Well, if there’s anyone that can beat Apple at its own nostalgia-driven, name-recognition powered branding game of the smartwatch, it’s (you guessed it) the guys at Swatch, right?
Swatch Group AG plans to start selling a smartwatch within the next three months, potentially pitting the Swiss maker of colorful plastic timepieces against the debut of the Apple Watch.
The device will communicate via a form of technology known as NFC and won’t have to be charged, Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek said in an interview. The Swatch smartwatch will also let consumers make mobile payments and work with Windows and Android software, he said.
Hayek is ready to go head-to-head with Apple Inc., which has scheduled its smartwatch introduction for April. The market for such timepieces, which enable phone or data communication, will probably reach about $10 billion in 2018, Citigroup Inc. analysts forecast last year, with half of the market coming from traditional watch wearers switching to the devices.
Swatch has decades of experience developing technology that might go into a smartwatch, such as long-lasting batteries so thin they’re bendable. The company’s Tissot brand has made watches with touch-screens since 1999 that now offer an altimeter, a compass, and sensors to record a diver’s descent.
Dude I didn’t even know Swatch was still around.
? Martin
Yeah, they won’t beat Apple. The biggest trap people who suggest ‘xxx will beat Apple’ fall into is that they have no fucking idea why Apple is successful. Experience building watches is pretty much meaningless. Apple had no experience building phones and 7 years later makes more money selling iPhones than any other company makes selling any other thing. Tissot’s touch-screen watch sells for about what an Apple Watch will sell for. If Swatch has an advantage here, then why couldn’t they demonstrate that advantage over the last 15 years? Apple’s entry can only make their job harder, not easier.
The Apple Watch, only slightly in its first incarnation (as was true with the iPhone) is a move to put a full general-purpose computer on your wrist just as the iPhone put the first full general-purpose computer in your pocket. What derives from having that adds the real value to the platform, and Apple’s ability to package and sell it to you in a way that doesn’t piss you off (though you pay for the privilege) is what puts them over the top. Now, I’m with everyone else in not quite being sure what the use case is, but that’s only because developers haven’t shown up yet. Uber, Twitter, Tinder, Yelp, Instagram, and a whole raft of things that we use daily wouldn’t exist (or exist in the usable form they’re in) without the iPhone putting a general purpose location-aware device on you 18 hours a day. iPhone suffered the same problem of the use being unclear beyond SMS and calling. The same will happen with wearables – the developers will make the use cases by building new services around these devices. If I owned a Tesla, I’d probably buy a Watch just for the app.
But what makes me think that these will take off is this. Most desirable gift brand in China – Apple. Top gift type for men – watches. Apple’s sales in China just last quarter was $16B. That’s double Swatch’s global annual sales. That’s one hell of a hill for them to climb.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@? Martin: Felix says Apple messed up with their watch. He makes a good case, I think. Who wants to be touching their watch all the time, especially if they’ve got their phone in their hand most of the day?
Cheers,
Scott.
Xantar
@? Martin:
Actually, I’d say the use of an iPhone was pretty clear upon its debut. The mere fact that it had a fully functional web browser instead what was available on Blackberries was already huge. Add in a couple other neat features like being able to tap on a phone number you see on a website in order to call it and you have something that most people can understand very quickly. Safari on iPhone alone was enough reason for many people to get it.
The device with an unclear use at launch was probably the iPad, in my opinion.
srv
@? Martin: I can’t wait to have Android running on my Timex.
Derp.
Amir Khalid
The watch I got for my 15th anniversary of service was a Tissot. When I took it in to the Tissot store to have the battery replaced after some three years of use, they told me it would take three months: one month to wait for the service centre guy to come by and pick it up, a month in the service centre waiting its turn to have the battery replaced (a two-minute job), one month to wait for the service centre to return the watch to the store. The service centre, by the way, was in an office building within half a mile of the store.
I said fuck that shit, and bought myself a cheap Casio digital.
Now then, about smartwatches. I don’t know about them, I keep getting stuck on the absurdity of a device that is supposed to interface between you and your smartphone. I always figured that was the smartphone’s job. Maybe the ideal product is a wristwatch-format smartphone?
SatanicPanic
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: screens seem to be going in the opposite direction too- people want bigger, not smaller. Then again, Martin’s got a point- we don’t know what kind of things they’ll be used for until they’ve been around a couple years. And Apple isn’t going to make the same mistake Google made with Google Glass, i.e. making something that looks dorky. Who knows?
