Ars Technica Goes Close Up With the Pebble Smartwatch 140
Ars Technica takes a close look at the crowd-funded Pebble smartwatch. The reviewer had to put up with repeated delays in production as a Kickstarter backer, but seems happy with the watch and optimistic about the future of third-party apps; an SDK is due later this month. "It currently ships with three default watch faces, as well as 12 others that you can load onto the watch with the companion app (free on iOS and Android). By far my favorite custom watch face is 'Fuzzy Time,' which rounds the current time to the nearest 5-minute interval and translates that number to what you might say if your friend asked you the time. While seemingly trivial, I love this rough approximation of time. Rarely do I need to know that it's 5:13:23pm, but seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesome."
fuzzy time eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
those of us who have "analog" clocks and watches are amused; also we'd probably have that smart watch just display analog clock face
Re:fuzzy time eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what?
Fuck fuzzy time.
This is one of my pet annoyances in most "web 2.0" products. All those forums giving the time of a message as "a year ago" are driving me mad. Some of them at least have the actual date and time in the title attribute, but that doesn't help much on a mobile device. Let the software be exact, and leave the fuzziness to me, please.
CJ
Re:fuzzy time eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
All of my rage when I see a timestamp on something that says "5 months ago" or "1 year ago". All. Of. My. Rage.
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The timestamp here on Slashdot says "Mon 08 Apr 12:46AM". Hm, what year? What timezone? From what I've seen, when it archives, it still misses what year it's in.
It's already fuzzy, but it gives the impression of being very specific. Which is worse?
And I'm glad that all your rage goes to something so trivial, rather than something meaningful like fighting oppression at the local, national or global levels.
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I agree; I've been frustrated by slashdot submissions a number of times in the past, needing to look to the sourced articles to figure out what year it was written in. Omitting the year of a date is pointless and only serves to frustrate those who actually need or want to know just as other instances of fuzzy time.
Sorry if you feel my rage misplaced. If you wish, I'll toss oppression a bone here and there.
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...needing to look to the sourced articles to figure out what year it was written in.
For future reference, the year is in the URL:
hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/04/07/2147246/ars-technica-goes-close-up-with-the-pebble-smartwatch
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You know what?
Fuck fuzzy time.
This is one of my pet annoyances in most "web 2.0" products. All those forums giving the time of a message as "a year ago" are driving me mad. Some of them at least have the actual date and time in the title attribute, but that doesn't help much on a mobile device. Let the software be exact, and leave the fuzziness to me, please.
CJ
At that level, yes.
When it comes to recent posts though, it's handy to avoid time zone confusion.
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As I understand, there's no common way of getting the timezone or offset of a given browser. Slashdot times are displayed in Europe/London (for me), as i'm logged in, but I'm in south Africa this week, israel and Italy after that, then on a multi stop tour of the far east.
Now I know the offset to home, however if I'm not logged in slashdot displays one of the American time zones - not sure which. Central rings a bell.
If I look at a random airs, it claims a time, no idea on the zone unless it specifies it. I
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EST: eastern standard time (-5)
EDT: eastern daylight time (-4)
Daylight saving time is from roughly March to roughly October when clocks are advanced an hour.
Yes. It's the "roughly march" that makes the problem, especially as the U.S. changes at a different time to Europe. People also write "EST" when they mean "EDT". Fortunately more people write "ET", which means an almost non-ambiguous time.
Beats the situation with GMT, which depending on the user can either mean GMT or BST
Time is unambiguous as long as people use it correctly, however trying to guess if people are using it correctly is the problem.
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GMT means Greenwich Mean Time. Without daylight savings. BST (British Summer Time) is GMT+1.
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I agree about the web 2.0 thing.
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those of us who grew up with mechanical clocks do. also, nothing artificial about using a quartz regulated electronic time source to kick mechanical hands around; even my quartz clocks go tick tick tick....
Re:fuzzy time eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've noticed the past decade or so that people who grow up with much more exposure to digital clocks seem to have a bit of difficulty with interval and passage of time.
If it's 10:11 am and I've got to be somewhere at 10:45, a glance at my old-fashioned* watch and it's a no-brainer to grasp that I've got about a half hour to get there. It's almost funny to ask a digital kid how long we've got to the appointment and watch him stop to do the math.
