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.
You rewrite history as some kind of stasis, when in fact it is dynamic, but it isn't even important to defend Apple in its evolution of products; they always seem to come out on top, as they will with smartwatches.
Surely you are joking about the "if" of Swiss and Japanese watchmakers getting into the business. With Apple out front with its smartwatch, they have no choice but to compete and attempt to meet Apple's high standards. Apple dominates mobile UI, and leads in consumer electronics; hardly a fair fight against mechanical watch builders, who will likely have to settle on second tier Android Wear.
I'm going to laugh my ass off at all you Apple Watch doubters when the watchmakers fail miserably in smartwatches.
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.
what you're overlooking in that future scenario is the improvements in tech. today, a round smartwatch is just too damn big -- it looks like a hockey puck. maybe when the display and battery tech is there to have a very slim round case, they'll do it. but not before.
same with the phone -- obviously Apple tried bigger phones long ago. Ive even confirmed they did, during the iPhone 4 era. but it was just too damn thick. bulky. only now that they've developed thinner designs did they feel it was the right time. if those photos of absurdly large round smartwatches are an indication then this is simply no different.
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.
Bengi the snowman frost has finally been banned thank god and praise be to the mods
I wonder what he is going to do to get off now?
I think it's very ironic that he got banned right before the watch roll out. Me thinks the mods are toying with him and are having the last laugh, especially because of his prediction that the watch will be a huge failure going down in the annals .. What ever drivel he said now we won't have to listen to him back peddling his way out of that one!
There are two narratives I'm seeing with the watch that I think Apple needs to do a better job of controlling. One is that the product was conceived and then Apple tried finding a use case after the fact (i.e. a solution looking for a problem). The second is that your iPhone is an annoyance and the watch is here to save you from that. There are answers for both but I haven't seen Apple articulate them very well if at all. I know convenience isn't the easiest thing to articulate and people really will only appreciate it through use of the product, but the media will run with this solution looking for a problem meme if Apple lets them.
pulling out your iPhone just to unlock it and check a notification is an annoyance, and I'm not sure why Apple should try to "control" that narrative. the iPhone computer is great when you want to use it for computing. checking notifications is not the same use case.
You are forgetting apple is already making a round watch, it's going to be a huge, in fact it will hold thousands of apple workers and put shamsong to shame it's located in Cupertino!
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.
I understand all the references to traditional timepieces but I think they pretty much stop at references, or a respect for legacy if you will, and not an effort to emulate. The "digital crown" is a functional solution. It does not function at all like the crown and stem on a mechanical watch, nor is it merely decorative.
The focus here is heavily on the shape of the thing. The fact that it turned out rectangular rather than round tells me that this is the solution that Apple felt best fit the problem. Other than expressing an aesthetic preference, I don't understand the argument for round. If it had turned out round, I would be asking why. Over the past year we saw any number of third-party "concepts" for Apple Watch, most of which were round, and none of which made a lick of sense. It surprised me how many people were gah-gah for some of these unimaginative concepts, when I would have been shocked if the actual product was anything like them. Apple Watch turned out more "watch like" than I anticipated, but not nearly as much as many if not most expected.
I won't comment on the Apple Watch until I have tried one for myself, in a few weeks time, hopefully. I am particularly interested in its medical and physical exercise aspects. Most Apple products expand user experience. The only issue I have with the design is its rectangular form, which, I no doubt i will get used to it, provided that it delivers functionally.
No one can answer the question if round is best why aren't phones, tablets, TV's etc. round? Also show off photos of that Huawei watch with something other than a faux analog watch face and see how "nice" it looks. Of course a CGI image of that watch with a perfect looking faux analog display will look good. But IRL not so much.
Here's what the watch looks like IRL. Look at the bright screen compared to the CGI images. I don't think anyone would mistake it for a nice mid-range traditional watch. The leather bands look very cheap.
