. So a portrait oriented rectangle is probably the worst way to present anything on a display, aside from text. If anything they should have chosen a horizontal orientation for the wrist, or gone with a neutral square. But a circle offers a unique compromise on the wrist, it offers width when needed, and height when needed, all with a slightly slimmer profile, given there are no corners. Since the ?Watch is designed to do so many things, from viewing landscape photos, text, and analogue watch faces, the most versatile display shape for the size is what's warranted.
What's so amusing about all of this is that for all the debate over which shape is best for reading text, everybody seems to be overlooking the obvious -- how easy is the text to read on such a small display? If reading text were really so important, wouldn't everyone be opting for the 42mm watch for the largest display size possible regardless of how it looks on the wrist? I mean the way it looks is a style and fashion concern. Oversized watches have been around for decades, so that's a style choice. But when it comes to a practical choice, shouldn't the display be as large as possible if one is going to use it for text? If a rectangle is the best way to read text, then surely the size of the rectangle is no more an issue than the shape of the display, since fashion is not a concern. Right? If customers want to wear an ?Watch, they will have to accept it only comes in one size that is optimal for presenting text, especially if fashion plays no part of the equation. Women's watches range from 18mm to 34mm, so the ?Watch is already larger than most standard women's watches. So customers are already having to make a concession to wear one, at the cost of the optimal display size for reading text.
Of course, my contention is that it isn't all about reading text, and I keep going back to Ives statement about the watch being designed for quick "glances", if someone wants to read something more in depth, they will choose a more appropriate means -- say the iPhone in their pocket. From my perspective, the watch is about telling you 'Mom sent an e-mail' requiring me to pull out my iPhone, read and respond, versus seeing that notification alert was a marketing e-mail from Amazon, which I can ignore. And a circle is just as good for that kind of information as a square, or a rectangle, and in fact better, because it can be larger in a smaller size than with a rectangle. If you've ever seen a campaign button, you realize the power of that medium -- why aren't campaign buttons square if that's a better format for text?
That's a very good point -- it is a more processor-intensive calculation to, say, zoom a circular image than a square image ...
With current 3rd-party developer watch apps, the calculations are done on the iPhone, then the zoomed image is transmitted to the Watch via BTLE -- so, circular would be a bigger drain on the batteries of both the iPhone and the Watch.
And this is certainly a very good reason for why Ive also said the rectangular shape was to obvious choice for the launch of this product. This is practical reason for confining the shape of the display to a rectangle. At least at first.
Since I have demonstrated graphically that a virtual text box could be overlaid on a circle without losing any size, the round shape could be easily accommodated by restricting the peripheral spaces to static information only, allowing dynamic resizing in the rectangular section only. That should address processor related battery concerns. And of course battery life will likely steadily improve year after year, along code optimization.
The round watch is fundamentally driven by a rotary output mechanism. That was the primary driver for any of the original watch designs. That the manufacture was fundamentally easier turned than milled was obvious then and now.
The Apple Watch suffers neither of those constraints.
The argument for a round watch today is typically a style or stasis one; this is how it was historically and this is how it should continue to be. Apple has the opportunity to change that culture.
As I have pointed out a number of times in other threads on this most tiresome subject, historically speaking timepieces are not necessarily round. A great many watch and clock dials are rectangular or square, and others are neither round, square, or rectangualr. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge about clocks to know that the inherency argument for any dial shape simply does not exist. It never has and it never will. A vast amount of this debate is little more than arbitrary personal preferences being expressed as some kind of logical certainty. The irony is that Apple had to make a design decision for the shape of Apple Watch based on criteria a bit more deep and complicated than arbitrary personal preference, a decision that these instant experts on timepiece design are now criticizing on the entirely superficial basis of what shape they personally prefer. I am not going to argue aesthetic preferences with anyone, but I will tell the round watch obsessors that they doing Don Quixote one better. At least he tilted at a windmills that actually existed.
All you've shown there is that it is possible to surround a box shape with a circle. I don't think that is in dispute. It's still a waste of space though. All controls, and text would have to fit in that box or be clipped (if not immediately then on scrolling) except for the clock face and maybe other circular back grounds. In general though that's just a black background so it's just empty space.
As I have pointed out a number of times in other threads on this most tiresome subject, historically speaking timepieces are not necessarily round. A great many watch and clock dials are rectangular or square, and others are neither round, square, or rectangualr. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge about clocks to know that the inherency argument for any dial shape simply does not exist. It never has and it never will. A vast amount of this debate is little more than arbitrary personal preferences being expressed as some kind of logical certainty. The irony is that Apple had to make a design decision for the shape of Apple Watch based on criteria a bit more deep and complicated than arbitrary personal preference, a decision that these instant experts on timepiece design are now criticizing on the entirely superficial basis of what shape they personally prefer. I am not going to argue aesthetic preferences with anyone, but I will tell the round watch obsessors that they doing Don Quixote one better. At least he tilted at a windmills that actually existed.
Do you deny the mechanism is rotary output? Would you deny that manufacture is easier in a round format?
Do you deny the mechanism is rotary output? Would you deny that manufacture is easier in a round format?
I deny everything. I am in denial. Wait, does this argument make one flipping bit of difference? Of course not. Okay, I'd be in denial if it wasn't so full of people who'd gotten there ahead of me.
