"If you think Apple is polarizing today, you haven’t seen anything yet."
September 16, 2014 6:55 PM   Subscribe

When the prices of the steel and (especially) gold Apple Watches are announced, I expect the tech press to have the biggest collective shit fit in the history of Apple-versus-the-standard-tech-industry shit fits. The utilitarian mindset that asks “Why would anyone waste money on a gold watch?” isn’t going to be able to come to grips with what Apple is doing here. Apple watcher and polarizing writer John Gruber offers a long meditation on Apple's philosophy, the (as yet unannounced) pricing tiers of the Apple watch, the "smartwatch" market versus the "watch" market, and the new frontiers of wearable technology.
posted by RedOrGreen (148 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:59 PM on September 16, 2014 [34 favorites]


Yeah, plus I imagine an Apple watch being way more uncomfortable when hidden for two years in an anus.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:03 PM on September 16, 2014 [50 favorites]


The predicted outrage will be closely followed by another after the first teardowns happen and people throw a shit fit after it is revealed that apple charges 10 times what the watch costs to make, as if that has any real relevance.
posted by Dr. Twist at 7:03 PM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Moving upmarket where the margins are. It's the Apple Way, isn't it?
posted by notyou at 7:09 PM on September 16, 2014


It'll be like Virtu!!!

Can't you just see the fancy rose gold case you can pop your new iWatch into?

Except on the third iteration - whoops - apple wants a new size.
posted by JPD at 7:14 PM on September 16, 2014


well that's what I get for not reading the article before snarking.
posted by JPD at 7:14 PM on September 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


Once again, Ian Bogst summarizes my thoughts on the Apple Watch

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/future-ennui/380099/
posted by hellojed at 7:17 PM on September 16, 2014 [9 favorites]


The elephant in the room is that no fashionista would be caught dead wearing such an ugly watch face. And yes, I'm prepared to be proven wrong, as my predictive abilities are not the best.
posted by Yowser at 7:19 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I am going to make iWatch cases that are hot pink and covered in rhinestones.
posted by srboisvert at 7:21 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


While were at it, can I start a flame war on how ridiculously monstrously oversized the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are? Where am I supposed to buy my phones now?

Will I be stuck replacing parts in a 5S fir decades like I live in some sort of dystopian future?
posted by Yowser at 7:21 PM on September 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


So he's saying they're going to be more expensive than my plutonium Rolex? A lot more expensive?
posted by jfuller at 7:21 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


The elephant in the room is that no fashionista would be caught dead wearing such an ugly watch face.

A watch guys thoughts after playing with the apple watch
posted by shothotbot at 7:25 PM on September 16, 2014 [15 favorites]


I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.

It depends how much thought they have put into the connectors between the watch and the wristband. If you bought the gold wristband it would be nice if you can swap out the watch portion next year when everything gets upgraded. But I wouldn't make that bet with a watch face that definitely needs to get thinner and a company that doesn't mind making all your accessories obsolete in the name of progress. (This attitude is not always a bad thing, I'm kind of hoping that attitude keeps Swift from drowning in legacy problems like every other programming language).

The other question is if they have any sort of enforceable patent on the connectors. What's to stop third parties from making nice looking knockoff wristbands and eating up all that margin?
posted by Gary at 7:26 PM on September 16, 2014


Dr. Twist - followed by the inevitable debunking pointing out that the teardown price only included the bulk price of similar components without considering assembly, miniaturization, software, support or R&D.

The real problem with the Apple Watch is going to be that people can look at this, recognize all of that work building something which is about as good as the current tech is capable of and yet it still just isn't that compelling. There wasn't anything in the presentation which garnered more than a "oh, that's handy, I guess" – the iPhone gave you a first class web browser everywhere and now it's the ability to send someone your heartbeat?
posted by adamsc at 7:29 PM on September 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.

You don't buy a gold watch to tell the time. You buy it because you like the way it looks on your arm. And, of course, there is actual gold involved, even when it's dead.

Apple got that for most people, the jewelry aspect of the watch is a major factor, and for many people, it's the critical factor. That's why there are two sized, three case metals, and many bands, and that Milanese Loop band is just amazing looking -- and I'm a guy who doesn't wear jewelry at all. Apple knows that many people aren't going to wear an Apple Watch unless they like the way it looks -- and nobody agrees that one design looks good.

I think Gruber's not far off in saying $10K for the gold one. That's, well, that's cheap for a solid gold watch these days. I do think the stainless steel model will be closer to $500 than $1000, there's just not that much different in material price between jewelry grade stainless and jewelry grade aluminum alloys. I also wouldn't be surprised if the gold one was as low as $3000 -- one factor is just how much gold is in the thing?

But, seriously, have you looked at the prices on watches? If Apple sells the gold one for $3500, they are *seriously* undercutting every gold watch maker on the planet.

after it is revealed that apple charges 10 times what the watch costs to make,

Which would be a steal, actually. The Omega Speedmaster Professional, stainless steel, crystal dial, ranges from $3000 to $8000, depending on the band, and that's by no means the most expensive watch in the world. They don't cost anywhere near that much to make. Rolex? There are many good cars cheaper than a Gold Rolex watch.

This is an odd product for the tech world, because it is not aimed at the tech world at all. I'm a little flabbergasted by it. But judging it as a tech product would be a mistake, because it isn't going to be the tech world that makes this a success or failure.

There are way too many questions. It's clear to me that what we saw was half done, but because suppliers leak info, keeping the watch secret wasn't going to be possible. Plenty of people had the iPhone 6 details down because they saw suppliers building parts.

They announced this to preempt that, and, quite possibly, sneak in a few more models.

But, right now, we really don't *know* what it'll do, or how well it will do those things. We won't really know until sometime next year when people can actually get one and use it.

With the Apple Watch becoming a thing, Flavor Flav really needs to start wearing an iPad on a chain around his neck.

YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
posted by eriko at 7:29 PM on September 16, 2014 [18 favorites]


I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.

If you buy a fancy automatic watch they usually need to be serviced every few years. (My not so fancy watch is supposed to be serviced by the manufacturer every 4-5 years.) Apple could do the same thing, but instead of tuning gears, they'd just swap out the body for something thinner and faster.
posted by chunking express at 7:30 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.

But whatever the psychology of the calculation you or I paupers of the 99% make when we decide whether to buy a thing — whatever arcane combination of hedonic and utilitarian calculus we use — it's not the same as whatever the fuck the thought process is that ends in buying a $30,000 Rolex. Maybe Gruber is right and a $5,000 or $10,000 gold wristputer is an even better Veblen good because of its obsolescence, or maybe he's wrong and it's going to be a Cube-level flop (or a Twentieth-Anniversary Macintosh), but either way I'm pretty sure that introspection based on normal non-rich-person purchasing habits isn't going to provide the answer.
posted by RogerB at 7:31 PM on September 16, 2014 [8 favorites]


I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.

On the one hand, I completely agree with this. And on the other, I'm not so sure. I have a couple of mid-high-end watches, and the periodic service can cost $1k or more. So while I wouldn't want to throw them out after a few years, I also am not unaccustomed to putting more money into them on a periodic basis. So if there's some kind of upgrade program, it may be palatable.
posted by primethyme at 7:32 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


>I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand
>buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.

I am convinced Gruber is correct about this, by the way:
An idea that sprung to mind regarding the tension between multi-thousand dollar prices for gold watches and the short lifespan of computing technology: Apple could in theory offer significant trade-in pricing for years-old Apple Watches, based solely on the value of the gold alone. Or, perhaps the internals of the watch will be upgradeable. Apple is calling the S1 chip a “computer on a chip”, not a “system on a chip”. Take it in for servicing, and for a few hundred dollars, perhaps you’ll be able to replace your S1 for an S2 in a year, and an S3 the year after that..
Remember the point they made about all the internals being encased in resin - and yet the watch is only advertised as being basically "splash resistant"? The resin encasement is not about waterproofing - it's about physical integrity. The entire insides can be swapped out.
posted by kcds at 7:35 PM on September 16, 2014 [11 favorites]


Yowser: "Will I be stuck replacing parts in a 5S fir decades like I live in some sort of dystopian future?"

"like"
posted by boo_radley at 7:38 PM on September 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


I am going to make iWatch cases that are hot pink and covered in rhinestones.

I plan on going with cheap plastic in the shape of Boba Fett that flips up.
posted by downtohisturtles at 7:39 PM on September 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


I've worn a Pebble smart watch everyday since June. I did not want it but my wife thought I might and it made a nice gift. Everyone seems non-plused about receiving notifications on your wrist, but, I have to say that it is amazingly useful. I love it. I can see if my kids need me stat, or if it's just a hello, without demonstrably checking out of a meeting. That "glancibility" is handy in the car too. I think people who criticize the notifications system on pebble, android or apple watch probably aren't configuring notifications on their phones in a way that matches how they actually use notifications.
I can also control a playlist without reaching in my pocket or to a speaker, or to the cradle int the car. I can control the nest thermostat and get weather updates without grabbing and unlocking the phone.
It also has my favorite watch face ever: the time written out in English words. It saves me two steps in cognition, I think.
I'm bullish on wearable a because of my experience with Pebble. I would not have predicted it.
My pebble only needs charged every 4 days too!
posted by putzface_dickman at 7:39 PM on September 16, 2014 [15 favorites]


The only thing I want to know is: will it blend?
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:40 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


Ways I think this could fail.