^ Crikey those are some dramatic words. A "nightmare" on the maps? Why? You can see a little bit more in the horizontal and vertical on the second photo, just not in the diagonal. That's fine, and it's even good because a rectangular watch of the same dimensions would be so much blockier and large on a wrist. Hell, more in the vertical and horizontal is even how our eyes work, so how is it a nightmare?
Yes, aligned text may get cut off a bit when it's at the bottom or top of the watch, but it doesn't when it's in the middle, so as your scroll through it all becomes clear. That's fine; your first photo is clearly showing a notification that is meant to be dragged up. This is where software design for the dimensions of the watch come into play. If the software is designed for a round watch, then it should avoid putting blocks of aligned text on the screen where it might get cropped. Simple.
The third photo looks fine to me. I mean, it's a smartwatch, so there's a massive nerd factor right now, but otherwise fine. A bit thick maybe.
And fourth, web browsing, on a watch? Who is going to do that anyway? Come on.
No one can answer the question if round is best why aren't phones, tablets, TV's etc. round?
Those other things aren't wearables nor in a class of jewellery. Also, you're talking about best for their functional purpose. The Apple Watch is designed to be used for seconds, the other products for hours. There's also the content being shown, all video content is produced square but you won't be viewing videos on the watch whereas you would on all the others.
Also show off photos of that Huawei watch with something other than a faux analog watch face and see how "nice" it looks. Of course a CGI image of that watch with a perfect looking faux analog display will look good. But IRL not so much.
The same would be true of all watches. Software interaction looks ok on round ( ) but it's not ideal using software designed to work on both shapes like Android Wear. If Apple made a round one, they'd do a better design job.
If your main purpose of a smartwatch is to tell time than a round face may be perfect. But for most of us the Watch will be a mini-computer on the wrist.
Look how a round watch cuts off text.
Can you imagine how much scrolling you would need to do just to read a text or email? Pathetic. On the Apple watch the entire text would show up on your watch on a single screen.
Or what about looking at a map?
Another nightmare experience.
And look how fun web browsing will be on a round watch. Utterly useless.
As the article points out, the Apple Watch isn't designed to be a mini-computer or to be interacted with for a long time. It's designed for glancing at for no more than a few seconds. You think the ?Watch is going to have a web browser? It has no direct wifi. For short messages, the round watch looks fine, the message floats to the middle of the display, which helps readability a lot, it's like the entire watch is a message bubble with even padding all around.
These watches are going to keep shutting off like you see in the Moto maps video here:
[VIDEO]
You get a few seconds to see what's happening and then it shuts off. It has to do this to last a whole day on battery. You're not going to be panning and zooming maps on the watch to get directions, that would be really frustrating to do and why would you do this when you have your phone with you? You'd get the directions by typing on the phone and then use the watch to buzz your wrist to guide you and to glance at the map.
This isn't an iPhone killer, it's a second screen for the iPhone. It saves people pulling out their phone for messages they want to ignore or ones that need short replies or to quickly glance at where they are on a map that is giving them directions or to make a payment in a store. For the purpose that the watch was designed for, a round shape would have been fine. Most of the Apple Watch software has been designed in a way that fits into a round shape. People have mentioned lists of items but they switched the design of the contacts page:
It used to look like this:
You couldn't scroll that grid of icons on a round watch very easily. However, for some reason it now looks like this:
Why change it? Because people don't want to be scrolling and panning round a tiny display. The objective is efficient interaction. That works like the home page mockup I did:
No panning or zooming, the icons are just larger and you can use the outer part of the display as a control so just tapping the dots can jump to the icon page. It can also be a continual spiral of apps. This is very fast at getting to apps because you have muscle memory on which page a particular app is on, icons are always the same size and large and the clock is always in the middle.
