It's been puzzling reading this thread. I'm in the UK and we don't have to register a new device to use with a service. And I can't see why you need to. Forgetting the 'dozens of devices' comment earlier, surely, you have a phone contract with a data package. All your devices ( if you choose) go through that package, you're not using up extra bandwidth. I bought my partner an AW recently and just paired it with her iPhone. She uses either/or with no problem (be kind of tricky to use both together I guess!).
I know it works a bit differently in the US (our phones work anywhere/everywhere no matter the provider) but wtf?
Your partners AW is connecting through your current cellular connection just like any devices you might tether through your phone. The AW3 connects directly to the cell towers.
I like to look at Australia which has a similarly exploitive model for mobile phone products. Currently Telstra (the most expensive carrier) charges $5 per month to share a phone plan with another device such as a tablet.
So to me it seems excessive that these companies are requesting $120 a year for a device which really has an negligible footprint on their network. The LTE Apple Watch does not have software which can excessively tax the mobile network and even if such software did come about, battery limitations inside the device put a hard ceiling on how much time the device can spend on LTE.
Simply put, these carriers are cashing in on people who can afford a wearable LTE product. Phone-plan dependent wearables should merely be a sweetener to choose one network over another, and not a significant form of new revenue. I think $10 a month is excessive, I think $5 a month is excessive - people aren't getting limited value for that money. it should be $1.50 to $2 per month at most.
Don't forget the $25 activation fee --as if it takes a human 90 minutes of labor to update the IMEI onto their towers lol.
Due to the economy of scale, they should be able to offer special pricing (well below $10/mo) for AW3. That's the kind of thing that Jobs would have paid attention too, as he always focused on the end user experience. (Then again, I doubt he would have gone for a watch as opposed to a fitness-first device, but who knows.)
You mean the same Steve Jobs who misjudged the pricing of the original iPhone and had to significantly discount it a few months later and offer refunds to early adopters?
its not easy to strike the right balance in pricing. Even Steve made mistakes. The trick is to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers.
Tim will know soon enough if he & his team struck the right agreements with carriers.
It would be nice if T-Mobile lowered the fee for connecting the LTE Apple Watch to $5/month. Making it free would be even better.
However, don't you guys realize that the LTE Apple Watch is a separate device, and if you leave the phone in the car and go for a run or walk with the LTE Apple Watch, both your phone and your watch will be on the cellular network and both will be sending and receiving beacons as well as sending and receiving data. The iPhone constantly sends and receives data regardless whether you use it or not. So, to claim that it costs carriers nothing to add millions of Apple Watches to their network is factually incorrect. It may not cost them $10-month for each Apple Watch, but it it is not free either.
Don't forget the $25 activation fee --as if it takes a human 90 minutes of labor to update the IMEI onto their towers lol.
Due to the economy of scale, they should be able to offer special pricing (well below $10/mo) for AW3. That's the kind of thing that Jobs would have paid attention too, as he always focused on the end user experience. (Then again, I doubt he would have gone for a watch as opposed to a fitness-first device, but who knows.)
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are waiving their activation fees and are also offering three free months of connectivity either up front or through service credits.
Okay, let's see now, how much bandwidth do you need to 1) make phone calls, 2) stream music, 3) get texts, 4) check the weather... I'm trying to think of an app for the Series 3 LTE that would require big time bandwidth. Camera? Nope, doesn't have one. Watch videos? WTF, on that tiny screen. Games? Really?
If that is true, then there is no need to throttle it down...
My firm pays for my phone plan as it's BYOD (device), so they took control of my line and phone number. How can I possibly add my AW with LTE connectivity since my company owns my line? I think this is going to be a huge problem.
You get a free phone line -- and are whining about it?
I like to look at Australia which has a similarly exploitive model for mobile phone products. Currently Telstra (the most expensive carrier) charges $5 per month to share a phone plan with another device such as a tablet.
So to me it seems excessive that these companies are requesting $120 a year for a device which really has an negligible footprint on their network. The LTE Apple Watch does not have software which can excessively tax the mobile network and even if such software did come about, battery limitations inside the device put a hard ceiling on how much time the device can spend on LTE.