1) Battery Life. Battery life is simple -- power draw vs. battery volume, and this battery is going to be small.

2) The UI is unusable.

3) They get rid of the Mickey watch face.

4) It's nothing but what everyone else does in a smart watch, in more expensive clothes.

Part of me wonders, though -- they made a big deal about the integrated chip. It seems the watch is that chip, a batter, the display, the case and the speaker.

Could they have made it possible to swap these out? "Want the Watch2? Send it to us with $XXX and we'll swap out the display and IC." They *must* have made the battery swappable. If you can keep the technology current, the case then becomes much more of a long-term thing.
posted by eriko at 7:41 PM on September 16, 2014


Remember the point they made about all the internals being encased in resin - and yet the watch is only advertised as being basically "splash resistant"? The resin encasement is not about waterproofing - it's about physical integrity. The entire insides can be swapped out.

I'd completely missed that. The only question is does that include the display? But you're absolutely right, the guts are almost certainly swappable.

I'll bet the backplate will be swappable as well, if they come up with new biosensors or whatnot.
posted by eriko at 7:43 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


You guys do realize that 1%er watch fetishists would not even look at at $10K watch. Big boys start at $100k plus. And yes, I think a rich chump would run to buy one given the chance. Will Apple allow PatekP to license one? (disclaimer- I just bought a $6 casio- works great)
posted by T10B at 7:43 PM on September 16, 2014


I'm kind of a really cheap low level watch dude. I have a couple of watches in the $100 range and a lot of fun cheap ones, but I know all about the ones that are in the next tax bracket and have a pretty solid wish list for the monster wall of automatic winders I will one day have installed on my private island.

This watch doesn't really do it for me because I like watch-watches... they can step outside the norm, but I kind of like my watches to be a little bit on the eternal side.

HOWEVER... I do kind of dig the idea of having a little moving image on my wrist... a little gently spinning planet or a slowly morphing geometric shape from some occult GIF tumblr... like those Harry Potter newspapers that just introduce subtle movement to a place you don't normally find it. That shit has really got me thinkin'!!

That feature isn't worth $350 to me personally, but plenty of people already pay more than they should for Tokyoflash watches that are just PRETENDING to give you a bunch of colorful and important data but barely functioning as timepieces so I think Apple's gonna do all right.
posted by SharkParty at 7:44 PM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


It strikes me that Apple doesn't really know what the Watch is for yet, either. Sure, it will have some core functionality: messages, payments, music, etc. But by announcing it now for release sometime next year what they are really doing is signaling to developers: get in on the next app-rush. Apple will deliver the platform and a pool of high-end, early adopter, somewhat frivolous consumers. That's their part.

It's just like with the iPhone. The first iPhone had some basic functionality (it was, after all, a phone), but most of what people consider core functionality for their smartphone today was likely unimaginable back in 2007, and much of it wasn't developed by Apple.
posted by 2bucksplus at 7:48 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


Here on Earth, we still think digital watches are pretty neat. Good thing we're mostly harmless.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:49 PM on September 16, 2014 [17 favorites]


I want a pocket watch with a stop-watch function, compass, personal recorder and mp3 player that's also my phone (blue-toothed ear-buds) with a mic that allows me to talk with the thing sitting on a surface in front of me.

Totally round, magic Steve, like you always pushed for.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:54 PM on September 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


Putting your boarding pass on the watch's screen with Passbook the minute you step into the airport could probably be a killer feature for the world traveler.
posted by Talez at 7:55 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I wanna know what the folks at Rolex, Casio, Nixon, etc. are thinking about. Us bozos with no skin in the game can say all we want. The folks with something to lose? I haven't heard a word. [disclaimer, I have also not looked for a word either. if you know of some words, please share them]
posted by oceanjesse at 7:55 PM on September 16, 2014




I think people who criticize the notifications system on pebble, android or apple watch probably aren't configuring notifications on their phones in a way that matches how they actually use notifications.

It seems like the Apple Watch would be mostly useful for power users.
posted by Flashman at 8:01 PM on September 16, 2014


oceanjesse: What Do The World's Top Watchmakers Think of Apple Watch?

They're not fans. Which you can either read as the expert opinions of people who work in the industry and know more about watches than anyone else, or you can read as the opinions of the people most threatened by the advent of smartwatches and who thus have the most reason to try to strangle them in the cradle. Gruber sees the latter (not terribly surprisingly, given where he's coming from). To some degree, I see his points; people have had similar reactions to Apple products every time a new one has been released. On the other hand, as a person who covets (but doesn't have anything like the money for) fancy watches, part of the appeal (for me, at least) is that you're buying something you could eventually pass down to your children, that could become an heirloom, and there doesn't seem to be any chance of that with the Apple Watch. They're attacking a new and very different market niche. It's going to be interesting to watch.
posted by protocoach at 8:02 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Also, I think Gruber has most everything right here. For that matter, apple probably does too.
posted by putzface_dickman at 8:03 PM on September 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


It is possible that Apple will offer upgrades on the electronics on the high end models. First sell you a $5000 Gold Apple Watch. Then every 18 months or so bring it back to the Genius bar for a $800 upgrade and service.
posted by humanfont at 8:03 PM on September 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


I don't see companies like Rolex and the other Swiss manufacturers caring too much. They probably don't think that someone will buy one of these instead of a Rolex. A company like Casio might care more, but they've presumably seen their market destroyed over the last 10 years as people stopped wearing watches anyway.
posted by markr at 8:06 PM on September 16, 2014


As for the upgradable thing. I guess it makes sense when you're selling a gold case which contains a significant portion of the watch's value, but it seems like it would be a very different direction for Apple to take over their usual way of doing things.
posted by markr at 8:08 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


The first upgrade to the watch guts would likely be a big reduction in volume of electronics, leaving room for more battery - as that's likely going to be a drawback with v1.0. Cool to think what features could get upgraded into your same physical device over time...
posted by parki at 8:15 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


My prediction:

Apple's watch will be a modest semi-success, a lot like Apple TV. It will putter along through many revisions, and it will have its diehard adherents, but never really take off. There will be many, many clones often selling for under $50 that are far more popular. But most people will continue to just not wear a watch.

Apple Pay will be a huge success and within 3 years it will be accepted at the majority of larger establishments, and extremely popular online. It will link up with banks, money-management tools, and new services that have interesting new ways to spend your money.
posted by miyabo at 8:16 PM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


I was an early adopter for the 1st gen iPad; I bought it the first week, back when most people still didn't get it. You would not believe the hostility I got about it from people who basically said I had too much money. And some of these were professional colleagues in roughly the same income bracket, in a very high-technology field.

I suspect that the Apple watch is going to engender a much more severe version of this at least at first, and the sight of the much pricier non-sport model will cause reactions comparable to Google Glass, despite the lack of a surveillance issue.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:26 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


I think everyone who is talking about swappable guts and replaceable parts is completely full of shit. I'm pretty comfortable saying this without doing any research into it whatsoever.

It's the perpetual crazy dream of the apple fanboy--that the new iPhone/Watch/whatever will be smaller, slimmer, and btw also please add huge sockets for the cpu, ram, flash, and battery so I can upgrade it like a PC, thanks!

If there is an upgrade or trade-in program, it will be realized by sending out completely new watches and tossing the old ones in the compactor (or maybe possibly reselling them through third parties).
posted by ryanrs at 8:28 PM on September 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


I want a Bluetooth cuff bracelet in silver and black or gold and black. Slim. Small screen than just gives me 2 lines of text so I can see who's calling or texting, have my phone push weather or sports alerts to my wrist, etc, while I'm in a meeting or at an event and want to leave my phone in my purse. You can even put the microphone and earpiece in the bracelet so you can answer your phone like a spy if you really want to.

I get a lot of where smart watches are going but they'll have to get way closer before I'm interested. I just went back to a regular watch because pulling out my phone to check the time and seeing 15 notifications was stressing me out!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:38 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


In the previous thread about this from last week, I had a pretty detailed breakdown of the many, many, many details of the new Apple Watch that were from Apple's own website.