Functionally, square is more suited to higher amounts of text content, round is more aesthetically pleasing and given that we're talking about a wearable with low amounts of text content, I think it would have been the better choice here. This choice doesn't have a binary outcome of success or failure, you can only buy one watch that is fully compatible with the iPhone. In the following images, the content fits ok and that's just reshaping the square content to fit and not designing for it, text content mixed with the round graphics is actually bigger as the round content can expand out and the watch faces are much easier to read (look at TUE 9 and move/exercise/stand):
What other manufacturers do is irrelevant to what Apple is doing. If Apple had made their watch round, it would be more appealing than the one they've made. They wouldn't design it like a hockey puck or urinal cake, speaking of which, I wonder if they can do a pregnancy test with the watch. Not by urinating on it necessarily but with the wrist sensors. Anyway, Apple would design it just the same way they designed the current one. The gold one could be cheaper because the round base would be able to take up more surface area.
yes with a round watch you see a little bit more in the horizontal and vertical but that adds more BULK. And that little more you see is mostly useless. That is my point.
Excellent. Mostly useless is far better language than "nightmare" and "disaster". We're making progress already.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sog35
If size did not matter a round screen would be okay. But people don't want to wear MASSIVE HOCKEY PUCKS.
And round screens have to be MASSIVE HOCKEY PUCKS? Of course they don't, no more than rectangular screens have to be MASSIVE FOOTBALL FIELDS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sog35
And it is basic geometry that a rectangle is far more effiecent as a computer screen than a circle. Again I ask why isn't there smartphone, tablets, and laptops with circle screens?
Because circular screens are harder to make, so are only going to be explored when fashion is the driver. Fashion isn't a major player in smartphones, tablets and laptops. Watches are different.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sog35
Virtually everything is worse on a round screen compared to a rectangle. Video, photos, maps, text messages, apps, games, web, email. The only thing better on a round screen is an analog clock.
Everything that is formatted for a rectangular screen will be worse on a circular screen. That is true. Good thing that we have developers to reformat things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sog35
Look at the picture above. The bottom 3 watches are the Apple watch 42 and 38 and the Moto360. You see the black rectangle inside of the Moto360? That is the Apple 38mm screen centered onto the Moto. That represents the 'usable space' for most apps on a round watch. Now compare the Moto to the Apple 38mm. Which one looks more bulky? The Moto looks way more bulky IMO. Yet they both have the same usable (rectangle shape) screen.
The rest of the screen of the Moto (the rounded areas) are a total waste and don't add anything to the user experience.
The Moto is a bigger watch, of course it looks more bulky.
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.
The main reason most watches started as round was.. Lazyness, initially, they were slight pocket watch with a strap on... Though right from the start, top watch makers were making them square too. I've seen a stunning rectangular watch from 1919. From the mid 1920s to the 1950s, square watches remained very popular at 50% or more of the market. That was especially the case in the Art Deco mid 1920s to late 1930s era, the heyday of rectangular watches. In men's watches, square or rectangle then fell out of favor from the 1960s on, though it remained pretty popular in women's watches (the watches then looks more bangle or bracelet like).
I think Wired posted a great article. I really enjoyed reading about the thought process behind the watch hardware and software design, and the ultimate goal: help us get our heads out of our smartphones and back into the world around us while still feeling connected, but in a less intrusive way. I like it.
Its bigger because the round face makes that NECESSARY.
Again look at the picture. If they made the Moto any smaller the readable area would be microscopic. And that's my point. With a round face you will always be losing efficentcy of space.
No one can answer the question if round is best why aren't phones, tablets, TV's etc. round? Also show off photos of that Huawei watch with something other than a faux analog watch face and see how "nice" it looks. Of course a CGI image of that watch with a perfect looking faux analog display will look good. But IRL not so much.
Here's what the watch looks like IRL. Look at the bright screen compared to the CGI images. I don't think anyone would mistake it for a nice mid-range traditional watch. The leather bands look very cheap.
The biggest problem with smart watches like this is they are imitative of traditional watches, right down to the functionless and space-wasting bezel, and big, fat buttons. They don't look good to my eye. To me they look like they were designed in Photoshop out of bits and pieces of other watches. Most of the Apple Watch "concepts" we'd seen over the past year were exactly like this. As many complaints as we are hearing today about rectangular, even more (and more valid) complaints would be heard if they'd taken the timid, derivative, and unoriginal approach we are seeing in virtually every other entry into this market.