Simply put, these carriers are cashing in on people who can afford a wearable LTE product. Phone-plan dependent wearables should merely be a sweetener to choose one network over another, and not a significant form of new revenue. I think $10 a month is excessive, I think $5 a month is excessive - people aren't getting limited value for that money. it should be $1.50 to $2 per month at most.
There's an additional $10/mo for each of two LTE-equipped cars in my household which adds up to $360 (with the Watch included).* This is on top of the ~$2400 per year for the underlying family share plan.
It is what it is, I get that. However, given the amount of typical monthly data usage, it does seem a tad excessive.
*In my case, I'll probably get rid of the LTE charges in one of the cars and switch that over to the Watch.
Don't forget the $25 activation fee --as if it takes a human 90 minutes of labor to update the IMEI onto their towers lol.
Due to the economy of scale, they should be able to offer special pricing (well below $10/mo) for AW3. That's the kind of thing that Jobs would have paid attention too, as he always focused on the end user experience. (Then again, I doubt he would have gone for a watch as opposed to a fitness-first device, but who knows.)
You mean the same Steve Jobs who misjudged the pricing of the original iPhone and had to significantly discount it a few months later and offer refunds to early adopters?
its not easy to strike the right balance in pricing. Even Steve made mistakes. The trick is to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers.
Tim will know soon enough if he & his team struck the right agreements with carriers.
What a silly comparison. Jobs was trying to price a product that did not exist prior to that one. Ever. There were no benchmarks at all, none.
The carriers have data from experience with other LTE-equipped products, e.g., cars, to make a judgment. Moreover, Apple likely has a good sense of the amount of data that a typical Watch consumes (barring, of course, music streaming).
While thats nice....I still think its pure BS for carriers to charge for a watch to be added to the plan. Its the same line, not a different phone number. For this reason alone I will not get an LTE Apple Watch. I already pay out the wazooo for my cell phone...I don't appreciate being nickel and dime'd by these greedy carriers.
Every device added to a network consumes resources. If one person has: (1) one phone, (2) one tablet, and (3) one watch... that's 3 device slots occupied for that one user. It has an impact on the network's ability to accommodate more users, thus impacting the carrier's profit potential. So it makes sense that the carrier charge a small fee for the additional devices.
Except a watch isn't going to take up any resources in the grand scheme of things. This is what the carriers want you to think. Don't fall into their trap.
Don't forget the $25 activation fee --as if it takes a human 90 minutes of labor to update the IMEI onto their towers lol.
Due to the economy of scale, they should be able to offer special pricing (well below $10/mo) for AW3. That's the kind of thing that Jobs would have paid attention too, as he always focused on the end user experience. (Then again, I doubt he would have gone for a watch as opposed to a fitness-first device, but who knows.)
How well did you know Jobs?
AW is a fitness-first device, among other things. The fitness tracking and activity alerts were the first features I got value from.
The fee in any form is a deal breaker. I was pondering an upgrade, as I really like my original AW. An upgrade for my wife's one too would have been a nifty holiday present. But not at $240/yr. Nope nope nope.
Couldn’t agree more. Same “line”, same bill, should be same data allowance, regardless of device on that line.
Very cool tech by Apple shot in the foot by gouging carriers.
So don't buy the Series 3 LTE and tell all your friends not to buy it either. Stand your ground, cry from the rooftops that YOU will not be 'gouged' by evil Apple and its evil cohorts the carriers. Then just shut your trap and make no more comments about the watch and its features, how good it is or isn't since it no longer exists in your personal universe. Let the rest of us enjoy it and the satisfaction it provides us. And we are certainly within our rights to pay the $10/mo if we find the value in that.
And by the way, I'm betting no one in these forums understands how the mobile network actually works or why a carrier might decide to limit bandwidth or price a feature. Nope, it's always greed and price gouging in your eyes.
Who has claimed Apple is gouging? No one.
Youre using split-thinking to build black & white straw men of those with complaints of carrier pricing. People have the right to express their opinions and yes even complain. You do it as well.
Personally, going on past pricing behavior from carriers, I feel confident guessing (obviously a guess) that they are charging as much as conceivably possible, regardless of actual cost of service to add the device to the network. I shed no tears for the poor, poor carriers in the US. Nor do I lick their boots for the opportunity to do business.
Watch phone should have been free on all carriers. Apple should have flexed its muscles and said if you want the watch on your service we'll split whatever small cast is involved with you; leave the customer out of it. Charging is a rip-off—free money for carriers.
