Sunday, February 7, 2016

Stop Watch

Marco Arment:

The Apple Watch is a confused product, designed like a tiny iPhone, which is as misguided as it would’ve been to design the iPhone with the Mac’s UI and app structure. The result is promising, but clunky and slow. It could be so great at its three most useful functions — notifications, activity tracking, and timekeeping with robust complications — if only they were more reliable and better executed. Someday, I hope they are.

To be great, the Apple Watch needs to be rethought to do less, better. I see no signs that Apple is heading in this direction, but never say never.

[…]

Apple has aggressively pushed the Apple Watch as high fashion, but it’s simply not. It’s a utility watch, much like quartz watches, that has many useful functions and can be made to look very nice but won’t ever be a prestigious fashion item. There’s no shame in that. The sooner Apple realizes this and lets the Watch be what it really is, the better.

Brent Simmons:

Some time last week my iPhone started prompting me frequently to re-enter my iCloud password. And then my Watch started doing the same, about once a minute — with a little tap on the wrist each time.

Obviously I did re-enter my password — and have done so a dozen or so times now — but it doesn’t seem to matter.

John Gruber:

Lots of interesting tidbits, including the fact that Apple Watch sold better in its first holiday quarter than the original iPhone did in 2007.

Update (2016-02-10): Nick Heer:

I find these two articles, which were published within days of each other, completely compelling in their disagreement. Arment is a long-time tech guy who does not find Apple’s effort good enough — in many places, he sees it as unfinished. Forster, meanwhile, is someone who wrote a book on Cartier’s watches, and is used to wearing tiny lumps of metal on his wrist that are worth more than a car.

1 Comment RSS · Twitter

"Some time last week my iPhone started prompting me frequently to re-enter my iCloud password."

Very annoying problem that can also happens on a Mac. On the Mac, the only solution is to disable iCloud from the Pref pane and then re-enable it. The additional issue on the Mac is that there's nothing in the bugging alert requesting the password that proves it's a legit alert from Apple and not a malware that would try to steal your iCloud, FaceTime or Messages passwords.

Leave a Comment