And if the Watch is meant to be used for quick glances a round screen would suck since you would need to scroll much more to read text.
You don't need to scroll much more. If the message is short then it's all visible just the same. The square one can handle about 20 words vs 15 on the round one. Average words per tweet would fit:
And that's your lack of vision. Apple is thinking 5 to 10 years in the future with the Watch.
If you think the watch is going to allow web browsing and gaming, you clearly haven't been paying attention to what the people who designed it have been saying. Here's what you said about screen size:
those mockups are totally misleading. Why doesn't the round faces have any bezels? Look at the AppleWatch, it has a bezel/boarder. While your round face mock up does not. You need to add the bezel and thus make the screen MUCH BIGGER and BULKIER.
That's how the Moto 360 looks. They can take away the bezel because they are cropping anyway. If you removed the bezel on the Apple Watch, the rounded corners would be cropping content.
Even that withstanding the email message on the round face has SMALLER TEXT and only shows 3 lines. While the AppleWatch has LARGER TEXT and 4 lines. Huge difference.
That image was to show how it could crop longer content inside the square area, you'll notice there's more padding between the bubble and the buttons. For content designed for the shape, it wouldn't be much different. There is less room to work with but you're still not accepting that the watch won't be used for a lot of text content. The difference is small too.
I'm not suggesting they need to change their design route, I'm just saying that round is a perfectly ok shape to use for a smartwatch and I think it looks nicer, which helps with it being jewellery.
Here's a photoshop with a proper bezel and SAME SIZE TEXT SPACING as the Apple Watch.
You're leaving lots of empty space though and when you remove the bezel from the Apple Watch, it looks terrible. The mockups I made were to show how they could have done a round one at a similar physical size and make it look perfectly acceptable. Are you saying that the best design and engineering team in the world couldn't design a decent looking round smartwatch?
Making a round Watch would have been the easy and lazy thing to do. It would be like the first iPhone having a physical keyboard.
Round face pushers can't get it past their brain that no matter what tricks designers try to use a round face will always be less efficent than a rectangle. Thus the compromise is either a LARGE WATCH (Moto360) or a smaller usable screen to the point where the text is so small its utterly useless. Is it no wonder that every single Round smart watch is incredibly LARGE?
In a sense the debate really boils down to whether the principal purpose of Apple Watch is to display data or analog time. If it's data, then rectangular follows as the more logical shape. For analog time, circular would be the more traditional, if not the more logical, shape. Apple decided to call this product a "watch" (and to use horological language to describe it), so in a sense they created the controversy, so they will need to resolve it. The resolution comes when the product gets into the hands of users. At that point, Apple's design decisions will either explain themselves or they will not. My guess is the design will make sense to a lot more people than not. What's more, a lot of the people to whom it won't make sense have already said they'd never buy one anyway, so they are unpersuadable from word go.
Comments
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.
You rewrite history as some kind of stasis, when in fact it is dynamic, but it isn't even important to defend Apple in its evolution of products; they always seem to come out on top, as they will with smartwatches.
Surely you are joking about the "if" of Swiss and Japanese watchmakers getting into the business. With Apple out front with its smartwatch, they have no choice but to compete and attempt to meet Apple's high standards. Apple dominates mobile UI, and leads in consumer electronics; hardly a fair fight against mechanical watch builders, who will likely have to settle on second tier Android Wear.
I'm going to laugh my ass off at all you Apple Watch doubters when the watchmakers fail miserably in smartwatches.
what you're overlooking in that future scenario is the improvements in tech. today, a round smartwatch is just too damn big -- it looks like a hockey puck. maybe when the display and battery tech is there to have a very slim round case, they'll do it. but not before.
same with the phone -- obviously Apple tried bigger phones long ago. Ive even confirmed they did, during the iPhone 4 era. but it was just too damn thick. bulky. only now that they've developed thinner designs did they feel it was the right time. if those photos of absurdly large round smartwatches are an indication then this is simply no different.
