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Handhelds Microsoft Hardware

Microsoft SPOT Watches 175

Posted by michael from the time-to-reboot dept.
Octagon Most writes "PocketPCThoughts has a report from a graphic designer who worked on wristwatches using Microsoft's SPOT. Tons of design images here and a soon-to-ship model from Suunto here. Data plans from MSN Direct will be USD$9.95 per month. This is the coolest vapor from Microsoft in a long time. It's geeky _and_ stylish!" Our older story about the watches also notes that since it's a proprietary service, when the service provider decides to stop providing it, the device becomes useless.
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Microsoft SPOT Watches More

Microsoft SPOT Watches

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  • Stock is down! (Score:5, Funny)

    by leinerj ( 115797 ) * <leinerj@@@gmail...com> on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:15PM (#6307258) Homepage
    Notice in this picture [timezone.com] - it shows MSFT stock is down. Nice marketing images designer >:-)
  • How come none of them actually look like a watch? Looks like something Kaptain Kirk would wear.

    When Rolex or Citizen makes one, I'll think about it.

  • Realistic Images (Score:5, Funny)

    by SiliconJesus ( 1407 ) <siliconjesus@@@gmail...com> on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:15PM (#6307263) Homepage Journal
    This image [timezone.com] shows the watch, complete with BSOD. Sorry - I saw it, had to comment...

  • Microsoft STOP Watches (Score:3, Funny)

    by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:15PM (#6307264)
    Whoa.. I completely misread this.. I thought it said Microsoft STOP Watches.

    Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!!! (shoot me)

    But sheesh, do we really need any more inaccurate stopwatches? I already incorrectly measured gravitational acceleration as 3.1415 M/S^2 thanks to my piece of crud watch... Give me Timex any day.

  • And, (Score:2, Troll)

    by qorkfiend ( 550713 )
    Microsoft can track anyone wearing one! This sounds like a great idea!

    • Re:And, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:29PM (#6307363) Homepage
      It is very unlikely that MS could track the people wearing these. Have you read any of the articles?

      The SPOT watches use FM as the method of data transmission. FM. Like FM Radio. The watches are one way. You can get info on weather, IMs, stocks, etc, but you cannot send any data out. Any perception of "asking" for data is faked- the watch simply filters out data that doesn't apply to it.

      Unless you think MS will start including 10kW FM radio transmiters in these watches and GPS recieves. MS SPOT watches: now with a big ass generator in every box!

      The only thing close to MS having the ability to track is your geographical region. The MSN Direct stuff sends out data depending on your location; the local radio station will send out weather data for that area. There is a chance that if someone wanted to IM your watch, you would have to select the region first- otherwise, the IM would be sent to every MSN Direct station there is. But then again, there's probably just as much of a chance (or perhaps higher) that they will do that.

      Frankly, if MS wanted to know what state I was in, they could've figured that out already by a number of means. I would be uncomfortable with MS or any other company tracking my relatively exact position, GPS or even something more coarse.
      • > The SPOT watches use FM as the method of data
        > transmission. FM. Like FM Radio. The watches are
        > one way. You can get info on weather, IMs, stocks,
        > etc, but you cannot send any data out. Any
        > perception of "asking" for data is faked- the
        > watch simply filters out data that doesn't apply
        > to it.

        Yep, just like that big Russian TV I've got in the loungeroom. Funny thing though: I still like it's watching me...
    • Microsoft can track anyone wearing one! This sounds like a great idea!

      /me grabs his tin-foil hat.

    • Re:And, (Score:3, Funny)

      by sharkey ( 16670 )
      Microsoft can track anyone wearing one!

      Well, I hope they do a better job than they do tracking email. I'm STILL waiting for Bill to send me some rich stuff.

  • New Twist to Old Joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:18PM (#6307281)
    hey, remember those C:\ C:\DOS\run run DOS run jokes? Now we can do C:\SPOT jokes!
  • I don't mean to MS-bash here--even if this /is/ Slashdot--but these are ass-fugly timepieces. That, plus really crappy ad mock-ups, equals /not/ "stylish".

    Remind me again why we need a watch that does twenty million things? I was fine when my watch just told me what time it was.

  • Yes... But... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fishynet ( 684916 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:19PM (#6307292) Journal
    ...Does it tell time?
  • ..everything except TELL TIME.... figures.
    :-/
  • since it's a proprietary service, when the service provider decides to stop providing it, the device becomes useless.