Analog approximation, one side of brain, done. Digital, one side of brain to the other and back.
Years ago I came across a good article on testing done to help choose analog or digital output for certain kinds of data when designing gauges and displays in cockpits and nuke plants, e.g. The folks who did the study referenced, among others, much of the same material used at PARC when designing GUI. I sure would not mind if people designing our current 'digital experience' displayed more awareness of these kinds of studies.
*Well, not so old-fashioned; it's got solar cells on the watch face keeping charged a battery which powers a quartz-oscillator and motor which drives the hands. I will say the pebble looks pretty neat, but I'll keep with what I've got.
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Watch, I've stopped wearing one for most of the time and I am finding quite surprising how uncomfortable they truly are. I can't imagine what require me to put one back on all of the time, world war three and the disabling of the internet and all telecommunications? Once you carry a smart phone why carry a watch?
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Belt and suspenders? Dunno, man, started wearing a watch in '61 or so, didn't get a cell until '06. Don't have (nor can afford) a smartphone, have just a phone that gets and makes calls and serves as an alarm clock.
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Belt and suspenders? Dunno, man, started wearing a watch in '61 or so, didn't get a cell until '06. Don't have (nor can afford) a smartphone, have just a phone that gets and makes calls and serves as an alarm clock.
i'd be really surprised if your "just a phone" phone doesn't also have a clock. check out your manual.
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If you read what I wrote you might have noticed that I stated that my phone serves as an alarm clock. I'd long thought that the term "alarm clock" carried with it the notion of clock by virtue of that word being in the term, which word I've taken to meaning an apparatus for displaying time of day.
Until now.
However, I then remembered that in '06 and '07 there was a website up in Canada that I went to that would call me at a specified time of day either once or more often according to a schedule I could set
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Advantage of smart phone don't need to look for my glasses to read the larger display. So just looking at the watch was about quite a few years ago.
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I'm not a watch owner, and despite owning a smart phone, I want a watch.
1) As the new father of a five-month old, I've found that when out and about, typically one or both of my hands are occupied with a baby carrier, car seat, shopping bag, my son, whatever it may be. I hadn't noticed it before, but there is definitely utility to be found in being able to check the time without needing one of your hands.
2) Getting to your phone can take a few moments. It may require standing up to pull it out of a
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Except for time (buying the fancy clothes, picking out which fancy clothes to wear that day, some/most(?) fancy clothes can't just be washed in the regular washer, putting on the fancy clothes (likely takes longer than a Tshirt & shorts), and money (fancy clothes cost more and the aforementioned possible dry cleaning).
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Be careful, the previous one didn't last long.
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As an old-timer that grew up with watches being an assumed part of one's daily kit, congrats for recognizing that they can be useful, and also not assuming a stance but rather making a conscious choice.
As you may guess, I'm going to recommend an analog display. However, for timing formula or eggs, one might want an added digital display that includes seconds, rather than having to pay attention to the seconds hand. Having used both, I don't have much problem with either one, and watching a seconds hand ca
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I would say that I was one of those people that grew up fully exposed to "digital clocks". My first watch was a digital watch (I guess I was about 6 or 7?), that good ol' casio model that everyone knows. If I wasn't wearing it and I wanted to know the time, I would check one of the many digital clocks around the house - the VCR, Teletext, the Stereo, rather than any of the analogue wall clocks. Even today, I've moved on from plastic watches (at least until my Pebble arrives) to "proper" watches with metal s
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I don't like saying "this will take about 15mins" if I know it'll take exactly 13 mins
how about if you know it will take 13 mins and 27 seconds? do you include the seconds? would you include tenths of a second? i'm curious how you decide how much precision to include. as much as possible?
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As much as possible, yes, with allowing for some variation. If I know something will take an additional 30s, I'll mention it (I'll say two and a half minutes rather than 2, 3 or 5 minutes). That's not to say I don't use "fuzzy" time at all, sometimes all I can do is offer a range ("It'll be between 10 and 15minutes") or a ballpark ("About 20mins, give or take") but depending on the situation, I may keep them more up to date.
