26 Apr 2015
After work on Friday night, I came into possession of a 42mm Apple Watch Sport in Space Gray.
I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. One second I was telling my girlfriend and everyone who would ask that I was almost certainly going to wait until Gen 2. Less then 24 hours later I was handing over $399 (plus tax) of my hard earned cash, resting my thumb on a circle within a gold ring on my iPhone. And just like that, I committed to buying an Apple Watch. It’s crazy how easy it is to give away one’s pay check these days.
I’m still kind of shocked it showed up so soon. I was a frequent visitor of /r/AppleWatch over the last week, and to date it still seems like more people have yet to get theirs then have them. We still don’t have exact numbers (with most estimates seem to be hedging around the 1 million units shipped range), but we do know Apple was absolutely unable to keep up with demand with the most recent orders not slated to hit customers’ doorsteps until June. And we’re only talking about online orders, here. Apple’s stock is so limited that a retail store launch is still apparently months away from being a reality.
The package was big, really big. Like most people familiar with Apple, I’ve become accustomed to teeny tiny, minimal packages that barely have enough room for the product and its assorted accessories. Not so with the Watch; my Sport Watch was packaged in a narrow, long box with plenty of space to spare. The first thing you’ll see when you open your box is, well, another box. To protect the device, Apple decided to place the watch laying (with band on) inside of a plastic jewelry-like box that I’ve been told bares a striking resemblance to a Swatch brand Watch.
Under the box I found various pamphlets welcoming me to the Watch and teaching me how to put on my Sport band, and the two bundled accessories; the familiar USB charging block that’s been included with every iPhone since the iPhone 3GS and the charging cable. Despite being compatible with most Bluetooth headphones, you won’t find any in the box. If you were hoping to leave your phone at home while on your evening run, you’ll want to invest in a pair. (I hear Apple’s own Beats Powerbeats 2 Wireless are pretty good, but I have no experience one way or the other.)
Setup was incredibly easy and one of the most Apple-like experiences in recent Apple history. Turn on your Watch and it’ll begin to glow with a 3D rendering unique to your device more like art than a QR code. Open up the Apple Watch app on your iPhone (included in iOS 8.2 and newer), point your camera at your Watch, and boom. You’re synced. Setup from that point on is straightforward - set up your language, a passcode if you so choose, sync your apps and music and you’re done.
Remember that you’ll need an iPhone to complete setup and use your Watch; it is not compatible with an iPad, iPad mini, or iPod touch. I suspect this is a limitation of today’s available hardware rather than an inherent product strategy. Remember in 2007 when you need to plug your iPhone into your Mac and use iTunes to set it up and sync data? Think about how archaic that seems today. I suspect that in 7 years we’ll look back at today’s Apple Watch set up and syncing method in the same light.
The feeling I’ve gotten while actually using the Watch over the last 47 hours varies depending on what it’s doing for me. When the Watch is at its most useful, when it’s pushing over text messages and phone calls, reminders and event notifications - when I glance at my wrist for the weather, or the score of the ball game, or to check when the next episode of Gotham is on, that feeling is best described as “whoa.” At its best, it’s the same feeling I got when I first started carrying around my iPhone; so much information, available so easily. It’s so useful (and fun) that it’s actually created a new problem for me - I’m already less likely to remember to grab my phone before I go somewhere. I’m genuinely worried I’m going to leave my phone on this table after I finish my coffee in a little while while I pause my music with my Watch.
That’s one side of the coin, but there’s another. When the watch is not acting as a hub for my information, when I need to do something more in depth, when I need to create rather than consume, the Watch becomes fashion rather than utility. And as fashion, watches aren’t really my thing. The Sport band is hard to put on and, frankly, a little uncomfortable against my wrist when worn as tightly as it needs to be for the heart rate monitor to work. I’ve already become increasingly paranoid about the condition of my Watch in a worrying way. Is that a scuff? Was that a scratch? Ugh, those smudges. I already freak over the condition of my phone, and I suspect my paranoia surrounding the condition of the Watch is something that will linger. I know I’ll need to get over it, and I know I won’t be able to.