Bengi the snowman frost has finally been banned thank god and praise be to the mods
I wonder what he is going to do to get off now?
I think it's very ironic that he got banned right before the watch roll out. Me thinks the mods are toying with him and are having the last laugh, especially because of his prediction that the watch will be a huge failure going down in the annals .. What ever drivel he said now we won't have to listen to him back peddling his way out of that one!
pulling out your iPhone just to unlock it and check a notification is an annoyance, and I'm not sure why Apple should try to "control" that narrative. the iPhone computer is great when you want to use it for computing. checking notifications is not the same use case.
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.
I understand all the references to traditional timepieces but I think they pretty much stop at references, or a respect for legacy if you will, and not an effort to emulate. The "digital crown" is a functional solution. It does not function at all like the crown and stem on a mechanical watch, nor is it merely decorative.
The focus here is heavily on the shape of the thing. The fact that it turned out rectangular rather than round tells me that this is the solution that Apple felt best fit the problem. Other than expressing an aesthetic preference, I don't understand the argument for round. If it had turned out round, I would be asking why. Over the past year we saw any number of third-party "concepts" for Apple Watch, most of which were round, and none of which made a lick of sense. It surprised me how many people were gah-gah for some of these unimaginative concepts, when I would have been shocked if the actual product was anything like them. Apple Watch turned out more "watch like" than I anticipated, but not nearly as much as many if not most expected.
I won't comment on the Apple Watch until I have tried one for myself, in a few weeks time, hopefully. I am particularly interested in its medical and physical exercise aspects. Most Apple products expand user experience. The only issue I have with the design is its rectangular form, which, I no doubt i will get used to it, provided that it delivers functionally.
Here's what the watch looks like IRL. Look at the bright screen compared to the CGI images. I don't think anyone would mistake it for a nice mid-range traditional watch. The leather bands look very cheap.
I will probably fall in love with it when I get it. I is a beautiful looking watch
http://www.ablogtowatch.com/apple-watch-receives-red-dot-best-best-design-award/
^ Crikey those are some dramatic words. A "nightmare" on the maps? Why? You can see a little bit more in the horizontal and vertical on the second photo, just not in the diagonal. That's fine, and it's even good because a rectangular watch of the same dimensions would be so much blockier and large on a wrist. Hell, more in the vertical and horizontal is even how our eyes work, so how is it a nightmare?
Yes, aligned text may get cut off a bit when it's at the bottom or top of the watch, but it doesn't when it's in the middle, so as your scroll through it all becomes clear. That's fine; your first photo is clearly showing a notification that is meant to be dragged up. This is where software design for the dimensions of the watch come into play. If the software is designed for a round watch, then it should avoid putting blocks of aligned text on the screen where it might get cropped. Simple.
The third photo looks fine to me. I mean, it's a smartwatch, so there's a massive nerd factor right now, but otherwise fine. A bit thick maybe.
And fourth, web browsing, on a watch? Who is going to do that anyway? Come on.
Those other things aren't wearables nor in a class of jewellery. Also, you're talking about best for their functional purpose. The Apple Watch is designed to be used for seconds, the other products for hours. There's also the content being shown, all video content is produced square but you won't be viewing videos on the watch whereas you would on all the others.
The same would be true of all watches. Software interaction looks ok on round (
As the article points out, the Apple Watch isn't designed to be a mini-computer or to be interacted with for a long time. It's designed for glancing at for no more than a few seconds. You think the ?Watch is going to have a web browser? It has no direct wifi. For short messages, the round watch looks fine, the message floats to the middle of the display, which helps readability a lot, it's like the entire watch is a message bubble with even padding all around.
These watches are going to keep shutting off like you see in the Moto maps video here:
[VIDEO]
You get a few seconds to see what's happening and then it shuts off. It has to do this to last a whole day on battery. You're not going to be panning and zooming maps on the watch to get directions, that would be really frustrating to do and why would you do this when you have your phone with you? You'd get the directions by typing on the phone and then use the watch to buzz your wrist to guide you and to glance at the map.
