Fossil/Palm PDA Watch Reviewed 176
SLiK812 writes "Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has a pretty good review of Palm's and Fossil's new wrist PDA. We all knew some time ago that this was coming out, and was initially covered last November and briefly last month. This is the first review I've seen, and Mossberg does bring up some interesting points, both good and bad. Definitely worth the read before buying it."
I can't imagine (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a little too small (Score:5, Insightful)
It definitely has its uses, but many would be well suited with a larger Palm Pilot or PocketPC.
Fashback to the 80s! (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmmm..big and ugly, where do I sign up?
Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditional PDA screens are about as small as you can go while still retaining a reasonable degree of usability. Get a watch that's too large, and it's no longer anything that you want to wear on your wrist.
While the entire concept of being able to wear your gadgets on your wrist is cool, it takes more than simply saying "I'll meet you halfway" to design such a device. Simply put, the PDA is too small, and the watch is too big for most people to be interested in this device.
Unless you're dealing with a very limited input style--think at most four or five buttons and maybe some form of roller switch--it's going to be nearly impossible to develop a viable wrist-worn device that relies on tactile input. Data storage, sure. Even limited data output is doable--an iPod-esque control system could be adapted to a wristwatch, and one can create relatively unobtrusive displays for a watch (without too great of expectations for resolution, readability, or volume.) But trying to drop a PDA into a watch--that's just too much fine motor control and tactile interaction in too small a space to be practical.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
What about lefties? (Score:4, Insightful)
Should I try graffiti with my right hand? I have a hard enough time with my left.
Re:I can't imagine (Score:2, Insightful)
the same way digital watches did ? (HHGTTG)
Pretty good review? (Score:3, Insightful)
Among Mossberg's comments about the watch:
Now in all fairness, keep in mind that Mossberg is in his 50's, and that's not Fossil's target audience of 20-something, eagle-eyed early adopters. So his first experience should be taken with a 30-year-old grain of salt. But I think I'll let some other people "early adopt" this one.
The toughest market to crack . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
My Grandma once said... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I think she was referring mostly to posted speed limits, and how she would commonly drive 5-10 mph under the limit, but...
Crazy Interface Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
It almost seems to me that we need to wait until we have an interface that can be built on the fly - say, a hologram idea.
Now, let's pretend that this actually works, and, a la Star Trek style, ignore the science: you have a flat pane of the watch that normally tells time. At the touch of a button, an interface appears over the watch that is about the same size of a standard PDA screen. It is able to sense the location of objects moving over it, so you could "touch" the images with your fingers, "scroll" through the address book, read an e-book (though you might want to move the watch for that to make it more comfortable, etc). You would have to allow the user to shift the display (so if you're driving, you can make it stay "upright" as you look into your address book before smacking into the car ahead of you because you didn't have your eyes on the road).
If you wanted to be really cool, you could let the user lay the watch flat, and "expand" the interface into a whole desktop complete with "keyboard" so they could type, use their fingers as pointer devices, etc. (We are of course pretending that the watch's electronics are so small and heat efficient they don't burn a hole in your wrist/desk to compute all of this information).
This technology I'm sure is about 15-20 years off, but I think that's what you would need to allow something that small to have an interface worth using.
Of course, this is just a "pull the idea out of my ass" concept - I could be totally wrong as to whether this would be useful or not.
And as per usual, (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, the normal palm is bad at times with the scrollbar on the wrong side of the screen [don't tell me about lefthack; it breaks Eudora]
Experiment: Put your watch on your right wrist. Now change the time. Now imagine you need to do this with far more dexterity.
Bah. They're only losing about 10-15% of the market by doing that, so no great loss, I guess...
Gary (-;
Re:Battery (Score:3, Insightful)
How much power can a self-charging watch get from the skin?
Re:Just a little too small (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than be put off by the "lack of Palmness" and expectations that it will be a substitute PDA, consider it a watch that happens to run Palm OS.
Now, if you don't expect to perform input on a watch, then don't. Instead, you can write a Palm OS program and download it to the watch to have as your watch "face." You want a Matrix-like falling digit clock? Write it. You want a port of the Dali clock, with constantly morphing digits? Port it. You want to write a Tetris clock-game, where the falling blocks are shaped like numbers? Cool. You can even push the buttons on the side to play a little game. Thne, when you want to run OmniRemote to change the channels on the TV in the bar, fine. It runs, it's Palm OS.
Just don't expect it to be your be-all/end-all PDA and it won't disappoint you.
DISCLAIMER: I work for a company who has a retail division that sells Fossil watches. However, I am not trying to shill these watches in order to get you to buy one; I'm just pointing out that they are not as useless as they look as long as you lower your expectations. I personally won't buy one for the same reason I won't buy a PalmOS / cellphone combo: they are two different devices serving two different functions using two different human interfaces that only share a common need for internet connectivity. Viva la Bluetooth!
great (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I can imagine Wal-mart selling them at a 30% discount with a permanent Wal-mart logo face. And then I can imagine someone writing a De-WalMart hack to replace the logo, and going to court for violating the DMCA because they thwarted the rot13 encryption neccesary to bypass the logo lock. Same shit, different year.