Frankly, the features list of a version 1.0 product actually blew me away. Maybe I have low expectations, but a lot of the things listed on that page mean that I will be someone who saves up to get an Apple Watch as soon as they are available for me to do so. In fact, if I had an Apple Watch, I would likely get an iPhone 6+, due to the fact that for a lot of the things that I usually end up pulling my phone out of my pocket for, the Apple Watch would do for me. See incoming calls, answer or reject calls, see incoming texts, see incoming e-mails, etc, etc, etc. Having a microphone and speaker for using my phone, rather than having to lose the use of a hand in order to talk on the phone. The camera viewfinder, so taking pictures don't require me to hold the phone up to my face to see where it is pointing. It just keeps going. A remote for my Apple TV or my iTunes on my computer on my wrist. The freedom of not having to tie up my hands in order to communicate is great, and something that no other product on the market has offered yet in a reasonable package (or price). In fact, aside from the Pebble, which I swore would be vaporware, or an even worse version 1.0 product (glad to be proven wrong), it still does not have the infrastructural backend that Apple does.

But anyway.
posted by daq at 8:43 PM on September 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


Eyebrows McGee, seriously, go read the Apple website about the features of the Apple Watch. I have yet to see ANY 3rd party reviews of the Apple Watch even bother to mention any of the actual features, all of which are listed on the site.
posted by daq at 8:44 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I looked at a range of watch makers such as Swatch, Casio, Tag Heuer and Rolex. Swatch is one of the biggest at at almost $10 billion in 2014. Luxury brands are smaller in the $3-$5 billion/year range. Success in the watch segment might end up as a fairly modest by Apple standards business. Closer to Apple TV than iPhone.
posted by humanfont at 8:47 PM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Gruber has been saying this for a while:

It may well be targeted more at people who’ve stopped wearing or have never worn a watch than at those who love fine mechanical watches.

I think I recall him saying that it will have to convince people who haven't worn a watch in 20 years, that they want to put something on their wrist. That would be me. No, the Apple Watch doesn't interest me in the least.

But I have a theory. People keep judging this as if it is a smart watch. It isn't. It's a "UbiComp Tab." It's a "Tab" device as envisioned in the Xerox PARC Ubiquitous Computing design. It is a device to signal your physical presence and position in a ubiquitous computing environment. It continuously signals to the computers around you, to let them know to display your work on the nearest machine. This would be a lot more apparent if the watch had been announced before Apple's developer previews of Continuity and Handoff features. Now Apple has all the pieces in place. You can start working on your machine at home. When you leave the house (and the Homekit network) your work location will "sleep" in your watch, then wake your desktop when you get to work, resuming the work stored on iCloud.

There's are a few problems with this. Right now, an iPhone is a much better Tab device, and the ubiquitous computing environment is not well developed right now. But Apple has shown you a hint of the future: money and payments are ubiquitous, and Apple Pay is already announced for both the iPhone and watch. Remember, Apple says it is always "skating to where the puck will be." Apple is the first company to ever attempt a widespread, large scale implementation of UbiComp. The "internet of things" is a toy compared to what Apple will have in 5 years. Apple is not interested in your wrist. It is interested in the entire computing environment. The watch is just a little sensor in that environment, although it could be the one you always have with you. The watch is merely a strategic maneuver in a long term strategy that is not obvious yet. But everyone knows what a watch is. So for now, it's a watch.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:48 PM on September 16, 2014 [39 favorites]


The main thing that I got out of this is that the Milanese Loop band-bearing watch is probably out of my price range, which is too damn bad, as the notion of wearing a smartwatch with a chain mail band is kind of what I want from the future. (Along with holodecks and replicators, of course.) But I'm sure that Griffin and Belkin and the usual suspects will be along with numerous third-party add-ons.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:53 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I adore my Pebble. It's been a great tool for me, and I have everything set up just right - the right types of notifications turned on, a few useful watchfaces, some great apps... If it broke I would miss it a lot, and would probably buy a steel version replacement as soon as I could afford it.

I'm intrigued by the Apple Watch, given that I'm already bought in to the Apple ecosystem. But it's just a non-starter for me until the battery life is a bit better. I'm already charging too many devices every day. I only charge the Pebble about once a week, which is still too often imo. A friend has a Moto and likes it, but the battery life just isn't there with it either.

A smartwatch isn't for everyone, but it can be really useful for some people. I'm looking forward to seeing where the Apple Watch ends up in version 4 or so.
posted by gemmy at 8:56 PM on September 16, 2014


Daq, apples site on apple watch is basically a list of iPhone tethering features through handoff. Also, 50 ms accuracy? It is too lolz for words. That is just so pathetic for a watch.
posted by Yowser at 9:04 PM on September 16, 2014


I want the Apple Watch functionality, but I'll wait until it's available in tattoo form.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:04 PM on September 16, 2014


If it don't run an NTP daemon it's shit.
posted by benzenedream at 9:07 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


Daq, apples site on apple watch is basically a list of iPhone tethering features through handoff. Also, 50 ms accuracy? It is too lolz for words. That is just so pathetic for a watch.

50ms accuracy to UTC. Last time I checked mechanical watches don't do leap seconds.
posted by Talez at 9:13 PM on September 16, 2014 [12 favorites]


I'm super-skeptical that the Apple Watch will have replaceable internals. Not given the way that Apple trims down their products (iPhone 6 excluded): the form factor of the 2016 Apple Watch will almost certainly be more svelte than the 2015 models.

I could definitely see a trade-in programme, though. That's something Apple has offered since the early iPod days.
posted by Banknote of the year at 9:17 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


The resin encasement is not about waterproofing - it's about physical integrity. The entire insides can be swapped out.

This is not necessarily the whole story. ICs are sometimes bonded directly to the circuit board and then covered with resin instead of being packaged in a traditional IC package. This is both cheaper and more compact versus even high-density SMD packages.

If you want an example google images of "furby board" - the technique is usually used in cheap high-volume products because it's cheaper but I bet Apple could be using it to some advantage in the watch.
posted by GuyZero at 9:30 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wait, Furbies are back? I give up, stay off my lawn kids.
posted by Yowser at 9:39 PM on September 16, 2014


World Famous: Oh, I can totally see using your old watch band with a new watch body. But I was reacting to Gruber's speculation that one might be able to "Take it in for servicing, and for a few hundred dollars, perhaps you’ll be able to replace your S1 [chipset] for an S2 in a year, and an S3 the year after that." That involves opening up the body and mucking around with the internals -- that's what I'm skeptical about.
posted by Banknote of the year at 9:40 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Beides, you'd want people to see that you had the new model, so just swapping the guts won't cut it.
posted by ryanrs at 9:43 PM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ahahaha if Apple can pull off a cell phone subscription/subsidy model for a device with no cell network access, hat's off to them.
posted by ryanrs at 9:50 PM on September 16, 2014 [3 favorites]


3) They get rid of the Mickey watch face.

I don't understand the people commenting on whether they like the sample pictures on the screen. Surely one of the most obvious features is that the watch face can look like just about anything you want it to look like.
posted by straight at 10:02 PM on September 16, 2014 [4 favorites]


Can I get the cover art from U2's latest album on not just my watch face but everybody else's as well?
posted by Phssthpok at 10:07 PM on September 16, 2014 [10 favorites]


Remember the $1,000 "I Am Rich" app that didn't do anything? Apple realized that was a pretty good way to make money, too.
posted by meowzilla at 10:17 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


50ms accuracy to UTC.

On the human scale, that's dead accurate, if the thing is +- .05 seconds to UTC. Cheap digital watches aren't that accurate over the course of the day thanks to temperature changes.

Running NTP on the watch would be stupid for one reason. The CPU has to constantly run, and that's battery life going away. If you need timing accuracy below 50ms, then neither this watch nor any other watch is adequate -- just reading the time is going to cause more error.

I'm super-skeptical that the Apple Watch will have replaceable internals. Not given the way that Apple trims down their products (iPhone 6 excluded): the form factor of the 2016 Apple Watch will almost certainly be more svelte than the 2015 models.

If they make the internals smaller, it could still fit in a larger case. Indeed, you could see a rev kit on the V1 watch having better battery life than the V2 watch if the V2 watch is smaller and the V1 rev kit uses the extra space for a larger battery.

Plus, while you could make it thinner (and they will), there's only so far you can thin the thing down before the crown and button interfaces are compromised.
posted by eriko at 10:34 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


The crown thing is, to my eyes, an ugly bit of skeuomorphism that's typical of, perhaps even necessary in, an early rev product. Apple has a history of doing this more than other manufacturers, sure, but it's still because they haven't really figured out the interface yet. I suspect it will be as enduring as the click wheel.
posted by bonehead at 10:41 PM on September 16, 2014


If they make the internals smaller, it could still fit in a larger case.

Yeah, that's a possibility. But let's consider what would be required to make that work. (I'm assuming that the V2 watches are thinner than the V1 models, but the face has the same dimensions. And, clearly, I'm overthinking this.)

1) The digital crown would need to be fundamentally the same, for compatibility with the sensors. This would preclude a major change, such as the iPod changing from a scroll wheel that physically rotated to one that didn't.