    True, true... that is, until the hardware hackers port Linux to the watches and write their own software for them.
    • Or, until someone reverse engineers the protocol, which is likely quite simple considering the simple hardware and the means of transmission. There is no reason you couldn't have a little FM transmitter in your house, spitting out IMs and data for your watch to grab once this protocol was laid out.

      Then again, something like this- a watch which recieves FM data- is pretty useless without a lot of money and stations backing it. What good would it do if we had an open protocol? As soon as the company provi

  • WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:20PM (#6307303)
    For a second I thought the design images link had misdirected me to a fark photoshop contest. That âoeyouâ(TM)ve got maleâ was particularly pukey. I just donâ(TM)t think it's proper to learn of a birth from your watch.

  • 10$ for weather ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:20PM (#6307304)

    seeing as these watches are no more than glorified pagers 10$ a month seems a bit steep just to recieve very trivial information, hell i can get a mobile phone with free minutes for 10$ a month, even my mobile GPS is free

    why not build the price into the watch instead of _another_ monthly subscription, are our lives desending into a rental culture ? where i spend cash but never actually own anything and when i stop the investment i have made in the device it instantly becomes worthless as the device ceases to function without the constant input of $

    whatever happened to buying shit that is MINE, is that concept to hard to grasp !
    • better yet, i can look around me for a weather report.

    • Service vs. Goods (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lpret ( 570480 ) <lpret42@NOspAm.hotmail.com> on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:55PM (#6307503) Homepage Journal
      I wish my macroeconomics prof could see me now...

      Here's why we're seeing more services vs. goods. Services allow the company a continuous revenue that is flexible with what people can/will afford. If X cellphone company needs more money, they'll do a CBA to see if it's better to raise rates or raise advertising or something to attract new customers. Also, services allow you as the consumer to be more flexible (in theory). Say you're leasing a car, but you don't like the way it rides. Turn it in, get another one, no big deal. You rent an apartment, but the neighbours upstairs have very loud sex (I speak from experience...), you can move out.

      If you owned a car and you didn't like it's styling, too bad -- unless you want to sell it permanantly, which takes time and then you have to buy another car (meanwhile, losing thousands of dollars in value).

      We're becoming a very fluid society in which change is the very essense of who we are. Therefore, services instead of goods is to be expected -- I mean, do you want to pay $5000 for a cellphone and then never pay for minutes? What if you break yours, another 5 grand? Or a new model comes out?


      • plus companies like a nice, recurring revenue stream. And selling high-price, one-time purchase (e.g., your $5000 no-minutes cell phone ;) is much more difficult than selling a cheap, recurring service.
    • With Suunto, I expect a lot more than a glorified pager. I'm not so sure about SPOT, but I can't wait until some of the technology that goes into a device like this makes it into their other wristwatch computers (diving, sailing, etc.).

      As for subscription services... it's ok, as long as you get value from it. Most electronic gadgets are better off with their initial sale than a monthly subscription because once the gee-wiz factor wears off, people realize they can live without it, and avoid spending the
    • This is a good point. It's probably smarter to come up with a cell phone the size of a watch, instead of a new service that adds little over existing devices. Last I looked, cell phones displayed time anyway.
    • You're not paying $10 a month for a pager. You're paying $10 a month to wear a watch that screams "I am a Microsoft whore".

      Still, for not much more than $10 you could get a T-shirt printed and be done with it.
  • 1. battery life.. does it need recharging? 2. display .. most watched can take a few bumps and bruises.. i wonder if this can 3. why does teh guy in the picture look so dorky?
    • "3. why does teh guy in the picture look so dorky?"

      he hs a watch that you need a service provider for, what did you expect? at least pock protectors are ^H^H^H were practical and usefull.

  • K.I.T.T. (Score:3, Funny)

    by sxltrex ( 198448 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:23PM (#6307322)
    But can you talk to K.I.T.T through it to get you out of tough scrapes with a blast of TurboBoost?
    • Because, as we all know here, Microsoft is evil. On that premis, the watch would therefore only communicate with K.A.R.R.

      For those who don't remember, this was the first prototype, K.I.T.T's "older" brother.

      Mmmm 80's tv, -5 lame

  • Heh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 )
    also notes that since it's a proprietary service, when the service provider decides to stop providing it, the device becomes useless.

    A proprietary service is the ONLY means of pulling something like this off. Open Source does not have the time, resources, or coordination necessary to produce the hardware, software, and services required. But you forgot to mention that.

    • Re:Heh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      what does that have to do with open source? the comment is towarsd its service. If they used an open standard(does not mean open source), then other companies could pick up if the original one stopped providing serve. Perhaps even(GASP!) competetion to provide the service!