This isn't an iPhone killer, it's a second screen for the iPhone. It saves people pulling out their phone for messages they want to ignore or ones that need short replies or to quickly glance at where they are on a map that is giving them directions or to make a payment in a store. For the purpose that the watch was designed for, a round shape would have been fine. Most of the Apple Watch software has been designed in a way that fits into a round shape. People have mentioned lists of items but they switched the design of the contacts page:
It used to look like this:
You couldn't scroll that grid of icons on a round watch very easily. However, for some reason it now looks like this:
Why change it? Because people don't want to be scrolling and panning round a tiny display. The objective is efficient interaction. That works like the home page mockup I did:
No panning or zooming, the icons are just larger and you can use the outer part of the display as a control so just tapping the dots can jump to the icon page. It can also be a continual spiral of apps. This is very fast at getting to apps because you have muscle memory on which page a particular app is on, icons are always the same size and large and the clock is always in the middle.
Functionally, square is more suited to higher amounts of text content, round is more aesthetically pleasing and given that we're talking about a wearable with low amounts of text content, I think it would have been the better choice here. This choice doesn't have a binary outcome of success or failure, you can only buy one watch that is fully compatible with the iPhone. In the following images, the content fits ok and that's just reshaping the square content to fit and not designing for it, text content mixed with the round graphics is actually bigger as the round content can expand out and the watch faces are much easier to read (look at TUE 9 and move/exercise/stand):
What other manufacturers do is irrelevant to what Apple is doing. If Apple had made their watch round, it would be more appealing than the one they've made. They wouldn't design it like a hockey puck or urinal cake, speaking of which, I wonder if they can do a pregnancy test with the watch. Not by urinating on it necessarily but with the wrist sensors. Anyway, Apple would design it just the same way they designed the current one. The gold one could be cheaper because the round base would be able to take up more surface area.
You just don't get it.
yes with a round watch you see a little bit more in the horizontal and vertical but that adds more BULK. And that little more you see is mostly useless. That is my point.
Excellent. Mostly useless is far better language than "nightmare" and "disaster". We're making progress already.
Quote:
If size did not matter a round screen would be okay. But people don't want to wear MASSIVE HOCKEY PUCKS.
And round screens have to be MASSIVE HOCKEY PUCKS? Of course they don't, no more than rectangular screens have to be MASSIVE FOOTBALL FIELDS.
Quote:
And it is basic geometry that a rectangle is far more effiecent as a computer screen than a circle. Again I ask why isn't there smartphone, tablets, and laptops with circle screens?
Because circular screens are harder to make, so are only going to be explored when fashion is the driver. Fashion isn't a major player in smartphones, tablets and laptops. Watches are different.
Quote:
Virtually everything is worse on a round screen compared to a rectangle. Video, photos, maps, text messages, apps, games, web, email. The only thing better on a round screen is an analog clock.
Everything that is formatted for a rectangular screen will be worse on a circular screen. That is true. Good thing that we have developers to reformat things.
Quote:
Look at the picture above. The bottom 3 watches are the Apple watch 42 and 38 and the Moto360. You see the black rectangle inside of the Moto360? That is the Apple 38mm screen centered onto the Moto. That represents the 'usable space' for most apps on a round watch. Now compare the Moto to the Apple 38mm. Which one looks more bulky? The Moto looks way more bulky IMO. Yet they both have the same usable (rectangle shape) screen.
The rest of the screen of the Moto (the rounded areas) are a total waste and don't add anything to the user experience.
The Moto is a bigger watch, of course it looks more bulky.
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.