I just took a break from writing; the Watch let me know that I’ve been sitting for far too long, and I need to stand up to avoid becoming a human potato. The Watch is more demanding than most college professors I’ve had. Stand up - you’re so close to completing your standing goal (whatever that is). You should go for a walk, you need to burn 350 calories today. Yes, I will try to get some exercise - no, not today, maybe tomorrow.
What I loved about my Fitbit is that I felt like it worked for me, and I didn’t work for it. I decided when I wanted to stand up and walk around, and when I did it graciously counted those steps for me. The Apple Watch feels like we have the opposite relationship. It’s telling me to do things rather than helping me do them on my own time. That’s fine - and probably better - in its own way. There’s a reason I’ve gained some weight while wearing my Fitbit. The issue isn’t about the Apple Watch’s utility as a fitness tracker, it’s with its presentation. I want to feel less burdened with walking and more encoruaged to walk. I’m not going to propose how Apple solve this problem, because I don’t know how to accomplish it. It’s a tall order. But I can tell it’s just not perfectly calibrated quite yet.
According to David Pierce’s excellent iPhone Killer: The Secret History of the Apple Watch, Apple designed and scrapped the Watch OS user experience numerous times before settling on what the company revealed to the world in September of 2014 and shipped last week. That doesn’t surprise me. Watch OS 1.0 represents the single best smartwatch user experience shipped to date. Put quite frankly, Google and Samsung better be going back to the drawing board.
Just like iPhone OS 1.0 on the original iPhone gave the impression that Apple understood how the ideal smartphone should work, rather than how it historically did work, the Apple Watch feels just right. Folks from The Verge has repeated over and over again that they found the Watch confusing, hard to learn, and hard to put into practice. That’s their prerogative. They’ve been saying that since that original September keynote. Design is inherently subjective, but I think they’re wrong.
When the first iPhone came out, nobody instinctively just knew to pinch to zoom, how to properly scroll with a flick of your finger, how to pull to refresh. These were things that we needed to be taught; habits needed to be broken, concepts needed to be learnt. A smartphone platform without stylus support? Hah. Yesterday I showed someone the Apple Watch, and I noticed that they tried to pinch to zoom on a photo to make it larger, which doesn’t work. A touchscreen device without pinch to zoom? Hah. Then I told them to try the Digital Crown, which zoomed the photo in exactly where they wanted it. They didn’t try to pinch to zoom again.
It all works so well, and there’s just so many moments of that classic Apple design that makes it a joy to use. The way that the Haptic Engine subtly, silently, but distinctively taps you on the wrist when you’ve got a text message. The tap you get when you scrolled to the bottom of a view. The way the physical Digital Crown feels when you spin it; the way the software moves perfectly in time with that spinning.
At its introduction last September, Apple CEO Tim Cook smiled as he claimed that the Apple Watch represents the next revolution for Apple. I’m not qualified to determine what the eventual size of the Apple Watch market will be, nor the smartwatch market as a whole. Maybe it’ll become the next iPhone - a smash hit, catching the world on fire and getting everyone talking. That’s certainly possible. I’ve already had people come up to me and excitedly say, “Is that the Apple Watch!?” out in public. That’s the same reaction I got when I first bought my iPhone in 2007.
It’s also possible that the Apple Watch will represent “Tim Cook’s Newton” - an exciting new product line with a lot of promise that, ultimately, will fail to break into the mainstream and remain a fringe product, never to be adapted by the masses. That’s also certainly possible. I’ve already had people claim it’s too expensive, or tell me that their phone does everything that their Watch does so why bother?
