Apple Hasn’t Solved the Smart Watch Dilemma

[ed. Ugh. I'm with Felix. See also: Apple's Watch is Like a High-Tech Mood Ring]

There’s a decent rule of thumb, when it comes to anything Apple: When it introduces something brand new, don’t buy version 1.o. Wait until the second or third version instead, you’ll be much better off.

Does anybody remember OS 10.0? It was a disaster, and even people who installed it spent 90% of their time in OS 9 instead. The very first MacBook Air? An underpowered exercise in frustration. The original iPad? Heavy and clunky. The original iPod? Was not only heavy and clunky and expensive, it was also tied to the Macintosh, and didn’t work either alone or with a PC.

The best-case scenario for the Apple Watch is that the product we saw announced today will eventually iterate into something really great. Because anybody who’s ever worn a watch will tell you: this thing has serious problems.

For one thing, Apple has been worryingly silent on the subject of battery life, but there’s no indication that this thing will last even 24 hours. A watch’s battery should last for months; even watches which don’t have batteries will last for a couple of days, if you have to wind them manually, or indefinitely, if they’re automatic and all you have to do is wear them.

Watches might be complicated on the inside, but they’re simple on the outside, and they should never come with a charging cable. (To make matters worse, even though the Apple Watch only works if you have an iPhone, the iPhone charging cable will not charge the Apple Watch; you need a different charging cable entirely.) (...)

Behind all the shiny options (sport! gold! different straps!) the watch itself is always pretty much the same: thick, clunky, a computer strapped to your wrist. Which is great, I suppose, if you’re the kind of person who likes to strap a computer to your wrist.

by Felix Salmon, Medium |  Read more:

Image: uncredited