I realise this isn't particularly normal behaviour either, my wife has told me off f
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my wife has told me off for telling her that the train is running 3mins late
Sometimes my wife will ask me to pass her a particular bathroom product and she might say "pass me the blue one" but what she calls blue, I might call purple
good luck with your marriage.
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Being on same page is good. Fewer assumptions can be good. Fetching the correct object is definitely good. Making a mistake is often not earth-shattering, tho, it's only an iteration to success.
Precision can sure be needful. A titration requires a certain kind and degree of precision, a hard-boiled egg, some, yes, but much less so. And so it goes.
If you don't mind, as one buddy to another, kicking back on the front porch on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a brewski and a bit of lazy conversation, consi
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Wow, guys, thanks for the peek into how it is for you with time-telling. I've tried to guess about it, but had no way of knowing. I find it both interesting and just for me a wee bit troubling without knowing just why. When I stop to think about it for a while, I can maybe sneak up on how it is for youse - but it's still only a better-informed guess. Gives me something to think on, so thanks again.
I've had the same need for exactitude but only for particular cases, so I think I can understand that part
Re: fuzzy time eh? (Score:4, Funny)
I've never really understood why they call it the second hand when it's really the third hand if you ask me.
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it's really the third hand if you ask me.
What if we don't ask you? Does it remain the second hand then?
Hey, you started it...
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I've never really understood why they call it the second hand when it's really the third hand if you ask me.
You too?
Also:
Why do they call it the 'minute' hand - when it's the biggest hand?
And, why do they call it 'our' hand, when it is really a hand on 'my' watch?
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However, I have a special appreciation for classic mechanical watches. I think it's the mixture of art and engineering that intrigues me. They are also much more stylish, though I think smart watches will eventually catch up in this regard.
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Priceless (Score:2)
Kickstarter pledges: 99 bucks.
Pebble watch in retail 150 bucks.
Having a watch that will not tell you exact time an instead tell you 'fuzzy' time in 5 minute increments (in words, not numbers) and doing it at 5atm pressure under water?
You see where I am going with this.
Re:Priceless (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, no, I don't.
Re:Priceless (Score:4, Funny)
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Do you rememeber when... (Score:5, Insightful)
..watches ran on a battery lasting several years without recharging. That was awesome.
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And phones that lasted for weeks, too.
Re:Do you rememeber when... (Score:5, Funny)
And sex lasted ...
Well, I've got nothing.
Re:Do you rememeber when... (Score:5, Funny)
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If it's like mine, you also have to manually set it for each of the timezones. So most of them are wrong for 1/2 of the year.
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If it's like mine, you also have to manually set it for each of the timezones. So most of them are wrong for 1/2 of the year.
As soon as I step on a plane I set my watch for the destination time zone. Really helps with jet lag (not that I've needed it recently - not been more than 4 hours off home since January)
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I have one of those from about 60 or 70 years ago... a Birks "Eternamatic" I really like it, unfortunately it's taken to not telling time too accurately any more (gains about 20mins to an hour and a half a day) so I've stopped wearing it.
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Yep, my Casio Databank calculator watches did that. I still wear one (150 model). :)
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Yup, I do. The battery was replaced, not recharged. Somewhere I've got a fine $20 Timex that was usually good for about two and a half years between batteries.
I remember watches that had to be wound every day. I also remember when self-winding watches came into the consumer market. So long as you moved around a bit every day they worked fine. The arm you wore them on got a little bit stronger as well.
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..watches ran on a battery lasting several years without recharging. That was awesome.
They still do.
In the last ten years I have replaced watch batteries 4 times over 3 watches
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Traditional watches aren't going away,
Right, they aren't "going away" they are gone. I don't know anyone who wears a wristwatch. Where I am now, I can see about 100 people, not all have visible wrists, but I see exactly zero watches. I also see zero watch chains as well.
More interesting than "quarter after five" (Score:2)
"[n] seconds until your appointment/train departure/etc."
While approximate time of day is a useful gimmick, you don't really need a watch to keep track of that.
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(The nice thing about this watch, of course, is that you absolutely could make it do that while looking up your calendar or time table.)
SDK coming soon??? (Score:3)
They still haven't released an SDK and they won't do so for a while after it ships?
What are people going to do with it while they wait for developers to receive their device and build apps?
