The Casio B640W he mentioned was exactly the watch I used throughout college. I absolutely loved it because it has everything a digital watch should have: waterproof, backlight, month, day, weekday, and time with seconds. But I haven’t needed a watch in forever, so…
Apple Newton was a flop. Google Glass was a flop. Microsoft Zune was a. Well, words escape me. Apple Watch is a 1st generation product that people are hoping will be a flop. So far it’s a clickbaiter’s dream, because there are fanboys and haters aplently.
Personally, I ditched my Casio because my Apple Watch outshines it as a watch, as well as all the other functionality. I loved my Casio so much that I’d bought a second one so that I’d never be without it (not even for a flat battery) but after a day & night with the AW I lost my love for traditional watches completely. The only reason I take my AW off is for some risky physical situations (salt water, grease, bleach, high-impact activities) , but even then I still wear it more often than my old watch.
The trouble here is that this is kind of a standard Guardian “look at my journey of personal discovery about not needing technology any more, of course I’m constantly checking the metrics on this post” article so doesn’t really say much about the tech concerned, any more than any of the “My Life Is So Much Better Since I Stopped Using Facebook” pieces in assorted publications do. It’s more about middle-class sensitivities than anything else.
That sounds right Ordinal M. and James Devenish is providing a data point of a happy customer. I don’t have any kind of watch that I put on regularly anymore and so this discussion could be about sunglasses versus smart sunglasses as far as I’m concerned. I don’t use either.
I am interested in whether this “category” is more than a gimmick. It was much talked about in the years after the iPad came out as the next big thing, mainly because all other surfaces seemed to have been taken. We have screen everywhere else so why not our wrists? I haven’t heard much talk this year about smart watches or the Apple Watch in particular so this article got my interest.
My criteria for consumer technology is “does it give me super powers or not”. I don’t think there is any question about this for smart phones or laptops. Some people would argue it’s a big yes for tablets too. These devices definitely improve people’s lives and actually let them do things that would be impossible or at least very difficult without them. They actually change the way our societies work. I’m having a hard time seeing that with smart watches. Knowing the time is a super power that we’ve had on our wrists for well over a century. Knowing the weather instantaneously doesn’t empower us much more than what our phones already offer.
I don’t buy your anti-watch arguments, and here’s why. [Sorry for clickbait leader: imitation is my form of sarcasm.]
To paraphrase some Watch detractors sarcastically: the 1st gen iPod is a flop; no one needs an iPod; it doesn’t give us any superpower we didn’t already have; it doesn’t change or empower society; No 4G. Less space than a Nomad. Lame; I’m sticking with Sony on this one, they know what a Walkman needs to be (disc man for Xmas, anyone?).
See what I mean? Some other things (not sarcastic):
Relatively speaking, Apple Watch is still in its early adopter phase. I don’t think Apple planned to care in the first year that some people wouldn’t want a watch. They’ve been targeting a different demographic, and will expect others to follow when culture develops around the product. I’m a long-term watch wearer so I didn’t need as much persuasion to adopt a wearable.
It’s a better timepiece than my traditional watch, on at least two fronts.
It has an illuminated screen that makes it fully functional in all lighting conditions from brightest day to darkest night, and it’s on my wrist. This means I can fully use it when the equivalent functionality on my phone or traditional watch are impractical. For me, this was one of the key ‘quality of life’ improvements that clinched AW for me in the first 24 hours. It certainly has empowered me.
Also, it’s actively synchronised to time servers, so it never loses time nor needs me to perform periodic manual adjustment. It knows about leap year days, it knows about leap seconds, it automatically updates its timezone and daylight saving when I travel. This means I can look at it and know I am always seeing the right date and time, something that was always under a cloud of doubt with my traditional watch.
And then of course there’s all the other functionality on the wrist (apps, calls, NFC, etc). Receiving reminders, notifications and silently screening calls on my watch is much more productive and reliable than depending on phone vibrations or obtrusive sounds and pulling my phone out every time. I probably use at least half a dozen, and up to a dozen apps on it every day, so I get non-traditional value from it.
In contrast, if I was a journalist who lives and breathes through their smartphone, any kind of watch probably wouldn’t offer me much benefit at all.
As an aside, Apple Watch has created a commodity market for watchbands. These were a niche market for hundreds of years but are now a high-volume, seasonal & occasional fashion accessory for AW users.
And as for the bulk & weight argument, if there is one, to me it seems featherweight. That was the first thing I noticed and commented on when I wore a demo model for the first time. For me, it’s less bulky, lighter weight, and a better use of real estate than my traditional watch.