2) The crown and button would need to be in the same position, so they would still connect with their sensors. With the iPhone, Apple has tweaked the location of the physical buttons between models.

3) The internals need to span the whole thickness of the watch: the screen needs to be at the top, the sensors for the crown and button need to be in the middle, and the body sensors (pulse, etc.) need to be at the bottom. You'd need to square that with having thinner internals.

The first two seem doable, if a little unlike Apple. The third issue is also solvable, but would be a lot more involved than just dropping the V2 internals straight into a V1 watch. Would Apple go to the extra engineering effort, just to help a relatively small number of customers upgrade?

Ordinarily, I'd say no. But the Apple Watch Edition is the first consumer computing device where the case is substantially more valuable than the chipset. So maybe that changes the rules.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:12 PM on September 16, 2014


I said this in the other thread, but I was ready to be deeply skeptical of Apple Watch. Then I saw the Jony Ive video and thought, " you know, maybe I'll grab one when Apple Watch, TNG is out." I think it looks amazing, and I don't wear a watch. I think the circular version, whenever Apple creates that, will be gorgeous.

You know, I was certain I'd hate reading on an iPad (real reading). Then I got one, and it was an answer to prayer for PDFs and great for nighttime reading.

At about the Quadra 800 I started to think that Apple (somehow) knows a hell of a lot about what I like. And they've been really good over the years in getting my preferences right, save that round iMac mouse.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:17 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm skeptical about the upgradable internals and that's mostly due to the practicalities of sensors. This iteration has a certain set of sensors on the back of the watch but certainly newer revisions would require something different to provide richer input.
posted by mazola at 11:22 PM on September 16, 2014


oh god that round iMac mouse was like if Ping were a physical object
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:25 PM on September 16, 2014 [5 favorites]


Oh come on, it wasn't that bad.
posted by mazola at 11:31 PM on September 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


Any defense of that mouse makes me immediately think that that person has never actually used it

I just


agh, that mouse
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:34 PM on September 16, 2014 [7 favorites]


I have used it. Was indifferent. YMMV.
posted by mazola at 11:38 PM on September 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yowser: While were at it, can I start a flame war on how ridiculously monstrously oversized the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are? Where am I supposed to buy my phones now?

Will I be stuck replacing parts in a 5S fir decades like I live in some sort of dystopian future?


I urge you to print out this from ars, cut it out, glue it to some cardboard with a gluestick or something... and calm yourself.

The 6+ is indeed massive. if the 4 was a 90s corolla, and the 5 is a current camry... the 6+ is like a ford excursion or the largest suburban/escalade EXT or something. It feels as close to a tablet as those do to some kind of commercial people carrying vehicle. It's like a mercedes sprinter compared to a kei car van.

But, the regular 6 is more like a 90s corolla vs a current corolla. It's still a small car, it's just a bit more bulbous in places. It fits in the hand almost EXACTLY the same. I breathed a fucking sigh of relief on that one.

They have obviously not lost their minds. I think they did some serious research when they made the 5, and concluded that the normal 6 was the largest phone you could reasonably make for a normal person, and then made the 5 simply to avoid adding anything but vertical pixels since no apps were really ready for 16:9 at the time.

The 6+ on the other hand, is a lot like the old 17in macbook pro. They made it because they know certain people want it, but it's also not the optimal size for a normal computer.

The difference between the 5 and normal 6 is like the 12in ibook/powerbook vs the macbook. It still feels like a "normal sized" computer. Yes, some people will complain about how they miss the smaller 12in powerbook/iphone 5, but it's not stupid large and will still fit in a normal pocket and hand. The 6+ on the other hand, feels like something between the old thicker 15in macbook pro and the gonzo 17(both of which i owned, the 17 was INSANE. I had to buy a different backpack just to carry the damn thing around).

Seriously, print it and hold it. You'll go "ohhhh, ok" and also chuckle a bit at the 6+. It's usable, but it's a bit lifted bro-truck. Still, you can tell thought went in to it. It's huge, but it's not stupid while being huge. More bmw 7 series, less dodge magnum.

DoctorFedora: Any defense of that mouse makes me immediately think that that person has never actually used it

I just


agh, that mouse


I realize i'm in the minority here, but i feel this way about a LOT of apple mice. And it's not the button thing. The pro mouse was sick and still looks cool today.

Mighty mouse? THAT FUCKING BALL AFTER LIKE A WEEK, and the stupid assholes online acting like you must be some grimy chainsmoking basement troll for clogging it up.

Magic mouse? anyone who thought a mouse that thin was ok was is lhiterally satan. the thing is just NOT ergonomic. It's one of the only apple products ever that seems to be designed 100% based on looks(your puck mouse being one of the few others)
posted by emptythought at 11:46 PM on September 16, 2014 [6 favorites]


I was initially quite excited about this watch, but after I sat down and thought about my use cases for it (running HUD and music control while running) I don't think it's going to be a good fit - the digital crown strikes me as hard to use while moving. The Pebble may be a better fit for my needs - and at a considerably lower TCO.

I look forward with interest to seeing how the market stratifies, now that Apple has provided it with an injection of mainstream credibility.
posted by curious.jp at 12:07 AM on September 17, 2014


I didn't get into this above either, but i honestly think the stainless one is going to be further under 1k to start. I think it's going to be almost exactly double the aluminum/glass one to get in the door. Maybe in the $599-799 range? Not with the fancy stainless band, just the basic one with the simplest leather strap or something.

I think what gruber left out here is that i think that other than the sport one where they all have the same band(which i agree is going to the bread and butter model, especially the black band one), that there's a LOT of band choices.

These are not all going to be the same price. I'd be shocked if they were. I think the "out the gate" price will be the really technically basic bands like the simplest leather/magnet ones. That'll be the equivalent of the 16gb ipad or something. Want the stainless band? minimum $100 jump, maybe even $200. It wouldn't surprise me if you could get out the door with the stainless one for $599 with a basic band, but that say the black stainless one with the black stainless band was $999.

Somehow i have a feeling the ceiling on the stainless one will be 1k though.

I'm ready to be completely wrong on this. I'm also interested to see if there's a price difference between the 38 and 42mm models too, especially considering they actually have different displays. Which is a ! thing to me in and of itself. I mean, they'd have to or the big one would look stupid... but it's still somehow totally gonzo to me.

I don't even know how to comment on the gold one. Even a similarly sized broken pulsar LED watch from the 70s that's solid gold is worth like fucking $4000 just in scrap gold. They could totally launch it at say, $5000 and kick all the major watch brands in the nuts and also vaguely justify the expiration date of it as a product... but if it was more, it wouldn't surprise me.

mazola: I'm skeptical about the upgradable internals and that's mostly due to the practicalities of sensors. This iteration has a certain set of sensors on the back of the watch but certainly newer revisions would require something different to provide richer input.

So lets assume the motherboard is attached to the back plate, and the screen is fuzed to the front and attached with a ribbon cable or just a direct socket.

Now you can swap the back plate, sensors, and "computer on a chip"(which seems silly just like apples logic board Vs motherboard, but anyways).

This isn't all that outlandish.

I also think there's room here, if they say make the new ones REALLY thin like this skagen for instance, which you're kidding yourself if you don't think they're already figuring out in some deep dark engineering lab right now, then the people who have an old model and upgrade get monster battery life. You know they'll hit a week on these within 5 years or less, or at least 3-4 days. What if the old ones got the new chipset + the extra space filled with battery and lasted like, 15 days?

"We'll give you a trade in value of a bit more than the gold is worth" is also something i could see, but there isn't absolutely no argument for the upgrade concept.

eriko: 3) They get rid of the Mickey watch face.

If you watch the video from the introduction, one of the watches that floats by for a second has the mickey face on it... and not only that, but it's totally upgraded. Mickey like, grooves out to the rythm of the watch ticking. It looked really awesome honestly.
posted by emptythought at 12:14 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like a lot of gruber's work and he is indeed an incisive Apple commentator but the argument in this piece can be summed up as.

"I said that if Apple announced something like what they announced on stage they were in "deep trouble". I don't think Apple are in deep trouble therefore, what they announced on stage can't really be what their product actually is.

Perhaps he is right, but it seems a hell of a stretch of an Argument based on the information we have so far
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 12:18 AM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


I think there's an intersection between the people who can afford this watch and people for whom monitoring/affecting their health is - or is about to become - of prime importance. Out of the gate, it looks like this thing can at least detect how mobile you've been and remind you to take medication in a more immediate and intrusive way than a phone can. It's probably not a stretch to say in the future it will monitor your pulse, temperature and who knows what else (e.g., "help me I've fallen and I can't get up....") If it did these things it would be a godsend for someone like my father.

The downside for the rest of us is our insurance companies and banks will eventually make some iteration of these functionalities less-than-optional. In the future, Siri might say something like, "Bob, the altimeter, temperature and GPS data indicate you're paragliding again, and American Express sent an alert declining your payment, and your insurance company has notified you it's dropping your coverage."

