steinm88299

Gotta love these analysts with a $200 target. Stock is trading around $199 this morning. Brilliant!

I have played with Android Wear and the TizenOS stuff with the round faces. The Apple face as it currently is I have found to be far superior for reading text. Of course, with Apple's focus on end user experience I would tend to believe they would overcome some of these shortcomings. 

The other issue with Apple doing this is the ability to get refunds. Whereas Google Play has allowed refunds within a quick time period, the App Store does not. So if you download a crumby watch face you will be out the money. The challenge I saw with third party watch faces on Android Wear and Tizen is that they did not always properly integrate with the watch, for example counting steps would often be incorrect. So if that happens on WatchOS, you would have paid money for nothing. 

I have played with Android Wear and the Samsung Tizen stuff. Apps like WatchMaker and Facer have a mix of cool original designs, stupid photos with hands, and trademark infringement faces from Rolex and others. It is tough to regulate for sure. However, many of the original faces are really good looking and interesting. I would imagine Apple would block Facer and WatchMaker as they have their own libraries of faces out of Apple's control. However, selling standalone watch faces would allow Apple to maintain control over the content.

I bought one for my wife in the kitchen. The sound quality is fantastic. Yes it is restricted to Apple's ecosystem. Yes Siri is behind Google in terms of overall AI smarts. However, my wife did not want a device she could ask random questions of. She wanted a device to listen to music while she is downstairs and it fit the bill perfectly with fantastic sound. As someone earlier commented, the Watch was also a "failure" when it launched and now earns more than all Swiss watchmakers combined. We will see.