I owned a much more feature rich device in a similar watch form-factor, the WiMM One. While the device was nice, there was never a good enough set of apps with addictive utility to me that justified the constant battle with battery life. It launched with a complete app SDK and was built on Android so it was trivial to develop apps for. This device doesn't have an SDK available and isn't as conventional. I suspect it will meet much the same fate once these initial orders are fulfilled.
If you say so... (Score:3)
Rarely do I need to know that it's 5:13:23pm, but seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesome."
Perhaps not in seconds, but I rather like to know how many minutes I've left to catch the bus since three and eight are quite different. I guess I really only look at the seconds if I'm trying to time something, which is rare but unless it's spoken I'd rather have it with numbers... how often do people really write "quarter past three" instead of 3:15 pm (or actually 15:15 around here)?
Not Awesome (Score:2)
Rarely do I need to know that it's 5:13:23pm, but seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesome
Let's say I want to seep my tea for five minutes. That means I want to know when five minutes is from the last time I looked at my watch. Even a few minutes window there is no good. Even just 5:15 showing as something non-numeric is not great as I have to mentally parse it. If I have any kind of clock, I'm in it for the time. If I can't have that why even bother?
Where I don't mind wording like that is on t
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Let's say I want to seep my tea for five minutes.
Then you use the stopwatch function on your watch, if it has one, or else just switch to exact instead of fuzzy time for that one particular act.
Why should I have to? (Score:2)
Then you use the stopwatch function on your watch
Which is way more involved than simply looking at my watch once, and then a few times more before five minutes has expired. There's no reason why the use should have to go to so much bother for something as simple as telling when it's been about five minutes.
Having a watch proclaim it is "quarter past five" is the ultimate case of form over function. It gives you nothing that is more useful in any way than the simple time - it's just there to look cool. Eve
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Rarely do I need to know that it's 5:13:23pm, but seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesome."
Perhaps not in seconds, but I rather like to know how many minutes I've left to catch the bus since three and eight are quite different. I guess I really only look at the seconds if I'm trying to time something, which is rare but unless it's spoken I'd rather have it with numbers... how often do people really write "quarter past three" instead of 3:15 pm (or actually 15:15 around here)?
I've never lived anywhere where you could time buses down to the nearest minute, do you live in Switzerland or somewhere?
Meh (Score:2)
I thought it would look like a pebble. That would have been cool. Instead it just looks like a standard issue watch.
Maybe better for android? (Score:2)
In a way I am glad I did not go in. Apple, as we can all agree, is not very open on the interfaces to iOS, which is why there are so many cool gadgets for Android and so few for iPhone. From what I can tell from the site, the
I have one, and really like it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I have one, and really like it. (Score:5, Informative)
I liked mine for the three days it worked. Seeing who was calling, seeing text messages and FB messages without having to pull my phone out was great.
The fact that it would not charge, or that I've been waiting a week since I emailed tech support (from in-app, which I have to admit was nice) and got the robo-response below is something I like less.
"Pebble | Apr 01, 2013 07:33AM UTC
Hello,
Thank you for supporting Pebble!
We are currently experiencing a higher-than-average amount of emails as we start shipping more Pebbles to our Backers.
Please do not send multiple messages about the same issue, as it will only delay responses further. We’ve prepared a list of answers to common questions, so please take a few minutes to check if your question has already been answered. . ."
Re: I have one, and really like it. (Score:3)
Kickstarter is not a store. As part of your backing/pledge, you got a gift. That gift is a first run of the product, and warranty is not the same as a product you buy in a store. Or so the party line goes, I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing.
Re:I have one, and really like it. (Score:5, Informative)
I've had mine for about 5 days now. So far it's worked pretty much flawlessly. It was a bit thicker than I anticipated, fairly large in the frame, and maybe not suitable for a woman's wrist, although the screen itself is small enough if the frame were a bit more compact. I've got a second one on order, in one of the colours they are not yet making.
I was surprised to get a notification this morning with my phone in one corner of the house, and my watch in the opposite corner (on the sill in the bathroom while taking a shower). I really didn't expect the BT to work at that range with a 90 degree bend from a large room into the hallway and then through a closed door at the far end. Perhaps it was a bit of fluke. Not enough data yet.
