Am I not in on the joke? Here's a magic 8 ball prediction: wearable stuff will bomb.
All they can do is tell me if I walked or not. I KNOW IF I WALKED OR NOT. If I wanted to walk more I'd get another dog, not a watch.
I also like DIRECTLY AFTER they show the pedometer they order a pizza. I just can't imagine a world where these are good ideas. I'd love to have been in on those meetings to throw staplers at the people who suggested these things.
It can't tell me whether I've walked or not, and I can't order a pizza with it, but I get all my notifications on it, which alone is very handy (pun not necessarily intended) for me.
The thing is not many people want to get notifications from their watch as they already carry a phone which is perfectly capable of giving notifications. If anyone can put a phone in a watch, then we start talking :)
I used to think like you are until I had a Pebble. I don't carry my phone around the house anymore, nor do I run for it or pull it out of my pocket every time it beeps. My pebble has saved me pulling my phone out 100 times a day and going through the lock screen to see that I just wasted 10 seconds. Notifications wise it has been a game changer for me. Other functionality I'm still dubious on.
The thing that makes phones such gold mines is that people in many countries reliably buy a new one every two years (through a carrier). Tablets are arguably on a plateau already. I wonder if the industry can really turn phone watches into something that reliably generates cash.
Its almost sad that the goal is "reliably generating cash" instead of "making something better for humanity." Working to prevent me from having to pull my phone out of my pocket is not anywhere close to where our technological efforts should be placed.
It's not about making you pull your phone out less its about trying to integrate more things around you seamlessly to be more interconnected. Reaching for your phone less is a by-product. Altruistic views are nice but the driver of our technology is consistent investment facilitating iteration on all fronts.
To a certain degree I still disagree. Integrated and more connected? Take that all the way out until you can't tell where the machine stop and the human starts.
While all these micro-iterations on technology are great, and we have some amazing toys, I can't help but think that humanity is getting too DISCONNECTED from EARTH.
Let me counter your anecdote with mine. I talk with customers all day for project related work. I regularly put thousands of minutes on my phone each month, mostly for work.
There's literally no way that today's battery density (or even in several years) is high enough to support more than a dozen calls, not to mention all the radios a cell phone requires (just think antenna length, not space).
I wouldn't expect a viable standalone phone-watch until 2025 barring significant advances in battery technology and cell antenna design.
Huh? They clearly demoed it doing all sorts of things. Besides, it's not like this is a brand new category, Pebble watches and the like have been doing this for a while, but they've been a niche product. A larger manufacturer might change that.
The problem with the Pebble (speaking as a Pebble owner) is that it's very, very limited in what it can do. It works okay as a display, but that's about it. I bought mine to basically use in lieu of a bike computer while cycling, and it's great for that, but it couldn't really do anything interesting.
I can see that I got a text message on my Pebble. Awesome. The problem was I couldn't do anything with it. Can't dismiss it on the phone. Can't reply to it.
Android Wear looks like it addresses the major problems I have with my Pebble. If pricing looks sane there's a good chance I'll be ordering on of the watches going up for sale today.
I can't comment on the whole Google API offers, but I use Moves and I really like it. I was initialy meant as a low-level excercice tool but they steped a little away from that and designed the product more for life-loging, and this is gold for me: I can, every week or so, look back at what I did. I make a personal effort to do something new every day (buy a vegetable I've never taste at the supermarket, try a new restaurant, walk another route to work) and that app covers a lot of that -- not always directly, but it reminds me of context. "Why did I walk that much that day? - Click to map - Oh, I went through that park back home. Yeah, that was when my boss really got in my guills, and I needed the Sun." Including photos, notes would make is more explicitly so, and Moves has more of a low-feature general approach, but what they have makes sense.
It's not about getting a dog as much as having something that archive (your memory sucks at that) and tells you if you have the regularity that such a responsability entails: I can't. I can tell you I got home after 10 more than half the past month, but not because I remember it: because Moves let me see so.
I've been wearing a watch every day for years and I have no interest in this stuff either. Honestly, I like the idea that my watch is just a stupid thing that tells me the time, having it beep at me every time I get an email would just feel like I'm being tethered to a computer even more than I am already.
They are definitely throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. It's the developers in the room that will turn things android can now do to stuff people may actually want to do.
Personally I prefer when google shows weak propositions instead of just prescribing everything people want to do/will do.
I've been wearing a BodyMedia tracker for over a year and a Pebble watch for 6+ months. I'm happy with both. I wore Glass for a month and wasn't happy with it. Some products are good, some are not, and some are early prototypes for future products we'll love.
There's something extremely magic about knowing who is calling you when you're cycling and therefore whether to stop or not to take the call.
Also, changing music or volume when on a bus without having to do that thing where you lift your bum to get your phone out of your pocket is, well, better than it sounds.
I have been wearing a Fitbit for over a year, my wife for 6 months. I can't imagine life without it now. The Big advantage is it keeps me honest. I aim to always do 10,000 steps a day, 100,000 steps a week, and I can see if I am short at any time. It is easy to convince yourself you have done more walking than you really have.
All they can do is tell me if I walked or not. I KNOW IF I WALKED OR NOT. If I wanted to walk more I'd get another dog, not a watch.
I also like DIRECTLY AFTER they show the pedometer they order a pizza. I just can't imagine a world where these are good ideas. I'd love to have been in on those meetings to throw staplers at the people who suggested these things.