Swatch Takes on Google, Apple With Watch Operating System (bloomberg.com) 65
Corinne Gretler, reporting for Bloomberg: Swatch said it's developing an alternative to the iOS and Android operating systems for smartwatches as Switzerland's largest maker of timepieces vies with Silicon Valley for control of consumers' wrists. The company's Tissot brand will introduce a model around the end of 2018 that uses the Swiss-made system, which will also be able to connect small objects and wearables, Swatch Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek said in an interview Thursday. The technology will need less battery power and it will protect data better, he said later at a press conference. Switzerland's four-century-old watch industry has been adjusting to new competition since Apple entered its territory with the Apple Watch in 2015. Hayek faces the uphill challenge of trying to outsmart Google and Apple, which have fended off would-be rivals to their operation systems in smartphones and watches.
They could call it Minux (Score:1)
...but that's kind of taken.
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In distress (Score:3)
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Not if you have to charge it almost every day.
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Why charge it everyday when you can charge it every hour? In fact, that's how you use it to tell time. Every time you have to charge it, you add an hour to the day. Much like the hour glass except now with computers.
An interesting historical coincidence: they both have sand inside
Battery Is not OS (Score:2)
Not if you have to charge it almost every day.
The original statement was "Apple has already perfected the Watch OS".
Now I'd e the first to say, there's always room for something more perfect. The new Swatch OS may be really good, and I'll certainly be looking at development details just as I did for the Pebble.
That said, your statement makes no sense. The original Apple Watch you had to charge almost once a day. The Series two seems better, say almost once every other day?
But that's all beside the point,
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Not really. An OS can be a resource hog and/or manage resources poorly, and thus eat up power. They are dependent. That's one of the areas this Swatch project wants to improve upon.
I should point out that there are probably trade-offs and there may be a decent market and/or niche for power-friendly watches that have fewer app choices/features as a sacrifice. Different consumers want different things.
Apple's and Android-based watches may depend on abstraction layers for cros
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An OS can be a resource hog and/or manage resources poorly, and thus eat up power
But that is not true at all of the Apple WatchOS, in fact it is highly optimized in that regard.
Apple's and Android-based watches may depend on abstraction layers for cross-product uniformity
Not true of either platform. They are both purpose-built OS's.
There is no magic bullet here, just incremental hardware and software improvements from where we are that slowly increase battery life. The closest thing to a real leap in bat
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I get different info on that in that both OS's are based their smart-phone counterparts to a large extent. They may have made several watch-related adjustments, but they are not from-scratch. Anyhow, hopefully we'll see if Swatch can pull it off from a battery/power standpoint.
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Re: Why? (Score:2)
Better have security in there somewhere... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every time I read about a new OS for IoT devices, it likely is about some new feature, but because of the mentality that security has no ROI, it means the new device is now an IoT toy for the blackhats.
If Swatch wanted to do things "right", the OS in question would be something lightweight like QNX, heavily compartmentalized (think SELinux), and done "right" from the ground up, so OS updates are as infrequent as possible, and when they come, they are ideally features, not fixing some obvious bug that should have been caught well earlier in the dev cycle.
I hope they think it through, make a lightweight, secure OS, designed to run on hardware that runs days to weeks between charges. A watch doesn't need tons of apps slurping up CPU. Instead, they should design with a philosophy similar to the original PalmOS. Black/white, do something simple, do it well.
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The problem is ease of development - use something developers are already familiar with and suddenly there's a massive pool of people making 'apps' for your new device, which helps it appeal to the consumer since you're probably not going to build an app library of your own out of the gate.
People don't want a watch anymore - they want a wrist computer that primarily tells time but tracks a bunch of other stuff and brings some of it to your attention as necessary. No matter what OS you write, it's going to
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I haven't worn a watch in nearly 12 years. My last watch battery died, and the batter cost more than the watch did originally. I thought I'll see if I miss it.
A few days later, my tan came back.
A month later, I stopped "missing" it on my wrist.
A year later passed and ... I didn't even care.
Twelve years later, I still have clocks all around me telling me what time it is. Often atomically accurate to within milliseconds. And I don't miss a wrist clock at all.
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I can't afford Jewelry that tells time, and functionality isn't needed. And yes, winding watches ... I haven't seen one in forever. Except for the nice antique pocketwatch I have.
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I used to go through watches like I used to go through chocolate.
I bought my last watch in 2009. I wear it a few times per week. Light charges it. It's on the original battery. I never have to set it, because it listens to WWV.
Casio FTW.
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Is it even an IoT device? Most smart watches are not connected directly to the internet, only to a phone via Bluetooth.
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In my opinion a device utilizing IEEE 802.15 (Bluetooth) to connect to a device utilizing IEEE 802.11 (Wireless LAN) to connect to a device utilizing IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet) to connect to other devices utilizing IEEE 802 standards across the network of networks that we call the Internet makes it an IoT (Internet of Things) device.
Do you feel like in order to be a IoT device it must have an IP address?
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By that standard Bluetooth headphones are an IoT device. A monitor is an IoT device, after all it displays data downloaded from the net... I think you need more specific criteria.