All I know for sure is, personally, 47 hours in I’m impressed. At times, it feels revolutionary. It also can feel nerve wracking to wear, slightly annoying with its notifications, incredibly intuitive, potentially redundant. Tim Cook views the Apple Watch as the future of Apple. But it remains to be seen if the Apple Watch, or even just the smartwatch, is the future of intimate communication.
Oh, excuse me. My Watch says I need to stand up and walk around now. I’ll be right back.
17 Mar 2015
To take a solid swing at the future of the Mac lineup, you need only to take a look at the new Apple MacBook, released to much online chatter at Apple’s “Spring Forward” event last month. Apple’s newest laptop takes the blueprint Apple has established and honed over generations with the MacBook Air and takes it to the next level.
MagSafe, the traditional USB 3.0 form factor, Thunderbolt, and SD card slots are all out; USB 3.1 Type C and the pure, unadulterated allure of thinness are in. It’s clear how Apple thinks customers will use their computers in the very near future, and the company has shaped the new MacBook in that image. Tomorrow’s users won’t even think of plugging in a drive to copy files to. They’ll be doing that (and everything else) on the cloud.
I just so happen to be in the market for a new notebook, so I paid pretty close attention to the new MacBook when it was first showcased. While I’m certain that this is not the notebook for me (though, as Jason Snell points out, it may be the notebook for many) given the restraints of the processor, RAM, and screen size, I still find the new MacBook interesting because template will trickle up to not only future MacBooks, likely replacing the MacBook Air line, but also to the MacBook Pro that could very well be for me.
Today’s MacBook Pro is essentially built on the foundation that the MacBook Air first established in 2010, and tomorrow’s MacBook Pro will be built on this new MacBook. If you can’t live without the traditional USB 3.0 form factor, HDMI, or Thunderbolt (all two of you) you probably won’t be happy with what’s coming. I’m not entirely sure if the next-generation MacBook Pro will be the MacBook Pro 15-inch update we get at WWDC ’15 in June, but I can’t see the current MacBook Pro design being used much longer. While working through my thoughts, I put together this mockup of what a next-generation MacBook Pro could look like.
The true next-generation MacBook Pro, whenever that drops, will likely both look and work like a bigger, beefier MacBook. I can imagine it coming in the same three colors – silver, space gray, and gold – and it’ll be not insignificantly thinner than today’s models. I can completely see Apple killing off MagSafe, USB 3.0, HDMI, and Thunderbolt much to the chagrin of those who see those as essentials in a true “pro” machine.
Instead of the suite of traditional ports, we’ll be treated to that just one port to rule them all – USB 3.1 Type C. Only, unlike on the MacBook, I can’t see Apple giving us just a single USB port; I’ll throw professionals a bone and suggest that we’ll get two, so you can still use a single accessory while charging the device. While the MacBook gets “all-day” battery life meaning most people will need to plug in once a day at most, it’s simply unrealistic to expect a MacBook Pro of any sort to get that impressive of battery life, especially when under a heavy workload. Apple will need to allow people to continue to work even when they’re plugged in, hence the second port.
Then there are the givens, of course. Just like the newly updated 13-inch MacBook Pro, a next generation model would include the new Force Touch trackpad. The other major MacBook innovation we’re likely to see is the new, ultra-stable “butterfly” style keyboard (complete with keys featuring the San Francisco typeface). I’d expect both of these innovations to make their way to the rest of Apple’s lineup where applicable by the end of, say, 2016; including Force Touch on all iOS devices.
Again, this may not be the new MacBook Pro you see later this year. Perhaps Apple has a smaller update in mind for the Late 2015 MacBook Pro 15inch, an incremental update more in line with the new 13-inch that debuted at last week’s event. It’s certainly possible. But I would argue that history certainly suggests that the 15-inch MacBook Pro will be the first of the line to get the new updates; Apple has traditionally used the 15-inch as a springboard for the rest of the MacBook Pro line, bringing new functionally and designs to that model before updating the rest of the line later. The 15-inch was the very first MacBook Pro to premiere back in 2006, and it was also the first to go Retina in 2012.