I deny everything. I am in denial. Wait, does this argument make one flipping bit of difference? Of course not. Okay, I'd be in denial if it wasn't so full of people who'd gotten there ahead of me.
From a historical standpoint, yes. I also stated that Apple has no such constraints.
As per many of my other posts throughout the forum, I don't advocate for a round watch.
From a historical standpoint, yes. I also stated that Apple has no such constraints.
As per many of my other posts throughout the forum, I don't advocate for a round watch.
From a historical standpoint, the designers of timepieces have never been constrained by the mechanism. This is what I say to those who argue that round is somehow inherently more logical or historically consistent. The support for this argument simply does not exist.
All you've shown there is that it is possible to surround a box shape with a circle. I don't think that is in dispute. It's still a waste of space though. All controls, and text would have to fit in that box or be clipped (if not immediately then on scrolling) except for the clock face and maybe other circular back grounds. In general though that's just a black background so it's just empty space.
You're not looking closely enough. The point of that example graphic is there's no difference at all over what Apple is currently implementing. The ?Watch currently has a border that results in "clipped" text and images, specifically implemented by Ive as a conscious design choice (he could have taken the display to the edge). In fact this is a style choice that compromises the display size.
The "waste of space" is filled with information from the original screen, thus giving more room to the text than possible on the ?Watch. My graphic clearly demonstrates this. Since I used an existing screen grab, there were only two bits of information on the screen to move for demonstration purposes: the name of the contact and the time, which I moved to the top and right side quadrants respectively. Yes there's two more quadrants of the circle that have not been filled, but that's the beauty of it, it's extra space to display even more information without sacrificing size. At the moment this is no different than the situation that existed when the iPhone 5 first came out, and developers had not made use of the extra screen space, and black bars appeared on either side of the app.
Just look at all this so-called "wasted space" until the developers took advantage of it!
From a historical standpoint, the designers of timepieces have never been constrained by the mechanism. This is what I say to those who argue that round is somehow inherently more logical or historically consistent. The support for this argument simply does not exist.
And yet the predominance of early chronographs, pocket watches, and later wristwatches had round faces and round dials due to ease of manufacture. Certainly most of the movement ever built are round configurations, driven by the application of round dials and faces.
I agree that it wasn't exclusively so, just predominately due to ease of manufacture.
If you consider that a useful function of a smart watch (or any computing device) is to select items from a scrollable list -- the rectangular shape is more suited for that.
Also, the rectangular shape is more efficient in processing, transmission and battery use (from my earlier post).
Additionally there are manufacturing costs -- case, glass, display ...
For example, the sapphire screen is cut from a slice of sapphire cut from a round ingot. Say you need sapphire to cover displays of a square of 1.5 x 1.5 inches. Many more 1.5 x 1.5 squares can be cut from the slice than the larger circles needed to contain the 1.5 x 1.5 squares.
Same for slices from silicon ingots.
Even more so for glass and metal which are manufactured into rectangular sheets.
I suspect there is at least a 50% premium to manufacture a round watch vs a square or rectangular watch.
I suspect that Apple will use a circular watch display when they get ,,,
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/57829/width/500/height/1000[/IMG]
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/57828/width/500/height/1000[/IMG]
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/57830/width/500/height/1000[/IMG]
This is a bit larger than the Large Apple Watch, but it only has 240 x 240 pixel resolution.
For an interesting read:
http://www.dailydot.com/technology/apple-watch-vs-ipod-nano/
[QUOTE]
[B][SIZE=4][U]How the 'original' Apple watch compares to the real thing
[/U][/SIZE][/B]
By Mike Wehner
Mar 11, 2015, 3:48pm CT
Apple predicted the smartwatch a long time ago. The release of the sixth generation iPod Nano in 2010 gave users a very small taste of what it was like to have a smart device on your wrist, and now that the official Apple Watch is just weeks from availability, it's perfect timing to see how far the design has really come.
The sixth generation iPod Nano wasn’t designed specifically as a watch, but since the tiny device came with a variety of watchfaces built right in, it wasn’t long before third-party accessory makers jumped at the opportunity to turn it into the first iWatch. The Apple Watch, of course, is designed to be exactly what its name suggests, which means it should be more suited to everyday usage scenarios than its less powerful predecessor.
But that isn’t entirely true.
These are the features that both the iPod Nano 6G and the Apple Watch share:
Can tell you the time
Downloadable watchfaces
Built-in pedometer
Calorie tracker
Music playback
Audiobook support
Podcast support
Custom Wallpaper
Voice memo recording
Photo viewing
Stopwatch
Touch controls
Swappable watchbands
That's not even counting the Mickey Mouse watchface. It’s a pretty impressive list for the out-of-production, five-year-old Nano.
Of course, the Apple watch can do a few things the iPod Nano can’t, and they are significant:
Apple Pay
Phone calls
Heart rate monitor
Social touch functionality
ResearchKit
Third-party apps
But the Nano does a few things better than its update.
Battery Life (music playback)
Apple Watch: 6.5 hours
iPod Nano: 24 hours
Storage space
Apple Watch: 8GB (music restricted to 2GB, photos to 75MB)
iPod Nano: 8GB or 16GB (no restrictions on usage)
Price
Apple Watch: Starting at $349
iPod Nano: $129 (8GB), $149 (16GB)
[/QUOTE]
false
True?