Don't forget the $25 activation fee --as if it takes a human 90 minutes of labor to update the IMEI onto their towers lol.
Due to the economy of scale, they should be able to offer special pricing (well below $10/mo) for AW3. That's the kind of thing that Jobs would have paid attention too, as he always focused on the end user experience. (Then again, I doubt he would have gone for a watch as opposed to a fitness-first device, but who knows.)
You mean the same Steve Jobs who misjudged the pricing of the original iPhone and had to significantly discount it a few months later and offer refunds to early adopters?
its not easy to strike the right balance in pricing. Even Steve made mistakes. The trick is to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers.
Tim will know soon enough if he & his team struck the right agreements with carriers.
What a silly comparison. Jobs was trying to price a product that did not exist prior to that one. Ever. There were no benchmarks at all, none.
The carriers have data from experience with other LTE-equipped products, e.g., cars, to make a judgment. Moreover, Apple likely has a good sense of the amount of data that a typical Watch consumes (barring, of course, music streaming).
There had been lots of smartphones before iPhone. No one remembers them now. So there certainly were benchmarks.
And there are benchmarks now. There have been smart watches with data for a few years (though I expect many will be forgotten with time as well).
There had been lots of smartphones before iPhone. No one remembers them now. So there certainly were benchmarks.
Benchmarks? That's just bullshit. That's like saying there were vacuum tubes before transistors so there were 'benchmarks', or that there were transistors before semiconductors so there were 'benchmarks'.
There were 'phones' and there was the iPhone. It changed everything. There were no 'benchmarks'.
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http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/phones-imei-makeuseof-explains/
Your partners AW is connecting through your current cellular connection just like any devices you might tether through your phone. The AW3 connects directly to the cell towers.
The LTE Apple Watch does not have software which can excessively tax the mobile network and even if such software did come about, battery limitations inside the device put a hard ceiling on how much time the device can spend on LTE.
Simply put, these carriers are cashing in on people who can afford a wearable LTE product. Phone-plan dependent wearables should merely be a sweetener to choose one network over another, and not a significant form of new revenue. I think $10 a month is excessive, I think $5 a month is excessive - people aren't getting limited value for that money. it should be $1.50 to $2 per month at most.
Or were you expecting a full range of fashionable watches designed to appeal to your penny-pinching budget?
Make up your mind: are you paying for the high end service & device or are you skimping and looking for a deal?
its not easy to strike the right balance in pricing. Even Steve made mistakes. The trick is to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers.
Tim will know soon enough if he & his team struck the right agreements with carriers.
However, don't you guys realize that the LTE Apple Watch is a separate device, and if you leave the phone in the car and go for a run or walk with the LTE Apple Watch, both your phone and your watch will
be on the cellular network and both will be sending and receiving beacons as well
as sending and receiving data. The iPhone constantly sends and receives data regardless whether you use it or not. So, to claim that it costs carriers nothing to
add millions of Apple Watches to their network is factually incorrect. It may not cost them $10-month for each Apple Watch, but it it is not free either.
And the the lack of roaming.
It is what it is, I get that. However, given the amount of typical monthly data usage, it does seem a tad excessive.
*In my case, I'll probably get rid of the LTE charges in one of the cars and switch that over to the Watch.
The carriers have data from experience with other LTE-equipped products, e.g., cars, to make a judgment. Moreover, Apple likely has a good sense of the amount of data that a typical Watch consumes (barring, of course, music streaming).
AW is a fitness-first device, among other things. The fitness tracking and activity alerts were the first features I got value from.
Who has claimed Apple is gouging? No one.
Youre using split-thinking to build black & white straw men of those with complaints of carrier pricing. People have the right to express their opinions and yes even complain. You do it as well.
Personally, going on past pricing behavior from carriers, I feel confident guessing (obviously a guess) that they are charging as much as conceivably possible, regardless of actual cost of service to add the device to the network. I shed no tears for the poor, poor carriers in the US. Nor do I lick their boots for the opportunity to do business.
And there are benchmarks now. There have been smart watches with data for a few years (though I expect many will be forgotten with time as well).
The comparison is valid.
There were 'phones' and there was the iPhone. It changed everything. There were no 'benchmarks'.
Thanks for for the laugh.