Instead, my gut tells me that the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a stopgap solution to bring Broadwell and Force Touch – two of the easiest upgrades to bring without a major redesign – to the 13-inch model before introducing a next-generation model late fall, perhaps at a potential October 2015 event. That would give Apple a couple of months to focus on only the 13-inch model following the release of a next-generation 15-inch model.
08 Mar 2015
I make some bold predictions over at Haverzine.
This year had to be different. When Apple announced the Apple Watch at last September’s media event, it was also announcing its first new product category since the iPad in 2010. It was announcing a product unlike one ever to come out of Apple; intimately customizable, from watch face to watch band to watch price. Are you in the market for the potentially five figure Apple Watch Edition, by any chance?
The Apple Watch makes predicting Monday’s event impossible. Traditionally, anybody who knew how to read Apple’s product release cycle and what type of product they traditionally released could make fairly accurate predictions on what to expect – it’s why we’ve been correct in all but one of our nearly twenty predictions thus far. This time, the only thing we can know for sure is that the Apple Watch is coming. Everything else?
Let’s, just this once, take some wild guesses.
This was a doozy, and probably the most difficult “What to realistically expect” post in the series. But I feel good about most of those predictions.
02 Feb 2015
I feel comfortable enough to make a public announcement: I, Brian William Hough of Massachusetts, New England, USA (go Patriots!), have been suffering from a severe bout of writer’s block.
I was self-diagnosed in the latter month of 2014. The condition has continued throughout most of the new year, and now I’m treating this affliction with the only prescription that that may actually have a shot of working, eventually, hopefully. Writing.
Maya Angelou, Mark Twain, and countless of other authors around the world agree: when you’re struggling with Writer’s Block, the best cure in the world is to simply struggle through it and keep writing. Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, has a really inspirational (and also somewhat aggrevating) quote on the subject:
Writing is a job. Some days you don’t feel like doing your job. But there’s no ‘teacher’s block’ or ‘dentist’s block.’ I cannot figure out why we have created this mysterious phrase only for writers.
I’ve always considered myself a writer of some shape or form. Whether it be school essays, short stories, novel attempts, brain blasts, journalistic writing, whatever - I enjoy writing, and really, what makes someone a writer more than the act of enjoying writing? But lately, I haven’t felt like much of a writer, because at some point, to be considered a writer, one must actually write.
If I’m going to continue considering myself a writer, then it’s time I do what the writers do and just try to force myself to write. So the goal is this: I, Brian William Hough of Massachusetts, New England, USA (go Patriots!), will no longer suffer from writer’s block, but I will benefit from it. I will write as much as I can, as often as I can. I will post - on here, on Haverzine, maybe elsewhere (who knows) - numerous times a week.
I will write about my day, I will write about why cats are better than dogs. I will write about why dogs are better than cats, and I’ll write about why both are significantly worse than hedgehogs.
I will write about anything that, to be most plain, I feel like writing about. If you want to keep track of all my writing, definitely follow me on Twitter at @bwhough - I’ll definitely link out to pieces as they’re published. But if nobody reads them, that’s ok, too. Because I’m a writer, and at some point, to be considered a writer, one must actually write.
19 Nov 2014
The iPhone annual lineup, incredibly predictable in years past, has seen many shakeups lately. 2011 and prior saw Apple release a single new iPhone, price it at $199, and keep the previous two generations around at reduced price points of $99 and $0-on-contract.
Then along came the iPhone 5c. For the first time ever, Apple released and promoted not one, but two new models. The iPhone 5s was crowned the logical successor to the iPhone 5 and took over the $199 spot in the lineup, while the iPhone 5c replaced the iPhone 5, taking the $99 spot. The iPhone 4s stuck around at $0-on-contract.
