Great analogy.
Apple Music is the guy you've been dating awhile getting a new haircut that's pretty good. He's growing a bit of a belly and constantly wearing a hoodie but he'll be good to you and sometimes there will be flashes of brilliance that remind you why you loved him in the first place. Except sometimes he drives you crazy by putting your favorite stuff in a random drawer.
When Apple first previewed the Watch back in September last year, all that was said about price was "starts at $350", obviously for the smallest of the aluminium Sports models. Speculation on the standard stainless steel Watch, and of course the gold Edition models, was all over the map— I saw guesses ranging from "up to $1000" to "$20,000+".
My personal preference has always been for the steel Watch (and mostly for the black version). I've worn a mostly-steel link bracelet Casio Waveceptor for most of the past decade, and I like the way it feels on my wrist. It feels weird having anything lighter on: I experimented (to the amusement of some of my colleagues) with wearing a 4th-generation iPod Nano on an expanding metal bracelet for a while, and despite loving having the controls for my commute listening right on my wrist I couldn't get used to how it didn't really feel like my regular watch. After about 8 months I went back to my Casio.
(An aside: while I like the Casio a lot, and love its combined analogue/digital display and its solar-charging face, I don't like that parts of it—the buttons and the undersides of where the strap meets the body—are made from chromed plastic. The chrome has long since worn away of course. I also grumble about how hard it is to set: regular time setting is automatic, but changing time zones is a puzzle worthy of Myst island. I've toyed with buying a more recent Casio, but they're all a bit bulky, and the Bluetooth App control seems like an afterthought.)
Since it's been so long since I've shopped for a watch (the Casio was a gift, and thinking about it I'm not sure I've *ever* bought a watch for myself) I had no preconceived idea of what the Apple Watch would/should cost. Looking around jewellery stores at a few decent mid-range steel watches it seemed to me that the steel Apple Watch might end up anywhere between £500 and £1500. When Apple revealed the price range of £480-£950 (from the 38mm stainless steel with sports band at the bottom, to the 42mm space black at the top) that seemed just about right for the "jewellery" watch market (though obviously not for the existing smartwatch market, if you can even call it that).
I considered—but eventually decided to ignore—the technology issue. Any watch built around a computer running an updatable OS will need to iterate faster than one with fixed and limited functionality. I think this is a necessary transition that brings both benefits and drawbacks, and the increased functional value should, in the medium term at least, outweigh the faster depreciation. I don't intend to upgrade it annually, though I'm confident it'll hold at least some value that would offset a replacement. My year-old iPhones hold their value pretty well.
This isn't how I normally think about new categories of product. With the first iPad (and iPad mini) I went in at the bottom end, until I was convinced of the value and upgraded to higher capacity (and SIM-equipped) models. That I've opted to dive into Apple Watch at the "jewellery" end of things is significant I think. It's clear that this product is pushing different buttons for me. Just, I suspect, as it was designed to.
Insightful piece by Mitch Goldstein on the tense relationship between designers and new technology.
Even the analog technologies designers like to use in current work were originally introduced to dramatically reduce the unpredictability and ambiguity in the technologies they replaced. Before lead type, letters were drawn by hand, with each letterform being different. Analog photographic film reduced the wild variations in hand-painted portraiture.
Seems the Apple Watch that I ordered is harder to make than any of the others.
The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way, and we are thrilled to bring it to more customers around the world,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations. “We’re also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders, and we thank our customers for their patience. All orders placed through May, with the sole exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Link Bracelet, will ship to customers within two weeks. At that time, we’ll also begin selling some models in our Apple Retail Stores.”
In a seperate email to those of us who ordered one, Apple offers this assurance:
As you may have heard, some models of Apple Watch will soon be available for purchase in Apple Retail Stores. We’d like you to know that the model you ordered will not be available for purchase in Apple Retail Stores until all current online orders have shipped.
My guess is that the DLC coatin is proving especially hard to get right, at least to Apple's exacting standards.
Sam Groves over on the Flatpack blog writes about our recent adventure in Hong Kong, and does a much better job of it than I could.
When we’ve toured shorts programmes before, the screening’s been part of something bigger, usually a festival, so for us to travel to a different continent and put on a one-off pop-up screening in one of the back streets in Hong Kong – well, you could be forgiven to say we weren’t exactly guaranteed a huge audience. But we opened the doors, and some people walked in, and then some more people, and then some more people – and by the time we started, the room was full – a mix of ex-pats, foreign nationals, and HK locals. There was a real buzz in the place (I even got a cheer upon mentioning Birmingham in my intro – it may be a while before that happens again), and the films seemed to go down a storm (David O’Reilly’s The Horse Raised by Spheres being a real favourite). Via a bit of mingling during the breaks, I got a sense that this kind of alternative venue/social short film night isn’t a common occurrence in HK, and that using non-cinema spaces for film is scarcely explored throughout the city. Light bulbs began to appear above my head as thoughts of an annual Flatpack in HK crept into my mind – I started thinking about all the amazing spaces, buildings, and parks I’d seen over the previous couple of days – food for thought, for sure.
