I’m missing something about the watch. A watch is a fashion accessory and smartwatch or not, people like variety. I just took a look at Fossil’s website and they have about 250 different watch styles for men alone. Rolex has what looks like a few dozen.
I know Apple providing a variety of proprietary watch straps, but is the lack of variety of watch styles going to be a problem for them? Android Wear has a clear advantage in this department because any manufacturer can step in and provider their own unique styles.
I know the watch will sell, but I’m questioning if it will penetrate a market beyond the most loyal fan base.
I bought a fitbit a while back for about $100. I could see some value in a watch that is also a fitbit. Also if it can stream music to BT headphones without forcing me to wear my phone on my armband, that is worth something too. And it’s attractive looking (some of them), plus I can change the watch face for a bit depending on my mood. That gets me to about $200-$250 worth of value. I am not sure where the extra $100 comes from, but I imagine it might be there in other apps that I haven’t learned about or haven’t been developed.
But I tend to think of watches as a kind of jewelry. I suppose if I’m truly a BSD, I shouldn’t be worrying about $350, but I don’t like the idea of dropping $350 and then hearing in a year and a half that my watch is worth only half of that because the newer model came out with more memory and a faster processor.
Of course we used to feel this way about phones, and now we don’t, really, so maybe we will change our minds. And I’m sure the fashionistas will be delighted. V1 can be boxy, v2 can be circular, so everyone knows whether you are up to date or not.
I also don’t like the idea that the watch has to be charged frequently (every night?) or it stops working. If it has to be charged once a week or something like that, I can deal, but I have a feeling it may require charging every night, or every other night. You might have to keep your Rolex handy just in case you forgot to charge your apple watch, or forgot to pack your charger…
So google pay has a chip built into the googlepay phones? You can tap the phone on the sensor and run?
I’ve been looking for a nice phone case that will hold a credit card and a metrocard without adding too much bulk, but so far haven’t found it. It’s such a pain digging for a wallet when my phone is almost always in my hand.
The product is called Google Wallet, but yes that’s the case. You need a phone with NFC and I think in some cases, carriers have disabled it (at least Verizon had disabled Google Wallet for a number of months). I don’t think it natively supports fingerprint readers at the moment, but otherwise functions similarly to Apple Pay. You register credit cards with Wallet, specifying a default, and use that as payment in lieu of a credit card. The dearth of merchants kills its usefulness, though.
The argument in favor of Apple Pay has little to do with “breakthrough capabilities” – although the tokenization for each transaction is nice – it has more to do with generating widespread adoption of the technology by making it easy to use and understand.
My GS3 has a lot of capabilities I’ve never even touched, just because I don’t know how to apply them or what they’d be useful for.
My issue with Apple Pay is that I see no market for it outside the US. Especially here in Europe card providers have goen through lengths to push new wallet-cards to market. Since they realized that 90% of Europeans do not use credit cards they added the wallet feature to debit cards. Now all newly issued and replaced debit cards have a feature that allows you to pay conatctless and without identification up to 20 euros. For amounts above that e-banking apps can take care of payments. The big advantage of a wallet function on debit cards is that everyone has them on them all the time and they dont run out of battery. Not to mention that consumers have a tiny bit more trust in their banks than some tech company which would sell their information on a dime…
^ Yup this is a good point. I will never use my phone to pay for something, I just don’t think it’s secure. At least with the contactless debit card, there is a limit on how much it can charge on any one purchase and somebody would have to steal it in order to use it. I imagine hackers will find a way of hacking peoples phones and taking their cash along with their nudes. Money and boobs, what else would a hacker want.
What’s with all the Apple hate, dudes? I don’t have a problem if someone says X has more features, or Y is cheaper or that they like Z better for some reason. But what’s the need for saying “only dumb people use Apple?”
tech savvy folks who don’t have a vested interest in the brand (e.g. they don’t work for apple, they don’t build apps for iOS, etc) do not like Apple products as they are terrible pieces of hardware. most smart people or people with limited interest in music wouldn’t pay an extra $300 for iTunes. there are those who buy luxury and those who don’t. i find that most smart people (IQ 120+) don’t buy luxury (disclaimer: i may be biased as i live in a highly intelligent and rich town with mennonite roots and we’re known for being humble with our dough).
Palantir: “AAPL is the best and the stock is the best and the business is the best and they are the best.”
Other forum members: “I think the outlook is more nuanced than that.”
Palantir: “How dare you challenge the fact that AAPL is the best! AAPL is the best because they are the best and for them not to be the best would be a logical fallacy. Therefore, the stock is the best!”
Other forum members: “Okay, nevermind. This isn’t worth it.”
Palantir: “Good, because they’re the best.”
Palantir’s fanboyism naturally attracts the opposite end of the spectrum to argue:
“AAPL is the worst! Android is soooooo much better. AAPL is for idiots and you’re an idiot for thinking they’re good.”
^You mad brah? Nice to see I’m living rent free in your head. As for me being a fanboy, I’ve only owned 1 Apple product in my life - iP5. I’m just stating the facts as they are, not how I imagine they should be. But looks like you’re still bumbling for a response.
I keep stating it but I’ll repeat - It is simply true that Apple is the pre-eminent brand in consumer electronics worldwide, has the best ecosystem, high profit margins, a unique competitive advantage in integrating hardware and software, a loyal fanbase, and more importantly, a lot of people like their products, and people who can afford them, and care about buying high quality things, typically prefer Apple. All this makes it likely that the “only dumb people use apple” crowd is a bunch of misanthropes who need to get out more.
If you want to make a case that Apple is overvalued, maybe, but you’ll probably need to have a better argument than “only dumb starlets use Apple”.
I have both an iPhone and an iPad, and I will probably continue to use Apple products, simply because I’m familiar with them and they’re good enough for what I want. I’m sure I could learn to use Android or what not, but I don’t really want to, and I certainly don’t feel inferior to the Android crowd.
As noted in the other thread, I’m not one of those who has to have the newest gadget all the time. In fact, I’ll probably hold on to my three year old 4s for another couple of years. But there’s a lot of people who will line up to buy the new iPhone. You could argue that they’re dumb, or starlets, or that the margins are too high, or whatever, and I wouldn’t argue.
But I can tell you this with certainty–after the iPhone 5 and 6 came out, the local Sprint stores closed down early and had a city-wide meeting on how to handle customer demand. (Granted–this is a really small city.) They only do this for iPhone releases, not Android releases.