Obviously a lot of this is anecdotal based on my individual experience, but it basically means most of the anti-watch arguments don’t hold true for me on a personal level, and at an aggregate level I think it is too early to be sure. But by the second half of this year I might change my mind about the market prospects, based on what all players do this year.
My Casio is illuminated so I can read it anywhere, and automatically synchronized to an atomic clock worldwide. The battery lasts for two years, and recharges in sunlight. It’s waterproof to 100m and shockproof.
I’d quite like a watch that could show me notifications and let me redesign the display, but it also needs to have features like my current watch. I’d settle for a battery life of a week or so with the screen on.
Yeah my Casio is digital (to suit my needs) so it’s only illuminated when I press a button, which is a big impediment for me. The value-to-price for AW is much better for me, but importantly I don’t need 100m waterproof. I also have no need for the screen to be illuminated when I’m not looking at it. I consider those to be specialist requirements.
The definite game changer for me is the activitytracking, it’s much better than the fitbit och jawbone. The notifications and gamifications of the Apple Watch makes me able to get a chance to beat my diabetes. The Pebble, is next to my desk for failing this part. I took me about two weeks with out the Apple watch with my Pebble to realise how much better the Apple was at the gamifications part for me. I had a company watch for a long time, thet we sent to a fair, so i went back to my own new pebble, and then i had to by the Apple as it got into the swedish stores. This after desiding to put the Watch away untill gen 2. I passed the state of this article a year ago.
My Casio has an option to detect when I move my wrist to aim the watch face at my face, and illuminate the watch face when that happens. In practice I find the manual push button works OK for the rare occasions where I need to know the time in the dark. It’s the 90% of the time when I need to know the time and it’s not dark that having to push a button would suck.
I don’t need 100m waterproof in the strict “Can wear it under 90m of water” sense, but I need significantly more waterproofness than my Fitbit Charge HR offers.
John Hardy Developer 
I took my CASIO watch off about ~ 3 years ago. Time is shown on my smart phone. Why do I also need a watch?
I don’t.
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The Casio B640W he mentioned was exactly the watch I used throughout college. I absolutely loved it because it has everything a digital watch should have: waterproof, backlight, month, day, weekday, and time with seconds. But I haven’t needed a watch in forever, so…
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Apple Newton was a flop. Google Glass was a flop. Microsoft Zune was a. Well, words escape me. Apple Watch is a 1st generation product that people are hoping will be a flop. So far it’s a clickbaiter’s dream, because there are fanboys and haters aplently.
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I’m hoping Casio will make a smartwatch, because they understand what a watch needs to be.
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Pebble Watch. I have the Steel. Love it. 7 day battery life. Pre-programmed SMS responses – very simple and easy.
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Personally, I ditched my Casio because my Apple Watch outshines it as a watch, as well as all the other functionality. I loved my Casio so much that I’d bought a second one so that I’d never be without it (not even for a flat battery) but after a day & night with the AW I lost my love for traditional watches completely. The only reason I take my AW off is for some risky physical situations (salt water, grease, bleach, high-impact activities) , but even then I still wear it more often than my old watch.
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Eeew. He should put something on that wrist.
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Man Takes Off Watch.
The trouble here is that this is kind of a standard Guardian “look at my journey of personal discovery about not needing technology any more, of course I’m constantly checking the metrics on this post” article so doesn’t really say much about the tech concerned, any more than any of the “My Life Is So Much Better Since I Stopped Using Facebook” pieces in assorted publications do. It’s more about middle-class sensitivities than anything else.
I never even got a smartwatch. G-SHOCK 4 LIFE YO
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That sounds right Ordinal M. and James Devenish is providing a data point of a happy customer. I don’t have any kind of watch that I put on regularly anymore and so this discussion could be about sunglasses versus smart sunglasses as far as I’m concerned. I don’t use either.
I am interested in whether this “category” is more than a gimmick. It was much talked about in the years after the iPad came out as the next big thing, mainly because all other surfaces seemed to have been taken. We have screen everywhere else so why not our wrists? I haven’t heard much talk this year about smart watches or the Apple Watch in particular so this article got my interest.
LikeLike
My criteria for consumer technology is “does it give me super powers or not”. I don’t think there is any question about this for smart phones or laptops. Some people would argue it’s a big yes for tablets too. These devices definitely improve people’s lives and actually let them do things that would be impossible or at least very difficult without them. They actually change the way our societies work. I’m having a hard time seeing that with smart watches. Knowing the time is a super power that we’ve had on our wrists for well over a century. Knowing the weather instantaneously doesn’t empower us much more than what our phones already offer.
