{"id":10624,"date":"2015-07-23T13:22:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T13:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10624"},"modified":"2015-07-23T13:22:20","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T13:22:20","slug":"time-will-tell-if-apple-watch-catches-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10624","title":{"rendered":"Time will tell if Apple Watch catches on"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK: For all those who hailed the iPhone as the \u201cJesus Phone\u201d in 2007, the Apple<\/a> Watch\u2019s arrival has hardly been the second coming. Sure, it can do many useful, even delightful things, such as showing us incoming texts and email, tracking our heart rate during exercise or letting us send digital doodles to friends. But is that enough to spend $350 or more, especially when it requires wearing a watch again? After all, smartphones have negated the need for watches to tell time.<\/p>\n

Early Apple Watch owners seem generally happy with it, but Apple\u2019s bigger worry should be those on the sidelines \u2013 even hard-core Apple fans, not to mention the rest of us \u2013 who are waiting to take the plunge. Apple hasn\u2019t released sales figures, but its quarterly financial report Tuesday suggests that they were lower than many Wall Street analysts expected, even though they exceeded Apple\u2019s internal projections.<\/p>\n

Some people are waiting for early kinks to be worked out and others, for an \u201caha moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been cast as a want, not a need,\u201d said Matt Quick, a Topeka, Kansas, engineer and Apple fan who is holding off on getting one. \u201cI\u2019m kind of waiting to see what next year\u2019s model will bring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Clayton, who has had Mac computers all his life and owns an iPhone and several iPads, returned his Apple Watch after three weeks. The last straw? It nagged the physically active New Yorker to stand up during a six-hour flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cApple is famous for telling us what we need before we need them,\u201d Clayton said. \u201cI thought this would be the case with the watch. But it [just] added something to my life that I didn\u2019t need added.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say the Apple Watch is a bomb. Most analysts and tech reviewers, including the Associated Press, see promise, especially compared with rival smartwatches from Samsung and others.<\/p>\n

Wristly, a research company created to study the watch, found that early buyers are overwhelmingly satisfied, more so than with the original iPad and iPhone.<\/p>\n

And of the more than a dozen early Apple Watch owners interviewed by the AP by phone, email or in person, most of them love their watch. After all, early adopters of new technologies tend to understand that what they\u2019re getting isn\u2019t perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d recommend it to people with an open mind,\u201d said Dennis Falkenstein<\/a> of Danville, California. He said the watch gets him \u201ceverything I want\u201d such as local temperature, or the current time in Japan, where many of his business clients are.<\/p>\n

But even so, there\u2019s a long wish list, including smarter apps. Apple is already addressing some of this with a software update this fall. Falkenstein would also like to see the battery life improve from the 18 hours that\u2019s currently promised.<\/p>\n

Apple Tuesday reported $2.6 billion in revenue from \u201cother products,\u201d which includes the watch. That\u2019s about $952 million more than the previous quarter, when the watch had not yet gone on sale. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting $1.8 billion in watch sales.<\/p>\n

Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri<\/a> told the Associated Press<\/a> that revenue from the watch amounted to \u201cwell over\u201d that $952 million increase, as the category includes products whose sales fell. Maestri said the watch did better than iPhones<\/a> and iPads in a comparable period after those products launched.<\/p>\n

Apple has run television commercials showing the watch in everyday life, and it has devoted tables at its retail stores for people to try one on and learn more. Connected wirelessly to an iPhone, the Apple Watch isn\u2019t meant to replace the phone, but rather provide tidbits of information readily while the phone is in a pocket or purse. There\u2019s no keyboard, so searches and messages are done by voice dictation or the selection of a canned response. You can also send doodles and emoji.<\/p>\n

David Lubarsky, a Fairfield, Connecticut, photographer, loves that he can get \u201cbasic information, quick\u201d and avoid staring at Facebook on the phone all day. It lets him see texts, emails, calendar appointments and baseball scores.<\/p>\n

But he gets frustrated when using it to pay for coffee at Starbucks.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour wrist doesn\u2019t necessarily twist to the right position to the scanner so it\u2019s pretty awkward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Apple Watch also doesn\u2019t always provide the right information at the right time. The watch version of one transit app offers bus schedules for your saved locations \u2013 even if they are far away \u2013 rather than the stops closest to you at the moment, as the phone app does. As for message notifications, it\u2019s great when it\u2019s from someone you want to hear from \u2013 but annoying when it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll take time for apps to anticipate what users need most.<\/p>\n

Apps will get better when Apple updates the watch\u2019s software this fall to permit more \u201cnative\u201d apps \u2013 those that aren\u2019t just extensions of phone apps. Some apps could even work without the phone nearby, including games, audio recorders and tools that analyze golf swings.<\/p>\n

Apple also needs to ensure that the watch gets the types of essential \u201ckiller apps\u201d that propelled the iPhone into an extension of ourselves. For now, it\u2019s sometimes easier to just pull out the phone, and there\u2019s no app you absolutely need the watch for. With phones, you now have maps, cameras and other essentials.<\/p>\n

It might be hard to remember, but the first iPhone in 2007 was just a little more than a phone. Apps from outside companies didn\u2019t come until Apple launched its app store the following year \u2013 with just 500 apps. Now, it has over a million. At first, iPhone apps were dumbed-down versions of websites. Now many apps, such as Instagram, do more than what\u2019s possible over Web browsers.<\/p>\n

Apple Watch doesn\u2019t subject owners to ridicule the way Google Glass had, yet it\u2019s still, in essence, a computer on your wrist. Yes, the Apple Watch comes in multiple sizes, materials and bands \u2013 54 configurations in all \u2013 and other companies sell additional bands. But the watch isn\u2019t stylish enough for everyone and won\u2019t match every outfit.<\/p>\n

The watch could ultimately be more than just a Rolex for the tech-savvy set. But for that to happen, Apple needs to show how the benefits of wearing a watch outweigh the hassles of wearing a watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK: For all those who hailed the iPhone as the \u201cJesus Phone\u201d in 2007, the Apple Watch\u2019s arrival has hardly been the second coming. Sure, it can do many useful, even delightful things, such as showing us incoming texts and email, tracking our heart rate during exercise or letting us send digital doodles to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}