      • Re:Heh (Score:3, Funny)

        by cascino ( 454769 ) *
        If they used an open standard(does not mean open source), then other companies could pick up if the original one stopped providing serve.
        Yeah. And just as easily, L33T H@X0R from down the street could broadcast "pirate" signals to hack the time, stock quotes, weather settings...
        Though I do figure it would be funny if someone hacked the MSFT stock ticker to "+100" while displaying the weather in Hell, MI as 27/snowy :)
        • Dude, FM antennas and power for them are EXPENSIVE. And the inexpensive kind used by pirate (okay, COMMUNITY) radio enthusiasts don't reach more than a mile, and are easily snubbed out by even the weakest corporate station.

          If I set my iTrip to 102.7, I have trouble getting the station in my own CAR due to interference from a radio station 200 miles away in Vermont.

          It sucks to hafta use FM...but I'll bet MSOFT got a good deal with those ClearChannel fucks.
      • No one bitches about Tivo, etc. having proprietary services. Instead, the hackers go out of their way not to let you use a free alternative, even though the information you need is freely available on the internet. Why pick on MS?
    • A service that was run by several companies though would mean that no one company could ever just pull the plug
  • wow! they can draw pictures of watches! Show me a real picture of a real prototype...

  • So pessimistic... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "when the service provider decides to stop providing it, the device becomes useless"

    Don't worry. Some contingent of hackers will figure out how to:
    1. Install *BSD/Linux on the watch
    2. Get their watch to receive stuff from their local WAP
    3. Start a pirate wireless radio service that broadcasts l33t content just like the regular service does, thus allowing more features like Slashdot updates, pr0n, and broadcast messages from their system at work.

    So, don't be so pessimistic. There's [panix.com] no [cexx.org] way [sourceforge.net] a hardware devi

  • ...how long will it take MS to monopolize the watch industry?
    • I've got a Breitling on my wrist, so I'm out of MS's grasp for a while.
    • My desire to wear a watch on my wrist evaporated when I got a cellphone. It tells me the time (synchronized to the service provider which is far more accurate than any manually-set quartz watch), plus it has a calendar/datebook, alarms, etc. Oh yeah, I can talk to people on it too.

      As far as I'm concerned, wristwatches are obsolete. At least until wrist-cellphones become popular.
  • You'd figure something this futuristic would use an OLED color screen already...

  • Fossil Watch (Score:5, Informative)

    by SunBug ( 31218 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:26PM (#6307343)
    Fossil already has a watch designed to work with SPOT, and it is supposed to be available this summer. It looks a little bulky, but definitly useable.

    Click here [fossil.com] to see it.
  • Instead of hiring that web designer Rob to make smart watches, they should have hired, say, Jasmine St. Claire [amazing-ja...allery.com]. Now I bet any Smart Personal Object Technology gizmo she would design would be a huge seller, much more than a silly wristwatch.
  • Why do half of these ads [timezone.com] look like they're straight from a fark.com photoshop contest?
  • but I see 2 problems cost and text input, If they could sell them for under 200$ I may get one but chances are they will easly be over 300, as for input, one of the best things about a pda is that you can enter data without having to write it down first, if I have to cary an adressbook to write stuff down whats the point of having a pda. hell you can get a casio with basic phone, adress and calculator functions for around 50, and you have a keypad to use, sure they look geekish but they are usefull
  • I'd definitely call this thing STAIN: S: Superfluous T: Throwable A: Awful I: Interface N: Novelty
  • ...Microsoft Bob's dog?
  • pr0n at the flick of the wrist. heh. sorry, just couldn't resist. But seriously though, "flick, flick flick, flick" for each "image". ;) and plus its for geeks so, even better!
  • I really can't see how you're supposed to get text onto this thing. Stylus? Nah, it's too small. Voice recognition? Yeah that won't look weird and stupid talking to your watch all the time, plus I doubt it'd be very accurate especially in noisy environments. Looks like it's upload from another device then, which makes it seem pretty lame to me. Either that or some really lame button combos to get text on it, which is even worse, even if the buttons are onscreen.

  • Microsoft's poor choice of quotes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:40PM (#6307421)
    Check out that page [microsoft.com] from the SPOT page, and dig that quote :

    "This is the next evolutionary step in personal computing."

    - Bill Mitchell
    Corp Vice President,
    Microsoft
    No ? Really ? Messrs Microsoft, you should at least find someone who doesn't work for you to praise your products. We're certain Bill Mitchell is genuinely impressed by SPOT, from the bottom of his heart, but in any case it's not like he's ever going to say SPOT sucks toilet water as long as he's one of your employees. This quote is so useless it makes you wonder about the rest of the product ...
    • "No ? Really ? Messrs Microsoft, you should at least find someone who doesn't work for you to praise your products."

