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Gruber bends over backwards and twists himself in knots trying to explain why he isn't disappointed after considering the expectations he set before the event.

by tlipeep 12y ago

Gruber bends over backwards and twists himself in knots trying to explain why he isn't disappointed after considering the expectations he set before the event. I don't see anything different in the AppleWatch functionality compared to what he criticized Android Wear for earlier this year

jkubicek 12y ago
I thought he was pretty clear when he said > If it actually doesn’t do much more, or allow much more, than what they demonstrated on stage last week, I am indeed going to be deeply disappointed, and I’ll be concerned about the entire direction of the company as a whole. But I get the impression that they’ve only shown us the tip of the functional iceberg, simply because they wanted to reveal the hardware — particularly the digital crown — on their own terms. The software they can keep secret longer, because it doesn’t enter the hands of the Asian supply chain. He thinks Apple is holding some details close to the vest and he has a plausible reason for why. Say what you will about Gruber's Apple partisanship, but he's always been great at reading between the lines of Apple's publicity events.
- tlipeep 12y ago
  That's wishful thinking from Gruber so he can withhold judgement/criticism. Apple clearly demonstrated the fundamental functionality of their Watch and the hardware does determine the software — they have a hardware button dedicated to one particular feature ffs. Any additional functionality via WatchKit will at best be supplemental. It'd take a while for iOS developers to get to grips with the new paradigm. Furthermore, in his haste to differentiate Apple from the competition > My impression of Android Wear is that it’s best thought of as a wrist-worn terminal for your Android phone and for Google’s cloud-based services. An extension for your phone, not a sibling device. Android Wear devices are almost useless other than for telling time when out of Bluetooth range from your phone. I don’t think that’s a device that many people want; it’s a solution in search of a problem. Call me biased if you want, but I think Android Wear is simply the result of the rest of the industry trying to get out in front of Apple, out of fear of how far behind they were when the iPhone dropped in 2007. On the surface, they do look like the same basic thing: small color LCD touchscreens on your wrist. But all Android Wear devices are larger and clunkier than the larger 42mm Apple Watch, and none of them are even close to the smaller 38mm one. Is there anyone who would dispute that Apple Watch is far more appealing to women than any other smartwatch on the market? The new Sony Smart watch(1) already has more functionality (gps, waterproof, longer estimated battery, transreflective screen visible in sunlight) than the specs of the AppleWatch while the Asus ZenWatch(2) matches it in feminine looks (if not in expensive materials). Both will be out before the AppleWatch and likely for lower prices than the cheap entry-level AppleWatch. AndroidWear OEMs are iterating faster with a wider range of options. Gruber is comparing actual shipping products (Moto360) to promised unreleased products from Apple, indeed he's hoping Apple exceeds their promises. That's his bias showing (1) http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/smartwear/smartwatch-3-swr50/ http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/smartwear/smart... (2) http://www.asus.com/Phones/ASUS_ZenWatch_WI500Q/ http://www.asus.com/Phones/ASUS_ZenWatch_WI500Q/
  - ismavis 12y ago
    Also wrong about being useless outside of phone range: offline music playback (for bluetooth music playback) and GPS Support. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/android-wear-moving-forward-like.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/android-wear-moving-f...
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    " Android Wear devices are almost useless other than for telling time when out of Bluetooth range from your phone" Yeah. This is the part that gets me. Gruber is willing to withhold judgement and assume apple has not shown off everything. But android wear makers, you see, they've shown everything in their presentation. No android wear manufacturers are planning anything different than what was shown at I/O.
    - jkubicek 12y ago
      > But android wear makers, you see, they've shown everything in their presentation. No android wear manufacturers are planning anything different than what was shown at I/O. Most tech companies over-promise and under-deliver. Apple has a tendency to do the opposite (if you ignore they hyperbole). I'm sure most Android Wear manufacturers are planning beyond what they've actually announced, but I would be amazed if we see anything new before the new year.
      - DannyBee 12y ago