The vibration is surprisingly audible on the wrist, and even more so when the watch is left lying on a flat surface. This partly makes up for not having a beep.
Features are pretty limited as it stands, but the interface is dead easy to use with the four buttons provided. On the plus side, one can program a large number of distinct alarms. On the down side, there's no way to disable an alarm without deleting it completely.
I have two LCD screens on my desk. One is polarized horizontally, and the other vertically. With my polarized shades one display goes so dark I wonder if it's turned on--until I tip my head to either side. This causes the watch display to look a little funky when there are not other lights on in the room: different regions go darkish as I tilt my hand. For two puzzled seconds earlier today I thought the e-paper display had leaked.
It's super visible in bright light and a little hard to read in early dusk before you reach for the light switch. I turned my backlight off to better monitor battery life without accidental backlight activations. The wrist flick works, but it works too often if you have busy hands. No, I don't mean typing. No, I don't mean stereotypical activities, either.
I would never have bought one without the promise of an SDK to allow me to make customizations. There are aspects of my life not tied to a 24 hour clock, and I want my watch to display these other relationships as well as standard time. I'm happy enough with it, but it's just a silly toy for me until Pebble releases their SDK.
Forget the Metronome (Score:2)
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This might be easier to do: http://sillywalkclock.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
I'm assuming it's a monochrome display.
I'm sold (Score:2)
British English (Score:2)
Hello,
Any chance of a British English option so "quarter after five" becomes "quarter past five"?
Thanks, Bob.
Misread (Score:2)
At first I read this as "Pebble Sandwich", which sounds almost as distasteful.
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I still have a copy of SuSE Pro 7 somewhere, that has a fuzzy time clock on KDE.
I built a standalone clock like that, using an AtMega CPU with an LCD display. The original idea came from a New Yorker cartoon decades ago, showing such a clock in the window of a clock shop.
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Yeah that was pretty cool. You could even adjust the level of fuzziness. I loved setting it high and have it tell me "late afternoon" or at the highest level "the middle of the week".
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Yeah that was pretty cool. You could even adjust the level of fuzziness. I loved setting it high and have it tell me "late afternoon" or at the highest level "the middle of the week".
You can still do that. This clock just became a separate applet since the introduction of Plasma Desktop. It's in the plasma-addons package.
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Yeah that was pretty cool. You could even adjust the level of fuzziness. I loved setting it high and have it tell me "late afternoon" or at the highest level "the middle of the week".
Alternatively, you could stop taking so many drugs and you'd know things like what year it is without having to ask a computer.
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Yep, I remember seeing that on KDE under Mandrake Linux in the late '90s. You could even adjust the level of "fuzziness," varying from readouts to the nearest minute through "mid-afternoon," "tuesday," "spring," or "20th century".
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*that's* where I've seen it before! RISC OS 3 had it!
Incidentally, it is also an option on RISC OS Open for the Raspberry Pi :)
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The first one I saw was a program on a CP/M system in the mid-80's. Later in the 80's I had a similar program for PC/MS-DOS. Both were called "realtime", IIRC.
Around the same time I also had a talking watch - from Tandy / Radio Shack? - that spoke the time in the same fashion. I'd set the alarm for 4:25pm & play it over the PA at work when it went off - "Attention please! It's almost four thirty PM".
It could also be set to give a reminder 5 minutes after the alarm time - "Attention please! The time is n
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I'd set the alarm for 4:25pm & play it over the PA at work when it went off - "Attention please! It's almost four thirty PM".
Why?
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streaming it in about ten minutes... Windows Time...
Or, "Sometime before the Universe dies a heat death, thank you!"
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The first fuzzy clock I saw was in the late 1980s on an Acorn Archimedes. The wording was pretty good anyway, but you could also edit the text file it was taken from. The look on people's faces when they saw "It's just gone quarter past three" was priceless.
Some people are really easily impressed.
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Re:seeing that it's 'quarter after five' is awesom (Score:5, Insightful)
anyone is clever enough to do that approximating in his head. some people find different versions of presentation to be aesthetically pleasing.
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That wasn't the tone of the original quote.