      The last time they tried that, it was the Valerie Mallinson "Switch" campaign. Oops! She worked for M$ (indirectly) also. At least now they admit it when the kudos come from their own people.

  • How is this any different? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WankersRevenge ( 452399 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:40PM (#6307424)
    when the service provider decides to stop providing it, the device becomes useless.

    How is this any different from Windows XP? (I'm specifically thinking of product activation here)
    • well while it is true that ms could decide to kill the activation system to force people to upgrade to windows 2008 ( I forget how long ms stops supporting software that are no longer sold I think its 5 years) but all it would takes for windows activation is a small script, but even a realy evil company like MS will want to avoid the P.R. mess from killing it, to avoid people from switching to mac or linux knowing that ms could kill activation at any time, so im sure the'll keep a small server running the s

    • when the service provider decides to stop providing it, the device becomes useless.

      "How is this any different from Windows XP? (I'm specifically thinking of product activation here)"

      Actually, product activation resets itself after 6 months. That is, if you install and activate XP, and then do it again on a different computer after 6 months have passed, it won't complain.

      Also, there are plenty of ways to get around activation if you really want to (and install SP1 as well.) You can also use Windows 2

  • Wonderful- (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mu*puppy ( 464254 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:42PM (#6307433)
    Now I can look down at my watch and see "1 H4X0r'd U! YuR 5P0+ iz m4 b17c|-| N0w!"

  • All geeked up? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sbillard ( 568017 )
    I was pretty geeked about the tablet PC
    A laptop while docked - and a PDA while in a meeting, or on the plane...

    I still don't have one

    And I don't wear a watch, my mobile phone can tell time, messages, surf sites, play games, remind me of date/times, yay.

    blah blah blah

  • Remember the seiko receptor? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by snubber1 ( 56537 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:52PM (#6307488)
    Seiko had the nifty watch that could act as a pager and you could subscribe to all sorts of nifty alerts like weather a sports and whatnot.
    A bit before they discontinued the service a document was floating around detailing a way to cheat the service. All you had to do is subscribe to everything, and they would send a message to your watch to tell it to start reciving particular messages.

    Then all you had to do is turn off your watch and cancel everything. When you turned your watch on in the next day or two, it would of missed the unsubscribe signal and continue to get everything it thought you were supposed to.

    I wonder if they thought of that this time around.
  • Wired Mag had a good profile [wired.com] of Fossil a few months back, covering both the SPOT watches and the Palm OS ones.
  • wonder if spot is powered by bob?

  • Coverage... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @07:58PM (#6307519) Homepage Journal
    According to this [microsoft.com]:
    DirectBandâ will initially cover over 100 top metropolitan areas across all 50 U.S. states, plus the top 13 Canadian cities.

    Outside of these areas? Sorry. Stuck in the subway or the Lincoln Tunnel where FM signals can't reach? Too bad. Should have brought a back-up watch just in case SPOT can't latch on to a signal, maybe one of those $1.99 LCD Toy Story II watches you get with purchase of a Happy Meal and a medium beverage.

    On the other hand, there's the possibility of some real fun for someone who has the know-how to cobble together a low power FM transmitter that can broadcast on the SPOT sideband.

    "Hang on, I've got to check my mess...Holy Mother of Goatse.cx!"

    Damn. Now I hope these things really take off.

    k.

    • Do you really think a SPOT watch won't be able to tell time when out of range? I'm sure the watch has its own clock, which gets sync'd to the broadcast time signal only periodically (every few hours or whenever computationally convenient).

      And the broadcast signal is probably encrypted, too. So you could probably jam it, but not broadcast your own content. And after the X-Box fiasco, I bet the secret key is NOT on the watch itself. If Microsoft used public/private key encryption, the watch would only have t

  • More useless crap (Score:2, Insightful)

    by poptones ( 653660 )
    It's a watch pager. As someone who has been "tagged" by one of these exceedingly irritating pieces of shit before, I feel absolutely safe in saying "don't waste your money." There is nothing more irritating than being stuck in traffic and having your goddamn watch beeping at you to get back to the office NOW.

    Mine got fucked up one day when I had to change a tire and I received the third page in fifteen minutes... felt fucking fantastic to throw the POS off that overpass.

  • 5 of the top 10 stories on /. are Microsoft stories.

    Where do you want to viral market today?
  • So, can you SPOT BOB [telecommander.com] with it? Maybe Spot and Bob can play together, because I want nothing to do with either of them.