The gig definitely falls into my top three ever. Great space, enthusiastic (and very vocal) audience, and a cracking selection of films.
For me the Flatpack event was the perfect climax to five-weeks working in Asia, and something we'd been talking about vaguely since I first visited Hong Kong in 2006. Kudos to Sam and Steve Chamberlain for pushing to make it happen, and to Ian and Pip for bringing the amazing Flatpack festival into the world in the first place. Here's to the tenth festival next year, and to our next international expedition.
Interesting discovery by Daniel Eran Dilger:
Bizarrely enough, Apple's Maps in China are better than Apple Maps in Europe or the United States. Those improvements are likely to trickle back to the rest of us in enhancements due for iOS 9 and the next OS X (as well as in the navigation maps on Apple Watch).
I too struggle to navigate Hong Kong with Apple Maps. Looks like it's about to get a whole lot better.
A lot's happened since the last update, so we've a bunch of things to catch up on. I spent much of March and April in various parts of Asia, and general busyness levels have made writing hard. I'm going to be writing some quick updates and reflections on a few things over the long weekend, and then we'll see where things go from there.
I've also taken the opportunity to start rethinking what purpose Futurilla serves, and I want to try a few different things out over the summer. Some of these experiments will inevitably fail, but that's ok. Let's see what sticks. I'll write about some of the ideas in the forthcoming posts.
Sense 99, 2/F 99 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong.
Thursday 23rd April 2015, 8pm till late. Free entry.
More details here: https://flatpackasia.squarespace.com/ and on the main Flatpack site.
This looks great, and it's just what I've been thinking I want from iPhone accessories: A single specialised function that does something very well and provides the extra power needed. I want a camera grip that includes a battery too.
While you're at it, make sure you check out the promo video. Great stuff.
This, I think, is spot on.
From the Watch Face, you are able to see your Glances and notifications. In order to see apps, you have to engage the Digital Crown. This makes it seem pretty obvious that Apple has purposely designed apps not to be front and center like they are on iPhone. Instead, Apple Watch apps are mere repositories where stored information can be pushed to the user in the form of Glances and via Notification Center.
Looking at the Apple Watch walk-throughs myself, it's not hard to see that what initially looked like the Apple Watch's version of Springboard is actually more akin to a kind of Settings screen where you can see the whole "universe" of installed functionality. Apple Watch doesn't want you wasting your time in there Browsing through apps to use them—it wants to alert you to something that needs your attention now or soon, and let you get in and out fast. This is going to take some getting used to for most of us.
Astonishing.
The launch of the popular iPhone 6 by Apple in September 2014 was the biggest, and perhaps the only, positive driver for Hong Kong's retail sector during late 2014. Thanks largely to Apple, retail sales grew better than expected at 3.5%y/y in value terms during September and November 2014, despite the temporary disruption from the 'Occupy Central' demonstration. The sales of iPhone, which are captured in other consumer durable sales, grew on average 60%y/y since September, propelled predominately by the launch of new product.
(Thanks to myapplemenu for the heads-up).
If they shipped this in a less gender-specific version I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
Wearable devices are part of a new model of computer networking — what people are calling the personal cloud. The personal cloud will include both general-purpose and single-purpose devices. Apple is pursuing the general-purpose vision with the upcoming Apple Watch. Ringly is pursuing the single-purpose vision. There will be successful companies in both categories.
Great advice for creative freelancers, and anyone who sells design:
Work less in a struggling economy? Going on long holidays? You gotta be crazy my friend. Now is the time to push your name out into the market and pull in as much business and as much revenue as you can.
Secondly, it’s important that your product is very valuable. You must do great work. A truly exceptional, useful product is a must. You need to be on a path to mastery in your craft or have already achieved it.
You can not take short cuts to mastery.
Fiftythree's lovely bluetooth stylus is now in Apple stores. Here in the UK I noticed they had extensive stocks of all three models last week:
We’re proud to kick off the new year with a special announcement: Pencil is now available at Apple! For the first time ever, see Pencil up close and get it at your local Apple store.
I bought the Pencil (walnut model) when it first shipped on Amazon, and though I paid a fair bit more than it currently costs I haven't regretted it for a moment. Fantastic product.
Ian Betteridge puts his Law of Headlines into full effect with "Should you swap your Mac and iPad for a Surface Pro 3?". In short he has a lot of good things to say about the new Surface Pro, but:
For me, having two devices makes more sense. Most of the time, I can take the iPad and enjoy the insane battery life, huge range of applications, and easy portability of a tablet. Sometimes, I might want to take my MacBook Pro, and enjoy all the fantastic Mac apps. The number of occasions when I don’t know which device I’m going to need — or when I need both — are much rarer than Microsoft would like to believe.