The main reason most watches started as round was.. Lazyness, initially, they were slight pocket watch with a strap on... Though right from the start, top watch makers were making them square too. I've seen a stunning rectangular watch from 1919. From the mid 1920s to the 1950s, square watches remained very popular at 50% or more of the market. That was especially the case in the Art Deco mid 1920s to late 1930s era, the heyday of rectangular watches. In men's watches, square or rectangle then fell out of favor from the 1960s on, though it remained pretty popular in women's watches (the watches then looks more bangle or bracelet like).
I think Wired posted a great article. I really enjoyed reading about the thought process behind the watch hardware and software design, and the ultimate goal: help us get our heads out of our smartphones and back into the world around us while still feeling connected, but in a less intrusive way. I like it.
Rectangular beats circular for information beyond time alone.
No one can answer the question if round is best why aren't phones, tablets, TV's etc. round? Also show off photos of that Huawei watch with something other than a faux analog watch face and see how "nice" it looks. Of course a CGI image of that watch with a perfect looking faux analog display will look good. But IRL not so much.
Here's what the watch looks like IRL. Look at the bright screen compared to the CGI images. I don't think anyone would mistake it for a nice mid-range traditional watch. The leather bands look very cheap.
The biggest problem with smart watches like this is they are imitative of traditional watches, right down to the functionless and space-wasting bezel, and big, fat buttons. They don't look good to my eye. To me they look like they were designed in Photoshop out of bits and pieces of other watches. Most of the Apple Watch "concepts" we'd seen over the past year were exactly like this. As many complaints as we are hearing today about rectangular, even more (and more valid) complaints would be heard if they'd taken the timid, derivative, and unoriginal approach we are seeing in virtually every other entry into this market.
Just like they did on the iPods.
You don't need to scroll much more. If the message is short then it's all visible just the same. The square one can handle about 20 words vs 15 on the round one. Average words per tweet would fit:
http://blog.oup.com/2009/06/oxford-twitter/
If you think the watch is going to allow web browsing and gaming, you clearly haven't been paying attention to what the people who designed it have been saying. Here's what you said about screen size:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/160038/supply-chain-visit-makes-analyst-confident-about-larger-iphone-in-2014/40#post_2414701
"Even a 6 inch for is too small for browsing. Why not just get an iPhone+iPadMini?"
Now you're talking about browsing on a 1.5-1.7" display.
That's how the Moto 360 looks. They can take away the bezel because they are cropping anyway. If you removed the bezel on the Apple Watch, the rounded corners would be cropping content.
That image was to show how it could crop longer content inside the square area, you'll notice there's more padding between the bubble and the buttons. For content designed for the shape, it wouldn't be much different. There is less room to work with but you're still not accepting that the watch won't be used for a lot of text content. The difference is small too.
I'm not suggesting they need to change their design route, I'm just saying that round is a perfectly ok shape to use for a smartwatch and I think it looks nicer, which helps with it being jewellery.
You're leaving lots of empty space though and when you remove the bezel from the Apple Watch, it looks terrible. The mockups I made were to show how they could have done a round one at a similar physical size and make it look perfectly acceptable. Are you saying that the best design and engineering team in the world couldn't design a decent looking round smartwatch?
Exactly.
Making a round Watch would have been the easy and lazy thing to do. It would be like the first iPhone having a physical keyboard.
Round face pushers can't get it past their brain that no matter what tricks designers try to use a round face will always be less efficent than a rectangle. Thus the compromise is either a LARGE WATCH (Moto360) or a smaller usable screen to the point where the text is so small its utterly useless. Is it no wonder that every single Round smart watch is incredibly LARGE?
In a sense the debate really boils down to whether the principal purpose of Apple Watch is to display data or analog time. If it's data, then rectangular follows as the more logical shape. For analog time, circular would be the more traditional, if not the more logical, shape. Apple decided to call this product a "watch" (and to use horological language to describe it), so in a sense they created the controversy, so they will need to resolve it. The resolution comes when the product gets into the hands of users. At that point, Apple's design decisions will either explain themselves or they will not. My guess is the design will make sense to a lot more people than not. What's more, a lot of the people to whom it won't make sense have already said they'd never buy one anyway, so they are unpersuadable from word go.