  • design bad (Score:2, Insightful)

    by citroidSD ( 517889 )
    Is it just me, or do these [timezone.com] prototype designs look really bad?

    Am I supposed to believe that Microsoft just hired someone from a forum/enthusiast site, and asked them to come up with new designs?

    When are they going to realize that if you want to create lifestyle products, design/looks has to be a number one concern? I really don't see it reflected in the current protoype images. I've seen better simulated clockfaces on my 3Com Palm III!!!

    MS needs to buy a clue from the Mac design team... become u

  • Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Illserve ( 56215 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @08:18PM (#6307627)
    This doesn't seem like a magic nice application top me. I'd have trouble justifying its purchase even if the subscription were free, but $10 a mo?

    If I want to walk around with access to stock reports and weather, I'll get a wireless PDA or something.

    I mean, how useful can the information be when filtered through a watch? I can't web browse, I can't type or read emails, I can't even tell it what kind of food I want to eat for it to send me to an appropriate restaraunt (assuming it knows where I am).

    The whole problem with watches comes down to user input: there isn't one. This make communication decidedly one-way. So with this in mind, the only real input the user has (assuming they're not beaming IR to it from their PDA in which case why not just use a cellular internet connection), is their location in the real world. Context sensitive help has come a long way, but it's not going to let me control a watch by walking down the street in a certain pattern.

  • for these things. They could keep the watch busy 24x7 just reporting security breaches and bug fixes in Microsoft products! Flexstrat
  • The thing I don't like about these watches (I've actually seen them being demoed) is that they require you to basically charge your watch every night. I already have to remember to charge my phone and my pda. Now I have to remember to charge this thing as well? My PDA and phone at least lasts a few days. Hopefully that's something that will change when it's released.

  • Another addition to my collection... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Thursday June 26, 2003 @09:24PM (#6307899) Homepage Journal
    Of high tech, useless watches. Don't get me wrong, they're funky, but they're more like art than any sort of useful tool. I have:
    • A bunch of Swatch Access watches with contactless smartcard technology in them, and not a single compatible service in the state (possibly now the country).
    • A Swatch pager watch not compatible with any Australian services.
    • A Casio GPS watch that has a hard time talking to satellites anywhere I'm likely to be (I'm a city boy).
    • An old Casio watch that shows the positions of the planets on a cute little display.
    • Again, a Casio digital camera watch with a picture only slightly "better" than a Gamboy camera.
    And I don't wear any of them, I just look at my mobile phone for the time.
    • What, no Timex Datalink?

      I've been wearing mine every day for the past 8 or so years. I can no longer update it (the communication mode doesn't work on NT/2K/XP, no direct access to video or something like that), but most of the data in there is still good.

      Now I need a replacement...

      • Ah, the datalink. There's a serial port thingy you can get, that will produce the flashes. I believe it was originally marketed as the 'notebook adaptor,' as an LCD can't produce the flashes either, but they note that you also need it under NT/2000/XP for the reasons you cite.

  • If you hold your laptop up to a mirror and read the article, you'll get a really cool story about a micrsoft watch that stops and runs TOPS.

  • They're all pretty spiffy except the one with the bright blue band which is cluttered and confusing. Therefore, I predict that Microsoft will pick that design.
  • I don't understand... How is this different from WAP?

    WAP failed because users couldn't chose their content: their phone operator chose it for them and put it "online". This is the exact same thing, as far as I understand.

  • I think MSFT is right to think that these intelligent little devices will be used increasingly in the future and that they should be data-linked. However, in my opinion a proprietary service from an external data source is not the way to go.
    If I wanted to buy those little gizmos for my home, I would like to distribute content from my internal network (e.g. bluetooth, 802.11). I can even imagine an optional imode-like subscription service for when you are away from home. But without open standards and withou
  • Riiiiight. These are just like all of those Linux-powered touch-screen web pads I have been waiting 5 years for. *cough* freepad [screenmedia.no] All of the "designs" look awesome, but until they produce an actual product, they can bite me. And just redesigning the website every year doesn't fool me.

    (and I personally don't think that these watches are all that great looking)

  • Today microsoft released the first service pack for it's Spot line of watches. When the microsoft programmers who designed this watch [timezone.com] were informed that New York and London have a five hour time difference [maps.com] rather than one, the blushing engineers claimed "but it looks so close on the map".

    Open source enthusiasts responded: "this is yet another case of microsoft taking an open standard and mostly complying with it, but then perverting it enough to become incompatible with the rest of the world. They are clea

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