Apple Shows How To Make A Smartwatch Completely Wrong
By slapping a remodeled phone on your wrist
Apple shows a great example on how to do a smartwatch completely wrong with the Apple watch.
The wearable industry, especially the smartwatch is still in its very infant stage. The first ever widely available and well known smartwatch, Pebble, is released in 2013. Since then the connected wearable war has begun. Nearly every big corporations in the smartphone industry, such as Samsung, Sony, LG, released different wearable devices, mostly smartwatches, to try to gain market share and popularity in the wearable market. However, no one actually successfully achieved this objective. Not many people cared about the smartwatches and the way that the wearables could change the way that they interact and live with their smartphones.
For a typical consumer, they buy a gadget to be able to perform certain tasks. They just want to get things done. If they already have a way to do things and satisfy their needs, there’s no reason to spend more money to buy something to do the same thing with the same way, unless it does it better and/or faster. Apple showed the world how to make a completely nonsense device that tried to but impossible to replace your phone.
The Apple Watch tries to bring every task you do on your iPhone to your wrist. However, it provides a smaller screen estate, less processing power, less battery life, but with a higher price tag. An Apple Watch price ranges from $349, up to ridiculously $17,000. Potential buyers should know even Apple marketed their watch as a luxury product for fashionable people, it’s unapologetically a piece of nerdy gadget, which will be obsolete in less than a maximum of 2 years, maybe less. It won’t be resellable at a higher price after 2 years. It might not work anymore with your new iPhone after 5 years or less.
I won’t disagree or argue on the approach of Apple’s marketing strategy. They are selling their nerdy product as a fashionable luxurious accessory, but at the same time, they are selling away their credibility. Every smartwatch available in the market is doing mostly the same thing with their respective connected smartphone ecosystems. Android Wear and Android works mostly the same way Apple’s Watch OS with iOS. Apple actually didn't bring any innovation or revolutionize the way we’re interacting with our phones, and those gimmicky and creepy “digital touch” functions don’t count.
To do a smartwatch right, instead of being a complete replicate of your phone on your wrist, should be an extension of it instead. It should make the tasks that you do on your phone simpler, easier, even faster. A perfect example of a smartwatch is the Pebble. It reorganizes your contents and functions from your phone to your wrist, which makes things simpler and easier. It only notifies and shows you what’s really important. It also only enables you to do things that could be simplified, but not squeezing everything on your phone onto your wrist which is just ridiculous. And the Pebbles also cost much less, even the new Pebble Time Steel brings much more value to the consumers.
I might sound like an Apple hater, however I’m hating them objectively. So Apple, stop telling your users your products are innovative and could help people live easier, because they are not innovative anymore and it doesn’t make people live easier. Instead start learning from others, as you are really losing your mojo since you lost your God, Steve.
