Today,
it seemed as if every tech journalist in America was crammed into
Apple’s auditorium. We were there to see the unveiling of the Apple
Watch, the first new product category from Apple since the iPad.
The
Flint Center, where Apple introduced the Apple Watch … right before it
became a sea of tech journalists. (Stephan Lam/Reuters)
Yes,
the new phones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, are intriguing, and
I’ll be reviewing them soon. But the watch stole the show.
When can you get it? Not today.
In fact, it’s a long way from being ready. We don’t even know when it
will come out, except that it will be in 2015 sometime.
But I did get a chance to wear
one briefly, use it for a little bit, and learn more about it in a
private session. Here’s what I know.
What Apple said publiclyThe
Apple Watch is a gorgeous little metal square with rounded edges; at
first glance, it could be a tiny iPod Shuffle strapped to your wrist.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
But,
up close, you realize that this watch is much smaller and more
beautiful than most previous smartwatches. It’s available in two screen
sizes: 1.5 and 1.7 inches.
Within each size, there are three
models: Apple Watch (stainless steel body, sapphire back); Apple Watch
Sport, built to be tougher and 30 percent lighter (aluminum body,
stronger “ion-exchange” glass front, plastic composite back instead of
sapphire); and the gold Edition watch, which is 18-karat gold (including
the buckle on the band) and quite heavy.
There are six different band
styles in various materials (leather, plastic, stainless steel). On the
bottom of the watch, at each end, there’s a tiny release button that
lets you make quick band changes without a Phillips screwdriver or a
visit to a jeweler.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
That means there are a lot of
options. It’s unlike Apple, really. This is the company usually known
for designing products that say, “Here’s the look we’ve chosen for you.”
You can control the watch using at least four methods. First, there’s Siri. You can dictate text or give commands.
Second, there’s a remarkable
“Digital Crown” on the right side (sorry, lefties). Turning the knurled
knob zooms in or out of the Home screen, or moves the highlighting
through various onscreen options so you can change them. You can also
click this crown as an OK button.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
Third, there’s a big button below
the crown, again on the right side. Apple showed only one function for
it: Press it to summon the icons of the people you communicate with most
frequently, in order to send them texts, drawings, or — this is so cool
— tap signals.
For example, when you want to
leave a party, tap three times on your watch’s screen. Your spouse feels
the same tapping pattern on her wrist, elsewhere in the room. Or you
could send a silent “I love you” tap to your spouse’s wrist when you’re
thousands of miles apart.
You’ll also press the big side
button twice when you want to pay for something using Apple’s new Apple
Pay wireless payment system (see below).
Finally, you can touch the screen: Tap buttons, tap app icons to open them, and so on.
Interestingly, this screen knows how hard you’re tapping — I haven’t seen that before in watches or phones. Pressing hard will serve as a “right-click” — to open a shortcut menu full of options.
There’s a home screen full of
tiny round app icons. You can zoom in and out by turning the crown, but
there are no labels on these icons, which sounds like it could be
problematic.
(Siemond Chan/Yahoo Tech)
When
you raise your wrist, the darkened screen lights up to show you the
time, using your chosen watch face. From there, you swipe up to see
Glance: a series of horizontally scrolling info-screens like weather,
GPS, stocks, calendar, and so on. (Yes, reminiscent of Android Wear.)
You can specify which of these you want to see, and developers can write
new ones.
On the back: four round lenses.
Light is sent through two of them, and the other two are infrared
sensors. Together, they examine the blood flow through your skin, for
the purpose of determining your pulse rate.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
The charger is a magnetic disk
that snaps right onto the back. You don’t have to fuss with prongs or
getting the orientation right. It’s even better than the MagSafe adapter
on MacBooks.
What Apple said privatelyApple
reps offered individual briefings to some tech writers; there I learned
a bunch of stuff that Apple didn’t say in its keynote.
For example, the Apple Watch is water resistant.
Sweating, wearing it in the rain, washing your hands, or cooking with
it are fine. Take it off before you swim or get in the shower, though.
What you also couldn’t tell in the keynote presentation was how this watch feels and sounds. It
issues little vibrations of various intensities (it can control both
the intensity and the rapidity of the vibration), which will have
different meanings. For example, one vibration means “turn left” when
you’re using GPS, and another means “turn right.” The watch is light and
comfortable, and its sounds are clear and full of personality.