All that said I think charlie don't surf called it as the opening volley in truly ubiquitous computing.
posted by digitalprimate at 12:46 AM on September 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Interesting. I don't think I know a single person who wears a watch, except for a couple of 70+ people. Seems like Apple is starting to focus its products in strange directions.

And Yowser, I agree with you 99%, except I am holding on to my 4s, rather than a 5, with desperate adoration.
posted by miss tea at 3:06 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]



I can understand buying a gold watch, it's harder to understand buying a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years.


Unless they want to say “Look at me, I can afford to buy a $10k gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years”. It's basically a Veblen good, with the ephemerality of its utility making it more expensive from another angle.
posted by acb at 3:18 AM on September 17, 2014


Interesting. I don't think I know a single person who wears a watch, except for a couple of 70+ people. Seems like Apple is starting to focus its products in strange directions.

For me, depending on the functionality of the fitness app, this is more like a fitbit with a real display. The watch part of it is the least interesting aspect to me - I don't care what time it is, I care where I am relative to my daily workout goal.

I think given the popularity of fitness accessories the watch piece is a red herring.
posted by winna at 3:49 AM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


Wasn't there a trend among the Douchiest Canoes of strapping your giant Rolex-style watch to the outside of your shirt sleeve? Hopefully that's not where this is going.

I don't much care for this because of how huge it is, but it did get me to thinking...what I wouldn't mind too much would be something I could wear on the back of my motorcycle glove or jacket sleeve that was just notifications.

I don't buy fancy new cars, but I cannot imagine someone isn't making a car which can display your phone notifications somewhere on the dash, right? That's the use case for something like this for me. Actually, now I'm wondering what the smallest practical size screen is for a maps app. That on the back of my wrist to glance at every once in awhile on the bike would be handy.
posted by maxwelton at 3:50 AM on September 17, 2014


I think given the popularity of fitness accessories the watch piece is a red herring.

It is. This is not a watch, its a wearable computer. Thinking of it solely as a watch means you're missing the big picture.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:01 AM on September 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


I keep thinking that the social value of fine watches is a function of their lack of practical utility. There are clocks everywhere we look, and there's no reason to have yet another on one's wrist except to demonstrate one's ability to buy something expensive and unnecessary. That's in direct conflict with all the practical reasons one might want to have a computer on one's wrist. A watch that becomes too necessary might cease to be a possession and instead possess the wearer. Like handcuffs.
posted by jon1270 at 4:24 AM on September 17, 2014


A successful Veblen good has to at least provide a plausible argument that its superiority and exclusivity make it not actually a Veblen good.

I'd be surprised that a mass market consumer product with planned obsolescence wrapped in some precious metals hits that bogey.

I've spent more time selling a Veblen good than I'd care to admit - and while pricing and a suggestion that it might be superior get you into the conversation, its exclusivity that's closes the sale. I just don't see that for a high end iWatch even if I could see the two other lines being very successful.
posted by JPD at 4:43 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Actually, now I'm wondering what the smallest practical size screen is for a maps app. That on the back of my wrist to glance at every once in awhile on the bike would be handy.

Forget the glancing at the screen, the most under-reported feature of the Apple watch is haptic feedback. The "taptic" feature will tap your wrist in different ways to direct you to turn left or right. And this limited application in the first gen Apple Watch is only the beginning for this feedback technology...

"Just imagine the possibilities: your device could transmit the feeling of running water if a rain storm is approaching, or a friend could "send" you a sandy sensation to let you know they arrived at the beach."
posted by fairmettle at 5:00 AM on September 17, 2014


It is. This is not a watch, its a wearable computer. Thinking of it solely as a watch means you're missing the big picture

When the first iPhone came out, I wasn't that interested. "I already have a phone and I already have a laptop. I'm covered. Why do I need my phone to do all that?"

Then someone said: "It's not a phone that does extra stuff, it's a pocket computer that can also make phone calls." And I saw how that could be handy.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:14 AM on September 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


So it's a 350.00 watch that Tweets. No tnx.
posted by echocollate at 6:05 AM on September 17, 2014


Well, I've learned one thing from all this coverage, which is that if you want men to buy themselves sparkly jewelry, the key word is "heirloom." A gold watch is an heirloom. Not, "Hey, buy yourself something sparkly and pretty, because everybody likes to be sparkly and pretty!" but, "It's an heirloom! An investment! A smart buy! You will seem like the sort of person who invests in the future!" And hence all this concern over whether men will buy a ridiculously expensive gold watch that ISN'T an heirloom because of the obsolescence of the computer-watch part. Oh, they will ... they were always buying it because it was pretty, heirloom is apparently just what you have to tell men to get them to buy the sparklies.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:26 AM on September 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


emptythought: I owned a Samsung Galaxy S3 for one week; I sent that piece of crap back to the salt mines. Exactly long enough to hate 4.7/4.8 inch screens with the energy of a thousand burning suns. There will be a lot of broken phones in Apples future. There is nothing right about the iPhone 6's size.
posted by Yowser at 6:29 AM on September 17, 2014


It's got to hurt inside Apple that they couldn't get this out for this year's holiday season. From what I've heard, at the hands-on event, they didn't let folks handle an actual running watch - the watches for media to try were looping through demo software. Employees had watches but were only authorized to demonstrate specific functionality. Seems like there's a good amount of development remaining.

I think battery life is going to be the killer. My impression from the simultaneous translation webcast was that it was unlikely to stay charged till the bars close.

I'm a daily watch wearer, usually a $15 Casio, sometimes I "dress it up" with a cheap Timex. I have a pebble sitting uncharged on my dresser.

I enthusiastically bought a 1st gen iPod. Held off the iPhone until the 4 (had been a Blackberry user since they were pager-sized). Have a couple iPads, although I didn't buy them myself. Don't plan to buy a first gen Apple watch, but I'm sure I'll have one someday.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 6:33 AM on September 17, 2014


When you leave the house (and the Homekit network) your work location will "sleep" in your watch, then wake your desktop when you get to work, resuming the work stored on iCloud.

No. Never. DO NOT WANT.

Work stays at work. I am not my job.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:33 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Work stays at work. I am not my job.

I didn't say your JOB follows you. Don't you ever have personal work? Do you ever keep a website open on your iPhone and look at it at home AND work?

Lately I have been seeing people in the office carrying their laptops around in the halls, open and sitting on their outstretched palm, like they're carrying a serving tray. Apparently they are unaware that you can close the lid and it will sleep, and then open it and your work is still there. They are usually walking to a meeting room and have a presentation set up on their laptop. That's all this UbiComp is about. It's for guys like that. A Tab can "carry" your presentation from your office to the meeting room, without the ludicrous gesture of carrying around an open laptop.

And besides, you're already using UbiComp. Have you ever written a MeFi comment at home, and then commented again in that thread from your computer at work? That's what I'm doing right now.
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:46 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


It will be interesting if creepiness becomes a factor with these devices, not just the Apple products, but the "wearables" category in general..

Like phones, they will know where you are all the time. With the fitness tracker sensors, they will be able to interpret not just your activities but also have info on health and mood. They will undoubtedly have cameras in the next generation. The amount they will know about their wearers and their surroundings are much greater than current levels of tech intrusiveness, making us wonder what the fuss of Glass was all about.
posted by bonehead at 6:46 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think I recall him saying that it will have to convince people who haven't worn a watch in 20 years, that they want to put something on their wrist. That would be me. No, the Apple Watch doesn't interest me in the least.

Same with me. Then again, i don't own an iPhone, either. Or any smart phone, for that matter. With that established, I will say that I'm underwhelmed by the Watch. All the tech involved aside, I think the thing is pretty fugly. While I don't wear watches, I do appreciate their design, and I'm a hater of the square form factor for watches. So, that's the first strike against it for me. The second strike is that it also looks fat, whether it actually is or not.

When it became clear that Apple actually was going to make a watch/wearable, I had high hopes they would completely re-define the form factor for a wrist-wearable appliance. But, they didn't. And, I think that's a real missed opportunity. But, maybe we've just come to expect far too much from Apple?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:49 AM on September 17, 2014


you're already using UbiComp.

I guess I'm not seeing what a watch device does better for this task than a phone. We already carry one computer with BT, wireless and all that. I'm not certain I understand what having second one adds, unless you think the watch will replace the phone in some way. I don't think the tech, particularly battery life, is up for that in the next half decade at least.
posted by bonehead at 6:51 AM on September 17, 2014


I haven't worn a watch as a daily accessory in a decade or more. But to back up what winna was saying -- I look at this device not as a watch or ubicomp device, but as a massive upgrade to the Nike Fuelband I wear on my wrist already. I can't be the only one.

