It will be a long time — March 2015 perhaps — before you and your better half will be able to try out Apple’s entry into the fast-fashion business with the Apple Watch. I am in the camp of skeptics till proven otherwise — mostly because I find many flaws with the device, think of it as incomplete and behavior challenged first version. If I am wrong, the Internet will remind me — it always does have a way of making you look like a fool (or smart).
Still, that hasn’t prevented people from writing about the Apple Watch. The Apple PR machine is still as effective as ever. Here are seven articles which I think are intelligent, eloquent and worth your attention.
- Vanessa Friedman, fashion editor of The New York Times asks the question, does the Apple Watch look good? and offers a fashion point of view. “It makes you reimagine what a watch that you might wear everyday should do. It speaks the visual language of ye olde-fashioned watches,” she writes, pointing out the irony of it all.
- The New York magazine’s Kevin Roose writes about the subliminal things Apple will do to make you buy its smart watch. He points out that “Apple gadgets have always been, and will always be, pure fetish objects” and that is what it has going for the Watch.
- Nicholas Carr points out that just as clocks redefined our relationship with time, the new shiny handcuffs are going to redefine our relationship with our world. What he means — we are going to be a lot more distracted, though I wonder if it is possible to be any more distracted.
- The essential design of the watch makes sense to Khoi Vinh, a well known designer based in New York, and also author of one of the better blogs about design thinking.
- Imran Amed, editor of The Business of Fashion outlines 6 core beliefs behind the new Apple watch. Given that he was close to Angela Ahrendts former CEO of Burberry, let’s just say he must have been briefed in detail on the watch. While I find his take refreshing, I do think it fails to ask the tough questions.
- I hate linking to Esquire but John Hendrickson, is asking all the pertinent questions about what’s right and what’s wrong with Apple watch.
- And last, but not the least, here is a measured and very balanced take from KevinTofel who talks about the challenges facing Apple Watch are the same challenges facing other so called smart watches.
Before I go, I think it is testament to Apple’s ability as “market maker” that despite the presence of many many smart watches, we are starting to see conversations in context of fashion, luxury and lifestyle.
My personal take as a lover of extremely thin and stylish mechanical watches is that it’s too bulky to wear. If it doesn’t slip inside my dress shirt cuff then there is absolutely no way I’d wear one in a business setting.
In a casual setting, out being active, shopping, hiking, etc, it might be fun to have on my wrist if I could leave my phone at home, but oops, the current design requires a tethered iPhone.
So my needs: thinner and unteathered. Let’s hope they are already at work on v2.
Your last sentence nails it, Om. Regardless how the procession towards acceptance or rejection, facility, TC and Apple are now a realistic voice in defining a new aspect of fashion and utility. No one else in tech has done that.
The Apple Watch is Apple’s new product strategy for the iPhone. Next up is the Apple Camera (which can also be worn around a person’s neck or wrist in a hipster’ish sort of way). No need for a new device to run apps as the iPod is already available for that (and comes with a wrist strap). Removing the time-telling, photo-taking and app-running out of the iPhone into separate products the iPhone will become what it was always meant to be – a phone to talk with people. Each separated-out wearable product can be charged for which means that the parts are of greater value than the sum and keeps the cash tills humming.
For the love of whichever higher power, is the Apple Watch really what Apple is about? Is this what the biggest company in the world aspires to? My prediction is that in 12+ months time, it will be seen as a vanity project but Cook will survive as the cash continues to roll in from the other products.