        " I'm sure most Android Wear manufacturers are planning beyond what they've actually announced, but I would be amazed if we see anything new before the new year." So around the same timeframe that apple will actually release something? :)
  - pinkyand 12y ago
    > AndroidWear OEMs are iterating faster with a wider range of options. That's the critical point.Both ecosystems are starting from a similar point. AndroidWear is iterating faster. And since watch apps are probably much simpler to build than phone apps, we'll probably won't see a big difference between the app ecosystems. And there's probably little that can be patent protected. Probably the only difference would be that your phone will determine which watch you'll use. But the watches will pretty much be the same.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  "He thinks Apple is holding some details close to the vest and he has a plausible reason for why. Say what you will about Gruber's Apple partisanship, but he's always been great at reading between the lines of Apple's publicity events." And he also thinks that no android wear device manufacturer is doing the same, for no plausible reason. He's basically saying "apple has secret plans, they are awesome" and "Nobody else has secret plans, because they are not Apple. Thus, we can ignore anything they haven't talked about" That doesn't seem very sane to me.
  - freshyill 12y ago
    AND he says that if it turns out Apple doesn't have secret plans, then he will indeed be very disappointed. Everybody else's watches are shipping. If they've got secret plans, they should probably get around to revealing them.
    - elblanco 12y ago
      just like he backed out of being disappointed in the watch itself?
  - notatoad 12y ago
    Other people might have secret plans (like Tag Heuer's rumoured smartwatch maybe), but i think it's fair to assume that the android wear manufacturers have shown their cards. Android Wear is a released product at this point. Samsung has released four (or more?) iterations of their smartwatch. LG has released two. Motorola took some extra time to release theirs - if they had a secret awesome plan and were rushing a placeholder to market just to get their foot in the door, they would have released three months earlier. None of these companies did anything beyond the basic "smartphone notifications and action buttons on your wrist" feature set. I'm sure there are plans for the next version to be better in lots of little ways, but i think it's perfectly rational to assume that what we are currently seeing from android wear is indicative of the general vision for android wear. If anybody had a truly game-changing idea, we would have seen some hint of it in their products by now. It's probably unreasonable to pin your hopes on apple have some revolutionary breakthrough with their smartwatch (they've been pushed to market by public pressure just as much as LG and Samsung have), but it's even more unreasonable to think that samsung has some amazing secret plan.
bane 12y ago
I really struggled to get through this post. I can usually skim his posts despite the slavish hackishness of most of them, but I really couldn't get through this entire thing. I think it's important to see what Gruber is saying, only if because he tends to aggregate the talking points you'll hear about whatever Apple. But this...this was really a tough post to get through. I honestly felt like I was reading some long-winded justification article by a cult acolyte who just realized the apocalypse didn't occur last Thursday at 11:23am like he was promised and is vomiting justifications to account for it. All that being said, it's one of the few Gruber articles I didn't flag because I was interested to see how he was going to eat his words. The only saving grace of this entire post was this line "but I think Android Wear is simply the result of the rest of the industry trying to get out in front of Apple, out of fear of how far behind they were when the iPhone dropped in 2007." which I agree completely with. But agreeing with Gruber makes me a little angry and dead feeling on the inside. But then I read this garbage "The digital crown feels amazing. It didn’t actually control anything on-screen on the demo watches I handled last week, but it has the most amazing feel of any analog controller I’ve ever used. Lubricious (in the second sense, if not the first as well) is the word that springs to mind." and I felt a little better. I mean geez, enough. Seriously. Just come out and say you want to make love to it. No Gruber, you really meant in the first sense. I feel a little bit dirty though after dragging my eyeballs through this post.
w1ntermute 12y ago
I honestly don't understand why Daring Fireball hasn't been banned on HN. Gruber is just an Apple shill.
- bane 12y ago
  May as well just redirect to Apple press releases on the same topic whenever a Gruber post gets submitted. It would be an interesting NLP problem to figure out what subject he's talking about and automatically find the appropriate Apple press release to redirect to.