The missing features on the FuelBand for me are sleep tracking and buzz-to-wake. I wanted the Jawbone Up back in the day for those features, but settled for the Fuelband because Jawbone couldn't put together a device that worked for more than a couple of weeks and pulled the Up from the market for like a year. I'm really, really hoping Apple Watch has the battery life to last more than 18 hours so it can do that stuff. Or alternately, that it charges fast enough to get to 100% while I'm in the shower. I could live with that, too.
posted by Andrhia at 6:54 AM on September 17, 2014


A gold watch is an heirloom.

"You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation."

See JPD's comment about Veblen goods above. PP are selling the same fantasy as keeping a wedding ring for your future daughter, to justify their price.

I can't see this working for an Apple watch though. Who would want old gen technology in a decade or more? Who would want to give it to their kids as an everyday device?
posted by bonehead at 6:56 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


An acqauintance of mine has built his own answer to Pebble, Android Wear and Apple Watch. Behold SmarTwatCh not found anywhere else features include a breathalizer, tv remote, and laser pointer. It also keeps track of your current hit points which as any gamer knows is a far more meaningful health indicator.
posted by humanfont at 7:23 AM on September 17, 2014 [15 favorites]


And besides, you're already using UbiComp. Have you ever written a MeFi comment at home, and then commented again in that thread from your computer at work?

I don't want my watch to log me into metafilter, or whatever, on every computer I pass.

I don't want my phone to let every turnstile on the planet access my bank account.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:53 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think Gruber's a little off about the functionality/disappointment portion of this. I agree that they're announcing this ahead of time to avoid leaks... But I just don't really see this gaining some magical, huge, game-changing new functionality between now and launch. Maybe the next iteration!

I do think he's spot on about how high the price on the gold one will be. Which leads me to my only real question: How long until a rapper has one of those made-out-of-gold iPads mounted on a chain whose links are all gold apple watches?
posted by sparkletone at 7:58 AM on September 17, 2014


(As a total aside, Gruber has now also posted his iPhone 6 review.)

A few days into testing the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, I accidentally left my personal iPhone 5S on a desk next to the iPhone 6 Plus. While my back was turned, the Plus tried to eat my 5S. It’s a monster.
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:01 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


If they had released something that looked more like the Star Trek insigna, was pinned to your shirt and responded by being tapped, I think we'd all agree they would have had a defined audience that would have thrown money at them. This is... odd... as both apple people and watch afficianados seem to be scratching their heads...
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:02 AM on September 17, 2014


I don't want my watch to log me into metafilter, or whatever, on every computer I pass.

My initial reaction to UbiComp when I first heard of it in the early 90s as an office networking environment, was that I didn't want the computer network to know when I left my desk to use the bathroom.

I can see the utility of a portable device that can generate a token for two-factor authentication. When they first came out, people kept them on their key ring. Then they started integrating them into name badges.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:06 AM on September 17, 2014


The Real Reason You Don't Care About The Apple Watch

Why is the Apple Watch a bit, well, boring? Because the next set of problems Apple has to solve is so much less fun than the last..

..Nothing about the Apple Watch will fundamentally shift the way we experience TV, movies, photos or music. The Apple Watch has little appreciation for art or creativity.

So what design challenges lay ahead for Apple? Boring ones. Taking a cue from the Apple Watch, you see two highly lucrative, infrastructure-level problems: payments and health. They're certainly important problems worthy of Apple's attention, but that doesn't make them fun.

posted by charlie don't surf at 8:11 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Note that payments, while perhaps a big deal in the US, is a solved problem elsewhere. NFC payments are fairly common in the chip-and-pin parts of the world. Again, it's not clear what benefit there is to a watch device over a chip card that already does the same job. Anyway the barrier to wireless payments wasn't technical but regulatory and financial risk management.
posted by bonehead at 8:20 AM on September 17, 2014


While I have every intention of getting an Apple Watch, I really don't buy into the idea that it will make inroads into the luxury market the way, say, Rolex has. Rather, it will be like Vertu-- obviously someone buys Vertu products, I just don't know anyone who does. On the other hand, I know a handful of people who own watches in the $5000-$10,000 range: the reasons for owning a watch in that price range are different than what owning an apple Watch would convey. Maybe Apple is trying to break open a new market of luxury technology buyers: Vertu's untapped market. But I don't buy it. It seems more like a nicer version of a Casio GShock: maybe the steel one can be inconspicuous enough to wear one while still be dressed "nicely", but Vertu has been trying to hit the very sweetspot for 15 years now that a $5000 gold wrist computer that will be obsolete in 3 years is trying to hit, and it is still not much more than an obscure niche.

Outside of Vertu customers, there are two possible markets for a gold Apple Watch: "the sort of person who buys a gold watch" and "the sort of person who doesn't now buy a gold watch but will when it's a gold Apple Watch." I don't see the former buying a gold Apple Watch, and I don't see the latter as even existing.
posted by deanc at 8:30 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


>PP are selling the same fantasy

It's not a fantasy, though, bonehead. I wear my late father's Rolex regularly; it's from 1977. A have a good friend who wears his grandfather's watch every day, and it was bought in the 1950s. A solid mechanical will run for damn near ever if you take care of it.

Most Pateks aren't as robust as a Rolex, and so probably don't have the "every day, all day" duty cycle, but there's no reason to expect that you wouldn't pass it down just as you would any other quality mechanical.

The Apple Watch is interesting, but I'm a "real" watch person, so I doubt I'll buy a gen-1 version. I have a Pebble I use when cycling, because (when it works) it makes it easy for me to see who's calling or texting me without stopping. A Pebble is also dead cheap, so if I wreck (which I really don't ever do, but hey, cycling) and fuck it up I'm okay with that.

Even in gold, I can't see wearing an Apple watch with nice clothes to, say, go out to dinner, or in a suit, etc. But this isn't a gadget for me, because I have the "spring religion." The Hodinkee piece makes this point: Rolex, Omega, etc., aren't worried about Apple. Fancy multifunction watch firms like Suunto and Casio and whatnot, though, should worry. Lower-end nice watch companies that do mostly quartz should worry, too.
posted by uberchet at 8:46 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'd love to live in a world where a solid gold Apple Watch was a sane and defensible thing to own, because I just love the way it looks. I've wanted a Dick Tracy watch with a video screen since I was a kid and I love how clean and futuristic these things look. It makes an iPhone look clunky. And gold is such an attractive metal for a watch.

And a flying car would be so cool.
posted by straight at 8:46 AM on September 17, 2014


I keep thinking that the social value of fine watches is a function of their lack of practical utility. There are clocks everywhere we look, and there's no reason to have yet another on one's wrist except to demonstrate one's ability to buy something expensive and unnecessary.

The mechanical timepiece itself is an exercise in gratuitous-inefficiency-as-status-symbol. Given that electronic pieces are far more accurate than mechanical ones within orders of magnitude of the production cost, having a mechanical watch that stays close enough to the actual time is a statement of having money to burn.
posted by acb at 9:09 AM on September 17, 2014


my watch is a 20+ y.o. tag heuer, 7-8 hundred bucks in the dollars of yore, which tells time and looks good with a suit, except that i stopped wearing suits in 1995. that's all i want in a watch, i'm not gonna spend money on a watch that might be smarter than i am.

eriko says this thing has speakers. nuh-uh. can you image being on a first date, and i was in a dark corner of the restaurant, and i didn't like you? you would have an x-rated charlie mccarthy on your wrist.

digitalprimate suggests that it can monitor how mobile you are and advise more exercise. hey, if i wanted to be nagged about getting exercise, i would have married someone in the last 59 years.
posted by bruce at 9:28 AM on September 17, 2014


i'm not gonna spend money on a watch that might be smarter than i am.

There's the test for potential buyers right there!
posted by fairmettle at 9:31 AM on September 17, 2014


Apple, if they actually go after this super high end market, not just the moderately well-off, should really create another 'storefront'. A-la Trader Joes and Aldi's or any number of other examples.

No easy way to get around the 'marketing' when you're that much of an image centric item. (Like high end watches)
posted by DigDoug at 9:34 AM on September 17, 2014


I suppose I'm a target for this since I got a 5S specifically for the motion chip, and I could probably justify buying the entry-level version just for the "health" functions (I like the integrated pulse sensors). But, I like wearing my Speedmaster more and ain't no way I'm wearing both.

This is just Apple's first-gen, and we're clearly headed toward Dick Tracy-level functionality, which is cool. It's an exercise left to the user to decide what feature-set/price-point gets one on their wrist.
posted by achrise at 9:45 AM on September 17, 2014


Eh, these leave me cold. I have a modest little collection of watches, and like wearing watches that are interesting to look at and different from everyone else's. I have no interest in wearing the same shiny rectangle as everyone else. Dolling it up with different watchbands and three choices in finish doesn't make it more exciting.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:47 AM on September 17, 2014


I don't think Apple has any intention of really selling any of the gold watches.

Certainly some people will buy a few, but I would bet the vast majority that are produced are given away for free. So that they can be seen on the wrists of all the stars on the red carpet and all the musicians in the music videos.