There’s a speaker and a
microphone on the watch. You can, in fact, take and make phone calls
from your wrist, Dick Tracy style. That goofy ergonomic position was
first made laughable by the Samsung Gear watches, so I’m not sure how
many people will use it — but you can do it if you want.
I also learned that you’ll load
apps onto the watch from your iPhone. And you’ll be able to rearrange
those app icons into little clusters on the home screen. (To do that,
you’ll use the same technique you do on the iPhone: Hold your finger
down until they start wiggling, and then drag them around.)
Oh, and there’s a “Ping My Phone”
button on the watch, which will make your phone beep. Great when you’ve
lost your phone somewhere in the house.
The fanciest model, the gold
Apple Phone Edition, comes in a gorgeous jewelry box — which doubles as a
charger. The back of the box has a Lightning connector, and the inside
of the box has the watch’s magnetic round charger pad, standing
vertically. So as you retire each night, you can just lay your gold
watch into its case and let it charge.
What Apple knows but hasn’t saidThere’s quite a bit that we don’t know yet about the Apple Watch, and Apple isn’t yet saying. For example:
• Technical specs. We don’t know the screen resolution or the screen technology. We don’t know how much storage is inside or the processor speed.
• Battery life. We don’t know the battery life. (I’ll bet on “one day.”)
• What that big button is for. That
big button below the crown: What’s it for? We know that it summons your
friends’ icons or lets you pay for things. But it will have other
functions, as yet unannounced.
• How you’ll manage the phone. How
do you delete apps from the watch? How do you change the settings? How
do you specify which Glance screens you want to see? I’m guessing you’ll
use a special phone app, but Apple isn’t saying yet.
What even Apple doesn’t knowLots of the Apple Watch’s systems aren’t working yet. Pricing and models haven’t been ironed out.
We know that the least expensive
watch will cost $350. But there are a bunch of models; how expensive
they’ll go, Apple hasn’t determined yet.
Will you be able to mix and match bands with watches? Not decided yet.
Apple hasn’t yet determined
exactly which features will make the cut, either. For example, will the
watch offer geofencing (where it beeps to let you know that you’ve
wandered away from your phone, leaving it on a restaurant table)?
Finally, the big one: Nobody knows if the Apple Watch will be a hit.
Smartwatches so far have failed
with the public because they were ugly, they were big and bulky, or they
didn’t do much more than your phone could do. Or all three.
It’s clear that Apple has put
more thought into these factors than any other company so far. The Apple
Watch is by far the least gigantic fully capable smartwatch, and it’s
among the best looking.
Its reason for being
also seems better considered than previous smartwatches. It’s the health
monitoring. This watch keeps track of your heart rate as you exercise.
(And that’s as you exercise — continuously; you don’t have to
stop, hold still, and wait for it to take a sample, as on Samsung’s
watches.) It keeps track of how much time you spend standing. Moving.
Working out.
If the new Apple Pay system
catches on, that’s a natural for a smartwatch, too: Pay for something at
the register by waving your hand at a special wireless payment
terminal. (Apple says that 220,000 stores are already equipped and that
it’s working to sign up national chains like Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s,
Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Disney, and so on.)
Apple even said that your watch will double as a wireless hotel-room key at Starwood hotels. That’s cool.
But let’s remember that the most notable wrist trend in the past few years is people abandoning wristwatches. If the Apple Watch succeeds, it will have to overcome that tidal force.
And, of course, the Apple Watch
requires that you own an iPhone. It requires that you sign into the
Apple ecosystem. It won’t work if you’re among the hundreds of millions
of people who have Android phones (or the 23 people who have Windows
Phones).
In other words, the new watch
won’t do anything to bring a truce between the Apple fans and the
Android fans (whose vitriol toward one another will be clearly visible
in the comments on this article).
The bottom line: Many questions
remain, but one thing is for sure. By blessing the Apple Watch with
great looks, small size, customizability, and reasons for existing on
your wrist, Apple has gone further than any other company — much further — in helping to launch the Dawn of the Smartwatch Era.Source: Yahoo TECH
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