I know people who want a single device and are prepared to make compromises to achieve that simplicity. For some, that device is a laptop, for some a tablet, for others a large-screen phone. Me? I've never wished my Mac was an iPad, nor my iPad a Mac.
On the subject of the soon-to-launch Apple Watch, MacObserver's John Martellaro drops this reality bomb:
When Apple announces a new product, they've been working on it in secret for years. As a result, the obvious questions we ask ourselves between the time the product is announced and when it ships have already been worked out by Apple. And so, it makes little sense to beat up on Apple for things that we dream up as potential problems until the product actually ships.
There's been on-off speculation since we got our first look at the Watch that something like this might be possible. After all, you don't expect your solid gold watch to need replacing every year. Moreover, that new all-in-one S1 package looks remarkably like a separate module. Apple's designed that to be easy to swap out, even if it doesn't intend to let you do it yourself.
Even more interesting in my opinion: Apple will be getting a lot of experience in developing small, sealed packages that bundle all a device's sensors and chips together. Where else is that going to show up over the next few years?
Montblanc's e-strap is an intriguing concept to be sure, but it might have been better on the drawing board than in reality. Just because your customers like a bulky watch doesn't mean they want a second, slightly less bulky, display on the opposite side of the strap. Also: I've seen better displays on digital radios.
Hot on the heels of the iPhone toppling all-but-one camera brand on Flickr comes this piece on The Verge by Vlad Savov:
The iPhone’s lead as the smartphone to beat has rarely been defined by just one thing. At one point, the biggest advantage was the simplicity and speed of its interface; at another, it was down to the diversity and quality of available apps; and most recently, the iPhone has distinguished itself with the quality of its 8-megapixel camera. Today, the combination of all these things — simple and fast operation, strong optics and image processing, and a wide app ecosystem — is helping people create the best possible images with the least possible hassle.
It's been a while now since the iPhone pretty much replaced all of the my other cameras—I haven't taken either my Canon DSLR or my Ricoh GR Digital 1 out of the house since I bought the iPhone 5s, and the iPhone 6 has made me miss them even less. (Hat-tip to MyAppleMenu for the link).
I was asked yesterday to review part of a project proposal I'm involved in and—for the purposes of the funding application—highlight aspects which might qualify it as innovative. It's not an unusual ask, especially when the funding is meant to go to innovative projects, but it made me think about just how difficult it is to define innovation.
Reading through the proposal a number of different kinds of innovation seem apparent, and I think it's worth enumerating and thinking about them seperately:
1. Pure invention: This is characterised by a high degree of novelty or unexpectedness, though this might not be immediately apparent. Sometimes there are things we just haven't heard of before, and where we don't know if there's prior art. We can probably rid ourselves of quite a few of these simply by doing more research, and shifting the innovation into another category; some examples that remain might actually be bad ideas—novelty for its own sake, as it were. We should probably eliminate those too, unless we're working in a field of pure research. I'm not sure that this approach has much to offer those of us working in design contexts.
2. Extension: Some of our innovations are really extensions of what's been done before—a kind of dialling up of key aspects of the work. This is often what passes for design iteration, though it's less than all that implies. Much of what passes for consumer product innovation Is just this kind of amplification: faster, thinner, more. Almost every project does at least some of this,
3. Recontextualisation: Perhaps the most interesting kind of innovation is when something established (and sometimes mundane) in one context suddenly gets relocated into a new space and it just all makes sense. Think failed low-tack glue becoming Post-It-Notes. We're big fans of this over on the Visual Communication Masters course too—it's often what's happening when students are creating what we call new knowledge.
4. Synthesis: You can combine disparate elements and end up with a teasmade, or you can create the iPhone. When it works, when two conceptual frameworks overlay each other and tessellate perfectly, then true magic happens. Very hard to do well, and a quick read of The Design of Everyday Things is all you need to tell you why.
What's apparent from yesterday's exercise in innovation-spotting is just how hard it is to definitively call something innovative, except in hindsight. More often than not we're just pointing out areas with potential for design activity that fits one or more of our categories, and where we hope that innovation—with the application of design, commitment to iterative processes , and more than a little luck—might take hold and flourish.
Fascinating web archeology in old VHS cassettes.
In the late aughts, Baio figured out where he might be able to find this historical data. He began collecting instructional VHS tapes about the early web from thrift stores and Amazon's used video section, where he could get them for about a dollar each. With names like Internet Power and Computability they contain plenty of outdated jargon and quaint "gee wiz" attitudes, and were largely aimed at people who had an Internet connection but didn't know what to use it for. Turns out, these videos make up some of the only documentation left of that online era.