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In my opinion, Bluetooth headphones are IoT devices. They are a network device utilizing an IEEE 802.15 protocol to connect to other devices within their network. Those devices in turn may be connected to other network devices using the same or other IEEE 802 protocols. The name we give the network made up of all these smaller networks is the Internet.
I would not consider a monitor an IoT device. It is not utilizing an IEEE 802 protocol to communicate with other devices on its network. If it's not in a netw
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IoT. Internet of Things.
First word: Internet. We know what this means, right?
Second word: Of. Do we need remedial English here, too?
Third word: Things. Not specified is if they are large things, small things, proxied things, firewalled things, publicly-routable things, or other things. They're just things, ultimately connected to the Internet.
It's a very inclusive term.
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Bluetooth headphones are single-use devices, not designed to run arbitrary code. They may have a processor in them, in form of a DSP or a small microcontroller - but which has its firmware locked.
Smartwatches are supposed to run arbitrary code, and to get software updates over Bluetooth - That is what makes them smartwatches.
Re: Better have security in there somewhere... (Score:2)
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A watch doesn't need tons of apps slurping up CPU. Instead, they should design with a philosophy similar to the original PalmOS. Black/white, do something simple, do it well.
You just described every non-smart watch.
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Exactly. Do we need watches to be "smart" being yet another screen with bloated apps and coded by the cheapest people hirable? Not really. Having apps designed for low power, low CPU, low RAM, and low storage will bring a better benefit than trying to compete with WatchOS and Android head to head.
Synchronization better be super good (Score:3)
Meh (Score:2)
Your first part was right (Score:2)
Very few people want a watch that is "Smart", just like very few people want "Smart" Refrigerators, "Smart" Thermostats, and just about everything else being pushed as IoT. Watches are probably the worst, because it has become a redundant piece of Jewelry when every single phone built today has a functional clock.
People don't want to waste time tracking their heartbeat online, or looking at their home thermostat at work. Your "Meh" expresses the opinion of all but 1 person I work with regularly when talki
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Watches are probably the worst, because it has become a redundant piece of Jewelry when every single phone built today has a functional clock.
Unless you are a teenager/hipster and walk around with your phone permanently in your hand, it is still quicker to use a wrist watch to tell the time than take your phone out of your pocket and unlock it.
A phone is more like a pocket watch, and there is a good reason why they lost out to wrist watches.
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Excellent taste in watches, by the way. You can't beat the elegance of a simple analog watch, especially from the era before it became stylish to be large and vulgar.
I'm a collector vintage Indian watches, which while not quite of the same quality embody much the same aesthetic and can be had for about $15, including shipping from India.
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Sounds like vaporware (Score:2)
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Do you realize how complicated a mechanical kernel is? Even 1MHz is hard to get out of an escarpment.
I don't understand why the Swiss think they have any sort of lead on this tech? They build jewelry that keeps decent time.
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It's been dune before.
Smart watch? (Score:3)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AJ2YDZC/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have one and it is substantially larger than it looks in the picture.
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Re: Swatch? (Score:1)
Swatch Group is a portfolio of brands -- from the playful watches you mention to Omega and Breguet.
They're releasing the smartwatch under their Tissot brand which is affordable but refined.
I prefer for my three year old to run with Swatch Group's Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe though.
Too late (Score:2)
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Agreed. Swatch are a watch maker, not a software company.
I see a parallel in that between Nokia and Apple. Nokia were a mobile phone manufacturer, not a software company.
This announcement to me smacks of management going through the motions so that they don't look as bad as Nokia did when their market share diminishes.
I recently stuck a toe in the smart watch waters by buying a 2nd hand Apple Watch S1.
Got a stainless steel model for 1/4 of it's price new a year ago.
I was not convinced of the need for a smar
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You are confused about what swiss watches are for.
Hint: If a girl can't tell your knockoff from a real Rolex in a dark bar, it's serving its purpose. Apple watches don't address this. Get one that knocks off a better watch. ($3000? Who is that supposed to impress?).
You're hanging with the wrong sort of women my anonymous friend. ;)
Can you tell a real girl from a fake in a dark bar I now wonder?
No chance (Score:3)
Not mine. It will take something pretty special to displace Lucy Lawless.
Promises (Score:2)
Not that I think they have a chance at all, but I certainly hope we see a viable product hit the market. At the very least, Apple can incorporate (or steal depending on your '*-boi' status), bettering whichever p
New product delivery promises. (Score:1)
Our survey said "Ughhh Errrrr". (Score:3)
Wrong. It was already doing that when digital watches appeared in the 1970s.
P.S. I spotted & corrected the a-hat-TM in the copied section. Ain't preview marvellous, manish?
An AI watch takes over world: The Jennifer Project (Score:2)
by Larry Enright: https://sites.google.com/site/... [google.com]
https://www.amazon.com/Jennife... [amazon.com]
"In 2096, Deever MacClendon creates Jennifer, the first proto-conscious cybernetic processor. It is hyper-intelligent, aware, and evolving. Deever wants to use his creation for the good of all, to help fix a broken world, but knowing what a powerful weapon it could be in the wrong hands, he hides it. When his secret is uncovered, he is forced to plunge into a high-tech morass of deception and treachery to avoid catastrophe a