by tlipeep 12y ago

jkubicek 12y ago

I thought he was pretty clear when he said > If it actually doesn’t do much more, or allow much more, than what they demonstrated on stage last week, I am indeed going to be deeply disappointed, and I’ll be concerned about the entire direction of the company as a whole. But I get the impression that they’ve only shown us the tip of the functional iceberg, simply because they wanted to reveal the hardware — particularly the digital crown — on their own terms. The software they can keep secret longer, because it doesn’t enter the hands of the Asian supply chain. He thinks Apple is holding some details close to the vest and he has a plausible reason for why. Say what you will about Gruber's Apple partisanship, but he's always been great at reading between the lines of Apple's publicity events.

tlipeep 12y ago
That's wishful thinking from Gruber so he can withhold judgement/criticism. Apple clearly demonstrated the fundamental functionality of their Watch and the hardware does determine the software — they have a hardware button dedicated to one particular feature ffs. Any additional functionality via WatchKit will at best be supplemental. It'd take a while for iOS developers to get to grips with the new paradigm. Furthermore, in his haste to differentiate Apple from the competition > My impression of Android Wear is that it’s best thought of as a wrist-worn terminal for your Android phone and for Google’s cloud-based services. An extension for your phone, not a sibling device. Android Wear devices are almost useless other than for telling time when out of Bluetooth range from your phone. I don’t think that’s a device that many people want; it’s a solution in search of a problem. Call me biased if you want, but I think Android Wear is simply the result of the rest of the industry trying to get out in front of Apple, out of fear of how far behind they were when the iPhone dropped in 2007. On the surface, they do look like the same basic thing: small color LCD touchscreens on your wrist. But all Android Wear devices are larger and clunkier than the larger 42mm Apple Watch, and none of them are even close to the smaller 38mm one. Is there anyone who would dispute that Apple Watch is far more appealing to women than any other smartwatch on the market? The new Sony Smart watch(1) already has more functionality (gps, waterproof, longer estimated battery, transreflective screen visible in sunlight) than the specs of the AppleWatch while the Asus ZenWatch(2) matches it in feminine looks (if not in expensive materials). Both will be out before the AppleWatch and likely for lower prices than the cheap entry-level AppleWatch. AndroidWear OEMs are iterating faster with a wider range of options. Gruber is comparing actual shipping products (Moto360) to promised unreleased products from Apple, indeed he's hoping Apple exceeds their promises. That's his bias showing (1) http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/smartwear/smartwatch-3-swr50/ http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/smartwear/smart... (2) http://www.asus.com/Phones/ASUS_ZenWatch_WI500Q/ http://www.asus.com/Phones/ASUS_ZenWatch_WI500Q/
- ismavis 12y ago
  Also wrong about being useless outside of phone range: offline music playback (for bluetooth music playback) and GPS Support. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/android-wear-moving-forward-like.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/android-wear-moving-f...
- DannyBee 12y ago
  " Android Wear devices are almost useless other than for telling time when out of Bluetooth range from your phone" Yeah. This is the part that gets me. Gruber is willing to withhold judgement and assume apple has not shown off everything. But android wear makers, you see, they've shown everything in their presentation. No android wear manufacturers are planning anything different than what was shown at I/O.
  - jkubicek 12y ago
    > But android wear makers, you see, they've shown everything in their presentation. No android wear manufacturers are planning anything different than what was shown at I/O. Most tech companies over-promise and under-deliver. Apple has a tendency to do the opposite (if you ignore they hyperbole). I'm sure most Android Wear manufacturers are planning beyond what they've actually announced, but I would be amazed if we see anything new before the new year.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      " I'm sure most Android Wear manufacturers are planning beyond what they've actually announced, but I would be amazed if we see anything new before the new year." So around the same timeframe that apple will actually release something? :)
- pinkyand 12y ago
  > AndroidWear OEMs are iterating faster with a wider range of options. That's the critical point.Both ecosystems are starting from a similar point. AndroidWear is iterating faster. And since watch apps are probably much simpler to build than phone apps, we'll probably won't see a big difference between the app ecosystems. And there's probably little that can be patent protected. Probably the only difference would be that your phone will determine which watch you'll use. But the watches will pretty much be the same.
DannyBee 12y ago
"He thinks Apple is holding some details close to the vest and he has a plausible reason for why. Say what you will about Gruber's Apple partisanship, but he's always been great at reading between the lines of Apple's publicity events." And he also thinks that no android wear device manufacturer is doing the same, for no plausible reason. He's basically saying "apple has secret plans, they are awesome" and "Nobody else has secret plans, because they are not Apple. Thus, we can ignore anything they haven't talked about" That doesn't seem very sane to me.
- freshyill 12y ago
  AND he says that if it turns out Apple doesn't have secret plans, then he will indeed be very disappointed. Everybody else's watches are shipping. If they've got secret plans, they should probably get around to revealing them.
  - elblanco 12y ago
    just like he backed out of being disappointed in the watch itself?
- notatoad 12y ago
  Other people might have secret plans (like Tag Heuer's rumoured smartwatch maybe), but i think it's fair to assume that the android wear manufacturers have shown their cards. Android Wear is a released product at this point. Samsung has released four (or more?) iterations of their smartwatch. LG has released two. Motorola took some extra time to release theirs - if they had a secret awesome plan and were rushing a placeholder to market just to get their foot in the door, they would have released three months earlier. None of these companies did anything beyond the basic "smartphone notifications and action buttons on your wrist" feature set. I'm sure there are plans for the next version to be better in lots of little ways, but i think it's perfectly rational to assume that what we are currently seeing from android wear is indicative of the general vision for android wear. If anybody had a truly game-changing idea, we would have seen some hint of it in their products by now. It's probably unreasonable to pin your hopes on apple have some revolutionary breakthrough with their smartwatch (they've been pushed to market by public pressure just as much as LG and Samsung have), but it's even more unreasonable to think that samsung has some amazing secret plan.