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i disagree.
he seems to prefer knowing the time to the nearest 5 or 15 minutes or whatever, and this watch gives it to him without his needing to process it mentally. since he calls the process "trivial," i can only conclude that, yes, he could do it himself like anyone else on the planet, but why bother?
more likely, he just think it's cool and will get over it in a few days when he finds himself toggling to the standard clock mode for every appointment, but whatever.
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Maybe most people *want* to be dumbed down.... :(
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jesus fucking christ. it's not dumbed down.
feynman has an anecdote where he tries to determine if people can count and read at the same time. his results were that half of the people he tested could, and the others could not. the ones who could, counted by imagining visually a clock face or such, and the numbers incrementing on that. the ones who couldn't counted by mentally counting verbally. there was no difference between the two groups in terms of IQ or other achievements. some people just think differe
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Bullshit.
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I stopped reading Ars as well, for the same reason. They turned into too much of a fanboi site. TechCrunch and Forbes as well.
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Ah, well, welcome to Slashdot. We don't like nobody. You'll fit right in.
Even if we don't like you.
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All Apple product has shrinking market share (Score:2)
The iWatch will issue a quick and decisive butt kicking to this useless bauble.
Why? In fact there is a big question whether anyone wants an iwatch at all. Currently I see many manufactures with smart watches coming Sony; Samsung; Google to name a few. Apple unlike its incredible run of iPod, iPhone, iPad has no advantages (Large American Fanbase!?)...and several disadvantages; vertical integration a past advantage has been squandered for short term profits (admittedly vast profits)...and is now a disadvantage. The [as yet vapourware] iwatch is launching into a very hostile, highly com
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and products like this are already below $100 [and its very appealing]
You are just missing one small detail here. The presumed price of the iWatch (presuming it even exists) will be MORE expensive than everyone else. Thus, Apple will have a built in differentiator from the crowded field. One that they've used before to good effect.
Whether we think it's worth the added price is irrelevant (and I point out that Slashdot's long term ability to predict the popularity of various Apple products is a bit limited).
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That has never stopped them before. Apple is very good at taking existing products, removing features and usability, putting their own spin on them, doubling the price, and selling millions of them to people who think that Apple makes the only one and refuse evidence to the contrary.
Before the iPod there were cheaper, and more functional music players.
Before the iPhone there were cheaper, and more functional cell phones.
I predict this will be the same. There will be all sorts of smart watches on the market
Not necessarily an iWatch (Score:2)
I am curious what they'll do with a watch. If they do it well, it could be the start of the next step in truly personal/wearable computing
No hard to guess: They'll probably go with a variantion of the current 6-gen ipod nano.
With a low power wireless com (imagine an apple proprietary extension of Bluetooth Low Energy) and a way to have a sufficent battery life with a always-on colour screen (probably colour epaper or newer li-po battery generation, whichever is easiest for them).
you can also bet that Apple *WONT* follow an openstandard like NFC, but instead they will expect every manufacturer to follow their own proprietary techology (Apple i
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The iWatch will issue a quick and decisive butt kicking to this useless bauble.
Why? In fact there is a big question whether anyone wants an iwatch at all.
Like most people, I rely on my phone telling me the time. However its a right hassle getting it out just to glance at it.
What would be awesome is a slimmed down device which just tells me the time (and maybe day of month), which I could wear on my wrist.
I trust apple will make something that fits this market that people don't even realise exists.
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Like most people, I rely on my phone telling me the time. However its a right hassle getting it out just to glance at it.
Why, apart from fashion, don't you wear a watch then?
What would be awesome is a slimmed down device which just tells me the time (and maybe day of month), which I could wear on my wrist.
If you can't be bothered to wear a wristwatch now, why would you bother wearing a "smartwatch" just to tell you the time and do a few other things, when to do those things comfortably you're going to need to have your smartphone with you anyway?
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The reason the iWatch will kick this things butt is because the iWatch will:
1. Have a speakerphone
2. Allow you to answer/defer/pre-ring silence calls
3. It will have a speakerphone
4. Will let you respond with canned texts using the touch UI or text back using the Voice UI, when you don't wish to answer in speakerphone mode that is.
5. Did I mention the iWatch will have a speakerphone feature?
6. It will have voice activation.
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Part of what makes e-ink awesome is that it only sucks battery while it's updating.
Daliclock means it's updating all the time. That would suck.
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