Then they make their bank on the lower-end versions which they sell to everyone else who wants one because they are a hugely popular fashion/wealth signifier like the iPhone is.
posted by mayonnaises at 10:07 AM on September 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


You know, I used to buy a new watch every 1-2 years. Of course, they were the $20-$40 Timexes and Casios. About a decade ago I picked up one of the Citizen Eco-drives mentioned in the article, which was a significantly expensive watch to me, but it is still on my wrist so in true Vimes Boots Theory fashion saved me money in the long run.

Anyway, this article actually makes me feel better about the Apple Watch. Now I just need Apple to set up a trade-in program with Cash4Gold so the gold watch buyers can get the worst bullion value possible.
posted by ckape at 10:36 AM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think it's funny how people describe what they do or do not do with a watch and how that could possible say anything about how an Apple watch will be accepted. It's not a watch. Apple has been a consumer electronics company for nearly a decade. They don't sell computers they sell lifestyle devices, the best lifestyle devices. They work good, look great and feel nice. They're worth something and sworn by. What other 'things' in our lives get that kind of commitment?
posted by judson at 11:16 AM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


can you image being on a first date, and i was in a dark corner of the restaurant, and i didn't like you? you would have an x-rated charlie mccarthy on your wrist.

I doubt it's going to function like a CB radio.
posted by malocchio at 11:40 AM on September 17, 2014


In my experience, watch people treat their watches like jewelry. They select one to wear from their collection based on what they are wearing and their whims that day. How does the Apple watch fit into that? Is it really useful if you only wear it some of the time?
posted by smackfu at 11:59 AM on September 17, 2014


In my experience, watch people treat their watches like jewelry. They select one to wear from their collection based on what they are wearing and their whims that day. How does the Apple watch fit into that? Is it really useful if you only wear it some of the time?

I think most people wear one or two watches the vast majority of the time. I've got five or six watches, but two are in heavy rotation and one of those two gets the clear majority of the time. If the Apple Watch can grab that niche, they could make some serious money.
posted by protocoach at 12:14 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


In other, tangentially related news, iOS 8 dropped today. Anyone want to make a new FPP about it yet?
posted by daq at 12:14 PM on September 17, 2014


I think most people wear one or two watches the vast majority of the time.

I'd say zero or one, as I've never seen anyone wearing two at once, but YMMV.
posted by jeather at 12:21 PM on September 17, 2014


I'd say zero or one, as I've never seen anyone wearing two at once, but YMMV.

Somebody doesn't remember the late 80s Swatch craze...
posted by Talez at 12:40 PM on September 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


I don't think Apple has any intention of really selling any of the gold watches.

I kind of agree. I mean sure, they'll sell some to people who want something truly luxurious, but they aren't trying to replace rolexes, it's all about branding. It helps change the way people see apple products.

I'm interested to see whether the apple watch becomes the next big thing or not. I'm in my mid-twenties and the last time I wore a watch I was eight. I'm not too terribly interested in doing so again, but I also suck at predicting what will be revolutionary and what will be a more moderate success. I am not sure this pay thing is going to work out too well. It sounds good, but I think a lot of things need to fall into place for it to be a game-changer.

The design's a little too blocky for my taste right now, but it seems like they still have a fair bit of work to do on it yet, so who knows.
posted by Aranquis at 12:43 PM on September 17, 2014


In other, tangentially related news, iOS 8 dropped today.

I'm getting a new phone on Friday. Is ios 8 groundbreaking/different enough to download to play with now?
posted by Night_owl at 12:50 PM on September 17, 2014


From fastcodesign.com: Taking a cue from the Apple Watch, you see two highly lucrative, infrastructure-level problems: payments and health.

A.k.a. "death and taxes"?
posted by wenestvedt at 12:51 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


There is nothing right about the iPhone 6's size.

One of their most valuable markets is old rich people with fading eyesight. Grandparents loved the ipad for being a really big iphone.
posted by benzenedream at 1:20 PM on September 17, 2014


RedOrGreen: (As a total aside, Gruber has now also posted his iPhone 6 review.)

From TFA: To me, choosing between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is far easier than choosing between the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs, or the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros. It’s more like choosing between a 13-inch MacBook Pro and the old 17-inch “lunch tray” MacBook Pro.

Lol this is like, exactly what i said above. And it's spot on. And as someone who was a 17in macbook pro user, and who bought a 15in retina but would have bought a 17in 4k retina(WHERE IS THIS MACHINE APPLE), i think i know which one i'll be getting.

But then he goes on to say We might never see new iPhone sizes again — or at least not bigger ones.

God, i hope we see different bezel and chin/forehead sizes at least, geez. the 5.5in just should not be bigger than someone elses 5.7in phone, and the 4.7in shouldn't be the size of someone elses 5in phone.

Mayonnaises: I don't think Apple has any intention of really selling any of the gold watches.

Man, i feel like none of you guys have known rich private school kids. You know, the ones who go to a private 8-12 or 6-12 school and then go on to be the Winkelvoss twins? I'm talking like, lakeside school, where Bill Gates went, and discovered his love for computers on a bajillion dollar mainframe.

Ignoring that the kinds of kids who drive pink bentleys/ferraris/GT-Rs in college will definitely get these, so will a hell of a lot of those kids. Even when they're like 15. I've written about that sort of echelon of teenagerdom before, but these are the kids where basically every other one of them had an iphone when they were still $599. They had macbook airs when they were like $3k and sucked.

These are the kids who get BMW m3's or SLKs for their 16th birthdays. They'll get one of these on a holiday if they want one at all.

Fuck, you add up to the cost of one pretty fast just in the number of laptops and phones those kids break and get replaced. 5k isn't that much. Especially when you paid more than that just to hire a Santa to rappel down from a helicopter into your christmas party, which also had a real miniature steam train with elves throwing presents at people(i should write a snarky post about this at some point, too).

This is the first apple product to actually target that market, at least since macbook pros/powerbooks stopped being $3k. I don't think people realize that just them costing that much will help sell them. It's like that several hundred dollar brass knuckle iphone case that Rihanna had. Sometimes the fact that it's silly and "overpriced" will sell it.

A certain kind of nuovo riche parent will buy this for their kids because the other kids parents did. It's the same reason they all get BMWs.
posted by emptythought at 2:56 PM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


The issue is not how much the watches cost or whether watches are "a thing".

Say the iWatch is a $100M annual business. AAPL's annual revenue is $170B. That's, like, half a percent of revenue increase.

If Apple captures the entire global market for luxury watches - the entire market - it could at best increate their revenue a couple percent.

That's why the watch is an odd product. Because once you have the most successful single product in the world there's nearly no point in doing anything else.
posted by GuyZero at 3:32 PM on September 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


The mechanical timepiece itself is an exercise in gratuitous-inefficiency-as-status-symbol. Given that electronic pieces are far more accurate than mechanical ones within orders of magnitude of the production cost, having a mechanical watch that stays close enough to the actual time is a statement of having money to burn.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this, but you can make the same statement about lots of things. Buying art? Proof that you've got money to burn. Seeing a film in the theater instead of waiting for it on netflix? Proof that you've got money to burn. Driving any car nicer than a used Hyundai? Proof that you've got money to burn. Eating out on Friday night instead of cooking at home? Proof that you've got money to burn.

So often on Metafilter I see people taken to task because they choose to spend money on something they find appealing by commenters who don't share the same value system. I recently spent about $5k on a very nice racing bicycle for reasons that are important to me but I'd promise you that somebody is reading this thinking "What a fucking Lance wannabe moron" because I could "Get a perfectly good bicycle at Wal-Mart for like $300." I'm not the kind of person to spend $20k on a fancy stereo system but some people see the value in that and I try not to judge them if they've got the money to afford it.

Life is full of so much heartache and pain it just makes sense to me that people have a need to do something beyond just existing. If buying art brings you pleasure, go for it. Buying and restoring old cars? Awesome. If the craftsmanship, beauty, and heritage of high end mechanical watches do something for you, more power to you. Just don't spend more than you can afford and remember that all physical things are transitory.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 4:06 PM on September 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


I recently spent about $5k on a very nice racing bicycle

And you probably got SRAM Red instead of Di2 - ugh. Fucking Sagan wannabe.
posted by GuyZero at 4:20 PM on September 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


That's why the watch is an odd product. Because once you have the most successful single product in the world there's nearly no point in doing anything else.

Only if your end goal is more money than you can poke a stick at. And Tim Cook has repeatedly said that's not the end goal.
posted by Talez at 4:38 PM on September 17, 2014


That's why the watch is an odd product. Because once you have the most successful single product in the world there's nearly no point in doing anything else.

Also, the watch increases the value of the brand not only by how many apple watches are sold, but also by how many people are convinced to switch to or stick with the iPhone because of the watch
posted by Strass at 6:21 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I owned a Samsung Galaxy S3 for one week; I sent that piece of crap back to the salt mines. Exactly long enough to hate 4.7/4.8 inch screens with the energy of a thousand burning suns.

