Reply to post: Went back to a mechanical watch

Went back to a mechanical watch

I bought the Pebble when it came out, it was only $125 so it was worth a flyer. I quickly determined that the smartwatch features were useless and it was also terrible as a watch (display was barely readable), now I'm back to wearing regular watches, in fact I went back to wind up watches because they are the farthest thing from a smartwatch.

When gen 0 or 1 technology is introduced you can usually imagine what it would be like when the technology catches up to the promise. The first PCs were pathetic compared to the mini computers of the day, but it was obvious that in a few years they would be able to as much or more as those refrigerator size minicomputers could do. I thought the same thing when I got a Palm Treo, it included a browser that hinted at what a smartphone would be able to do once the screens got better, the network faster and had a better processor. In both of those cases there were already jobs that they could do well, in the case of the PC they could do word processing and spreadsheets which was enough to justify their purchase, the Treo could do e-mail and phone calls well which was reason enough to buy one. In the case of smartwatches they don't do anything that the phone in your pocket doesn't already do except that they don't do in anywhere near as well. I once thought that a wrist phone that replaced the pocket phone that we carry now might make sense but I've come to the conclusion that a wrist phone can never be more than a niche product (BTW some Android watches are wrist phone capable). The problem is that a 1 inch screen is essentially useless for displaying anything more then the time, it's a limitation of human eyes and it can't be fixed with better 1" screens. The same is true for touch input, human fingers are the limitation, you will never be able to use a 1" surface for any thing more than a swipe. The only user interface that can work well on a watch sized device is speech. The limitation here is that talking isn't private, it's OK to talk to your device at home but it's awkward in public. I do use OK Google in public but only for very limited purposes like making an appointment (in that case the person that you are setting up the appointment with is the only other person there), or maybe looking up a movie time but even that is a little bit awkward. I can't imagine doing much else with speech in public, even if it wasn't embarrassing it would be a mess if lots of people tried to talk to their wrists at the same time. Fitness bands are a different story, they supply an additional set of sensors that can't be put into the smartphone itself because the smartphone isn't in contact with your skin. That's an example of a new technology that provides new capabilities, they aren't competing with an existing device.