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I am wearing my Casio watch right now, I need to know the exact time quite often during the day, so I just look at my wrist and there it is!
The AW is too bulky, heavy and expensive to replace my Casio.
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I don’t buy your anti-watch arguments, and here’s why. [Sorry for clickbait leader: imitation is my form of sarcasm.]
To paraphrase some Watch detractors sarcastically: the 1st gen iPod is a flop; no one needs an iPod; it doesn’t give us any superpower we didn’t already have; it doesn’t change or empower society; No 4G. Less space than a Nomad. Lame; I’m sticking with Sony on this one, they know what a Walkman needs to be (disc man for Xmas, anyone?).
See what I mean? Some other things (not sarcastic):
Relatively speaking, Apple Watch is still in its early adopter phase. I don’t think Apple planned to care in the first year that some people wouldn’t want a watch. They’ve been targeting a different demographic, and will expect others to follow when culture develops around the product. I’m a long-term watch wearer so I didn’t need as much persuasion to adopt a wearable.
It’s a better timepiece than my traditional watch, on at least two fronts.
It has an illuminated screen that makes it fully functional in all lighting conditions from brightest day to darkest night, and it’s on my wrist. This means I can fully use it when the equivalent functionality on my phone or traditional watch are impractical. For me, this was one of the key ‘quality of life’ improvements that clinched AW for me in the first 24 hours. It certainly has empowered me.
Also, it’s actively synchronised to time servers, so it never loses time nor needs me to perform periodic manual adjustment. It knows about leap year days, it knows about leap seconds, it automatically updates its timezone and daylight saving when I travel. This means I can look at it and know I am always seeing the right date and time, something that was always under a cloud of doubt with my traditional watch.
And then of course there’s all the other functionality on the wrist (apps, calls, NFC, etc). Receiving reminders, notifications and silently screening calls on my watch is much more productive and reliable than depending on phone vibrations or obtrusive sounds and pulling my phone out every time. I probably use at least half a dozen, and up to a dozen apps on it every day, so I get non-traditional value from it.
In contrast, if I was a journalist who lives and breathes through their smartphone, any kind of watch probably wouldn’t offer me much benefit at all.
As an aside, Apple Watch has created a commodity market for watchbands. These were a niche market for hundreds of years but are now a high-volume, seasonal & occasional fashion accessory for AW users.
And as for the bulk & weight argument, if there is one, to me it seems featherweight. That was the first thing I noticed and commented on when I wore a demo model for the first time. For me, it’s less bulky, lighter weight, and a better use of real estate than my traditional watch.
Obviously a lot of this is anecdotal based on my individual experience, but it basically means most of the anti-watch arguments don’t hold true for me on a personal level, and at an aggregate level I think it is too early to be sure. But by the second half of this year I might change my mind about the market prospects, based on what all players do this year.
LikeLike
My Casio is illuminated so I can read it anywhere, and automatically synchronized to an atomic clock worldwide. The battery lasts for two years, and recharges in sunlight. It’s waterproof to 100m and shockproof.
I’d quite like a watch that could show me notifications and let me redesign the display, but it also needs to have features like my current watch. I’d settle for a battery life of a week or so with the screen on.
LikeLike
Yeah my Casio is digital (to suit my needs) so it’s only illuminated when I press a button, which is a big impediment for me. The value-to-price for AW is much better for me, but importantly I don’t need 100m waterproof. I also have no need for the screen to be illuminated when I’m not looking at it. I consider those to be specialist requirements.
LikeLike
The definite game changer for me is the activitytracking, it’s much better than the fitbit och jawbone. The notifications and gamifications of the Apple Watch makes me able to get a chance to beat my diabetes. The Pebble, is next to my desk for failing this part. I took me about two weeks with out the Apple watch with my Pebble to realise how much better the Apple was at the gamifications part for me. I had a company watch for a long time, thet we sent to a fair, so i went back to my own new pebble, and then i had to by the Apple as it got into the swedish stores. This after desiding to put the Watch away untill gen 2. I passed the state of this article a year ago.
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I went a few decades without a watch, but now I wear a vivofit2.
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My Casio has an option to detect when I move my wrist to aim the watch face at my face, and illuminate the watch face when that happens. In practice I find the manual push button works OK for the rare occasions where I need to know the time in the dark. It’s the 90% of the time when I need to know the time and it’s not dark that having to push a button would suck.
I don’t need 100m waterproof in the strict “Can wear it under 90m of water” sense, but I need significantly more waterproofness than my Fitbit Charge HR offers.
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