Here in Korea, I still carry around my iPhone 3GS, and will until it breaks. There are quite a few iPhones around, but the overwhelming majority of Koreans use a Samsung or LG or one of the other domestic phone brands, almost all of which have much larger screens. Not a week goes by where someone doesn't do a double take and a chuckle at how tiny my iPhone is by comparison, especially in my great big lumberjack paws.

Which isn't to say that you're wrong about your preference or anything, but it isn't a universal one by any means.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:28 PM on September 17, 2014


Because once you have the most successful single product in the world there's nearly no point in doing anything else.

Unless you're playing a different game altogether, and this is just the first shot in immersive, ubiquitous computing that cements the position of your cash cow as the control center of the consumer's life.

Crudely speaking, Google wants to put all the intelligence in the cloud, and have devices - the dumber the better - that constantly talk to it. That suits its main goal, continuous data mining to sell to advertisers. Apple wants the smartphone to be your hub, and wants to give you enough compelling reasons attached to it for you to never leave their ecosystem. If some of those accessories come with fat juicy profit margins of their own, so much the better - their bread is buttered by giving you something that you'll happily pay a lot of money for.

In this riff, I guess Microsoft wanted your Windows PC to be the hub, and now isn't sure what it wants any longer? Both cloud services and devices? And Amazon just wants you to buy more stuff from them...
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:41 PM on September 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


> The missing features on the FuelBand for me are sleep tracking and buzz-to-wake.

I realize a lot of people see it as no big deal, but I'm always amazed when people keep watches (or similar) on during sleep (or, uh, similar). Firstly, ouch! Secondly, doesn't that make it harder to keep clean?

Anyway, smartwatches (LCD screens, Bluetooth, speakers) are going to have to be plugged in at night so I doubt sleep tracking will make the cut for Apple Watch.
posted by Monochrome at 8:27 PM on September 17, 2014


On the other hand, I have previously had my mind blown by Apple products' battery life. 10 hours for this "iPad" thing? Bullshit, I say!
posted by Monochrome at 8:33 PM on September 17, 2014


No computer-thingy has impressed me with it's battery as much as the original iPad did. My stoner roommate who couldn't even keep his phone charged got one on launch day from his dad as a birthday present. He would basically charge it once a week. He used it in class every day, and on the couch/in bed when he got home, and in between to blast music on the speakers(which were shockingly loud and good on the first one. Louder and better than any of the later ones IMO).

It rarely hit 0. You could use it for all of a normal day of heavy usage, 5 days in a row, and it wouldn't die. That blew my fucking mind. The unibody MacBooks lasting like ~7 or 8 hours was impressive, but you had been able to do that with extended batteries and stuff on laptops for years. But a week? Damn.

I expect to have a similar "woah" experience with the 6+, and the watch. It wouldn't surprise me if the watch is good for two or three full days, or even pebble like length if it's used lightly. I'm assuming a big part of why we're getting it now is 20nm chip fabbing. That hasn't hit mobile yet at all, which usually lags a size or two on fab reductions.

If you paid attention to what that did even without a redesign on sandy bridge>ivy bridge you'd be excited. But this is a die shrink AND a bigass redesign, and a custom chip built from 0 for a watch. It's basically like jumping from sandy bridge to broadwell, or further, in intels map.

I think some people might have the wrong kind of expectations here. The CPU in say, the moto 360 is a smartphone CPU so old it was in the droid 2. Seriously. It's a 45nm part. I didn't even reach back far enough with my comparison.

It's like looking at a core2duo laptop, like the very first MacBook Air with awful battery life and heat issues, and inferring that the same problems must be raring to happen here. It's comparing the original MacBook Air to the new one that isn't even out yet That will probably get 15 hours of battery life or something because broadwell is bonkers.

I agree with Gruber that people should prepare their fainting couches for the price. but on his "I don't expect to be unimpressed" front, after some thought and google to verify what I was thinking... I think they're about to table-flip everyone else playing this game who doesn't have a custom 20nm CPU, with custom power management, and crazy battery tech(do some poking on the iPad mini 1 vs 2. The battery density doubled, but the weight and size barely moved) and a lot of other things.

I'd have to look at the dimensions again, but I reckon if I do the math and extrapolate from the dimensions of the iPad mini 2 battery, they're going to end up with double the battery of any other watch remotely this size. And remember, they have a slightly smaller and probably much more efficient screen since you bet your ass this is using the newest screen tech they just put in the 6/6+

Technically the more I think about it, the more this seems like a MASSIVE project. The iPad was half done before they made the iPhone. This probably started from 0 pretty much like the iPhone itself did. This has probably been brewing since like, basically the iPhone launch.

It's pretty impressive actually.
posted by emptythought at 11:01 PM on September 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Poking around the interwebs I see sales projections by various analysts of 10-50 million units in year 1. At the $349 price thats at least $3.5 billion in revenues. $100 million would be 30,000 units.
posted by humanfont at 1:38 AM on September 18, 2014


Apple sold 163M iPhones in the last four quarters. So the billion dollar question is what percentage of them will buy an Apple Watch. Keeping in mind that many of them paid $200 or less for their iPhones.
posted by smackfu at 5:59 AM on September 18, 2014


A $1B stream seems to be about the floor Apple has for their product lines, so they're clearly thinking they will make at least that. Their next lowest device stream, now that the iPod is cancelled, the iPads, are estimated to do at least $6B/yr.
posted by bonehead at 6:08 AM on September 18, 2014


Speaking of competitive advantage, Apple put together a site about privacy and updated its privacy policy. Shockingly, it's actually readable. And Tim Cook's letter uses phrasing that may sound very familiar to some:

A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product. But at Apple, ...
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:34 AM on September 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


2004 was the year Apple made iPod available for non-Mac users. Apple sold 4.6 million iPod's that year. Lack of a subsidy and a price of several hundred dollars did not turn out to be an impediment.
posted by humanfont at 8:46 AM on September 18, 2014


Note that payments, while perhaps a big deal in the US, is a solved problem elsewhere.

Smartphones were available before the iPhone, tablets were available before the iPad, and smartwatches were available before the iWatch. I just think Apple will do it better. This is a pretty low bar in the US, but even outside the US there is plenty of room for improvement.
posted by miyabo at 10:12 AM on September 18, 2014


jeather: "I think most people wear one or two watches the vast majority of the time.

I'd say zero or one, as I've never seen anyone wearing two at once, but YMMV.
"

The man with a watch knows what time it is. The man with two watches is never sure.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:19 AM on September 18, 2014 [3 favorites]


Their next lowest device stream, now that the iPod is cancelled

Wut? people need to stop acting like the ipod classic was the only real ipod. The touch and nano are still farting right along totally fine. And apparently the shuffle still exists for some reason too.

Although... i see some questions in the near future of "why does the ipod nano OS look so much like the watch OS even though they aren't the same thing at all?"

And yea, the ipod touch is arguably the coolest ipod they ever made. You can turn off wifi, just use it as an ipod, and the battery lasts obscenely long. It has a beautiful screen. And mainly, it's as little or as much a computer as you want it to be. You can just use it as an ipod with a good screen for playing videos for its entire life if you want without it feeling like much of a waste and just enjoy awesome battery life, or you can use it as everything up to and including a phone with skype and stuff.

And it's cheap.

I remember when the original iphone came out, me and my friends reacting to the part of the introduction where they go "this is the best ipod we've ever made" with "I really hope they make an ipod out of this, just like minus the phone part and smaller"... and they did. And they've been pretty faithful about at least updating it every major change of the iphone.

I know several people who have essentially used an ipod touch as their computer 90+% of the time, and i know other people who have basically only used them as ipods(with at most, something like pandora sometimes) and nothing else. Everyone is happy with them.

The only thing i think they're dropping the ball on is not doing the thing they did in the early days, back when you could only get a 16gb iphone but you could get a 32gb ipod touch. There needs to be a 256gb ipod touch like now. It would be a perfect "hey sorry for cancelling the ipod classic... but... LOOK A THIS BADASS SHIT" thing to pull out at the upcoming ipad announcement thing.
posted by emptythought at 5:13 PM on September 18, 2014 [5 favorites]


The touch and nano are still farting right along totally fine.

Sales are WAY down though. -40% year-over-year for the latest quarter. I don't see Apple investing much money in the iPod line, except maybe revising the touch which is more of an iPhone lite than a music player.
posted by smackfu at 6:15 AM on September 19, 2014


There is nothing right about the iPhone 6's size.

I downloaded the iPhone 6 Plus template (PDF), just to see the comparison with the 5s and instantly fell in love. My hands are so large that I can pretty much use the Plus one handed. Hopefully the keys on the keyboard are larger too.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:14 AM on September 19, 2014


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