bane 12y ago

I really struggled to get through this post. I can usually skim his posts despite the slavish hackishness of most of them, but I really couldn't get through this entire thing. I think it's important to see what Gruber is saying, only if because he tends to aggregate the talking points you'll hear about whatever Apple. But this...this was really a tough post to get through. I honestly felt like I was reading some long-winded justification article by a cult acolyte who just realized the apocalypse didn't occur last Thursday at 11:23am like he was promised and is vomiting justifications to account for it. All that being said, it's one of the few Gruber articles I didn't flag because I was interested to see how he was going to eat his words. The only saving grace of this entire post was this line "but I think Android Wear is simply the result of the rest of the industry trying to get out in front of Apple, out of fear of how far behind they were when the iPhone dropped in 2007." which I agree completely with. But agreeing with Gruber makes me a little angry and dead feeling on the inside. But then I read this garbage "The digital crown feels amazing. It didn’t actually control anything on-screen on the demo watches I handled last week, but it has the most amazing feel of any analog controller I’ve ever used. Lubricious (in the second sense, if not the first as well) is the word that springs to mind." and I felt a little better. I mean geez, enough. Seriously. Just come out and say you want to make love to it. No Gruber, you really meant in the first sense. I feel a little bit dirty though after dragging my eyeballs through this post.

w1ntermute 12y ago

I honestly don't understand why Daring Fireball hasn't been banned on HN. Gruber is just an Apple shill.

bane 12y ago
May as well just redirect to Apple press releases on the same topic whenever a Gruber post gets submitted. It would be an interesting NLP problem to figure out what subject he's talking about and automatically find the appropriate Apple press release to redirect to.