This year’s iPhone lineup has only complicated things further. Apple has returned to the strategy of keeping older models around at reduced prices, but added a new wrinkle by releasing not only a high end iPhone at $199, but also a larger one - the iPhone 6 Plus - at $299.
This put Apple in the peculiar position of selling not one iPhone size, but three - a 4.0” model (the 5s), a 4.7” model (the 6), and a 5.5” model (the 6 Plus). While this gives potential iPhone owners three different sizes to consider, not all iPhones are created equal. Since the iPhone 5s is last year’s model, it lacks some functionality found in the iPhone 6 series - namely, an improved camera, a graphical processing power boost, and Apple Pay.
The question then, of course, is what Apple will do next year. With Apple having broke typical patterns for two years in a row, we can’t even guess at what next year’s lineup will look like. We’ll likely see, at the very least, two completely new iPhones with A9 processors and improved cameras (perhaps greatly improved); one at 4.7-inches, the other at 5.5-inches. For posterity’s sake, let’s call these the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus.
Apple could then bring both iPhone 6 series devices down one slot each, making the iPhone 6 Apple’s new $99 phone and the iPhone 6 Plus the same price as the hypothetical iPhone 6s, $199. This, I think, would be a mistake. Given the iPhone 6 Plus’s status at the top of the food chain, I think it makes sense to nix the iPhone 6 Plus and leave the iPhone 6s as the only $199 device. The iPhone 5s would then sit at the bottom with that $0-on-contract price.
The issue with that, however, is that Apple would be sending a clear message that the 4-inch size is to be phased out. I think this would be a huge mistake. Apple still sells a butt load of 4-inch iPhones, and a not small group of people actually prefer that size to even the 4.7-inch devices. It would essentially be a death sentence to the entire size category - an admission that 4-inch devices are truly dead.
To me, it’s clear that Apple should keep the 4-inch models around as a size that sees consistent hardware updates. In an ideal world, I think Apple’s 2015 iPhone lineup could - and maybe should - look like this:
iPhone 6s Plus ($299)
iPhone 6s ($199)
“iPhone 6 Mini” ($99)
“iPhone 5cs” ($0)
In this scenerio, the “iPhone 6 Mini” enters the fold as a new device. The 6 Mini would share the iPhone 6’s design language, a 4-inch display, an A8 processor, NFC, and camera similar to this year’s iPhone. Giving it a year old processor would allow it to keep the $99 price tag while still giving 4-inch customers all the real world advantages of the bigger iPhones. Fans of the 4.7-inch / 5.5-inch devices will likely have no problem paying $199 / $299.
The one I’m least sue of is the one I’m calling the “iPhone 5cs” - not just because that’s a clumsy name. The iPhone 5c’s plastic body does have certain advantages, both in demographics as well as cost. I think that it would be wise if Apple kept that design around; but that, of course, will require that Apple engineer a new device. The iPhone 5c is simply too old to stick around for another year (I say as Apple continues to sell the even older first generation iPad mini). The best solution then would be to basically put the iPhone 5s brains into an iPhone 5c body. It would have the same A7 processor and Touch ID as the iPhone 5s, without the aluminum frame.
This plan would have some repurcussions, of course. This would mark the first time that Apple releases not just one new iPhone - not two - but four, each with a new manufacturing line, with marketing requirements, with roll-out complications. It would be a massive undertaking, one that perhaps Apple isn’t willing - or maybe even ready - to take in in terms of scale.
Maybe I’m just a little stuck in my ways, but it would be such a shame to see the 4-inch size whither and die while it has still so much worth in Apple’s lineup. Maybe, though, that next-generation smartphone owners really will have no need for 4-inch devices. Maybe the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 is the perfect size; maybe it’s even too small, and maybe we’ll even start to see a trend towards the even bigger iPhone 6 Plus. It could happen. But I can’t help but feel we’d be losing somethin great in the process.
…says I, the man with an iPhone 6 Plus.