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Is The Apple Watch ACTUALLY Any Good?
Why is there so much fuss about the Apple Watch? Everybody knows smartwatches are RUBBISH!
Google. Samsung. Motorola. Sony. LG. Pebble –– the list goes on and on for companies that have attempted to create and market a successful smartwatch. So far none have succeeded, except perhaps Pebble…a bit. The Apple Watch will succeed, though, providing you take Wall Street’s word as gospel, and no one seems to know why this is the case… and that’s a bit weird.
I watched the event last night and struggled to see why I’d need an Apple Watch. I’ve tested a bunch of smartwatches this year and found them all fairly substandard. None possessed a killer feature and once they’d ran out of juice, a thing that happened far too regularly for something that’s supposed to be a watch, I kind of just stopped using them and reverted back to my phone for all my time-based needs.
The Apple Watch does look nice, I’ll admit that. But no more so than the recently announced Pebble Time Steel. It costs a lot too, around £300 for the base level Sport model. And then there’s the Apple Watch Edition that will set you back £8000. I mean, who in their right mind would pay THAT much money for a piece of consumer electronics that probably won’t work in six years time? Don’t worry, though, that one apparently isn’t meant for mere mortals like you and me –– it’s for the super-rich and famous. Anyone outside the 1%, however, can “view” the Apple Watch Edition at select Apple Stores, though it will be locked away inside a glass box to keep your disgusting, grubby, proletariat fingers from smudging and/or stealing it.
As for features, yeah, the Apple Watch has a few nifty tricks up its sleeve but none are essential and certainly nothing that could be considered a KILLER USP for the smartwatch concept, which, since its inception, has consistently failed to live up the image peddled by tech companies hell bent on increasing their revenues by shifting more products.
Apple does need a new product line though. The company, as many pundits have pointed out in 2014, is dangerously reliant on the iPhone. The addition of the Apple Watch is an insanely risky move for the company. Partly because of the cost involved in developing and producing such a device, but mostly because smartwatches, generally speaking, have all the charm and charisma 3D TVs had a few years back.
But, as Andrew Flintoff famously said to everybody inside a Morrison’s store once up on a time: PEOPLE WILL COME!
“It’s going to be a successful product for Apple,” said Colin Gillis, technology analyst at BGC Partners. “They are going to sell millions of them. But even then they will be less than 10% of revenues and an even smaller percentage of profits. This is still the iPhone company.”
I have no doubt that millions will buy the Apple Watch. I also think it looks lovely too. But the same could be said about a lot of things most people can do without. I don’t see Apple reinventing the wheel here, as it did with the iPad and the iPhone. All I’m getting is that it looks nice and has a few tricks inside it that may or may not come in handy to a user, providing they don’t mind A) talking to their wrist or B) fannying around on a teeny tiny screen to issue commands.
I don’t mind using my iPhone. It’s not a chore. I don’t spend too much time on it… and if I did my solution would be to just stop using my phone as much. Not buy an Apple Watch.
Richard Goodwin
11:27, 10 Mar 2015