I want GoPro to make one, because when I’m at the beach is about the only time I ever wish I had a watch on my wrist.
Occasional Reader
The “colorful plastic timepieces” are only a tiny part of the Swatch empire. They own a ton of high-end Swiss watch brands like Breguet and Omega. I actually think a luxiry Swiss iWatch could compete with Apple among 1 percenters if it was bundled with e-pay and a white-glove concierge service. Like an Amex Centurion card you can wear on your wrist. A certain crowd would probably go for it.
Zandar
@Amir Khalid: I sincerely doubt the whole “$10 billion market by 2018” figure for smartwatches in general, and think the iWatch won’t be huge.
On the other hand, Android has sold 5 million plus of the Android Wear series of watches, so there’s a market for them.
boatboy_srq
Swatch, as part of Swatch Group, is BIG in Swiss timepieces. They own a bunch of other brands, including Longines, Rado, Blancpain, Hamilton, Omega and Tissot, and their movements go in a bunch of others, including TAG Heuer, IWC and Baume & Mercier. I doubt Swatch will knock Apple off the smartwatch pedestal, but they’ll definitely get their share – especially from folks who are interested in something that isn’t obsolete in a year.
@? Martin: I suspect that Swatch, being a mature enterprise and one focused on a more durable good, waited to see how the market reacted, and if they rushed anywhere it was in the announcement rather than the development. They can afford to be caught flat-footed now and then: battery-powered timepieces were supposed to be the end of mechanical movements in the 70s, digitals were the end of analog in the 80s, and on and on – and Swatch is still going and still selling a boatload of watches. Most of Swatch’s brands aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and there’s still good demand for them; if they want to dip a toe in the smartgizmo pool, chances are they’ll do it well.
Villago Delenda Est
I want to be able to hit my chest and say “VDE to Enterprise, one to beam up” and then I get beamed up.
jl
I don’t know whether Swatch can ‘beat’ Apple, but do they need to?
That a mass market Swiss made watch is even still here is kind of a miracle. They were invented to revive a dying industry, at least for mass market product. And it worked.
Disclosure: I am half Swiss, so not objective. And I even bought a couple of Swatches, and now might buy another since cheap wristwatches Timex or Seiko , digital or dial seem to have disappeared from convenience stores.
One thing Swatch knows how to do that Apple does not, is to simplify design in order to manufacture cheaper without much loss in quality. Seems to me that if these fancy Swiss-knife (har har har) style watches become popular, there will be a market for a cheaper version. Unlike Microsoft, Swatch also knows how to design things that people find attractive.
Belafon
@? Martin: Apple’s watch will be nothing more than a small screen iPhone. The icons will be so small you’ll need a DS Stylus to use them.
There’s a reason Samsung is eating Apple’s lunch right now: Since Steve Jobs died, the only thing Apple can do is make screens.
Pee Cee
I think one hill all of these “smart watch” companies are going to need to climb is that the younger set just isn’t wearing watches at all.
different-church-lady
@? Martin:
You say that like it would be a bad thing.
Arclite
Watches as an accessory have been in steady decline for a decade. It seems unfathomable that smart watches would be a $10B industry in 3 years. Few adults I know wear them, and only for specific purposes. My wife wears one when she goes surfing, but otherwise does not. My daughter because I won’t let her have a phone. I haven’t even put one on in 10 years.
jl
@Pee Cee: Minimum wage service industry workers like wristwatches since they have to watch the clock and cannot run to find one, and cannot pull out their cell phones all the time. And that is our future, so might be a market for reasonably priced versions.
SatanicPanic
@Belafon:
Are you sure about this? I was under the impression it was the other way around
different-church-lady
@Xantar:
The big breakthrough on the iPhone was Jobs’ personal dislike of keypads. He insisted on the touch screen, probably for no better reason than he wanted it that way, but in doing so it opened up a lot of other user interface possibilities that a keyboard or other physical buttons would make impossible.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Xantar: Not for me but I’m a minority; I knew I would use it for sheet music and a lyric teleprompter. Dream come true. Fits right on my mic stand.
That I found later it can be used as a fairly decent recording platform for demos is just icing on the cake.
Calouste
@Xantar: PDA’s/smartphones existed at least 10 years before the iPhone. It was pretty clear to everyone what the iPhone was supposed to do.
The purpose of the Apple Watch on the other hand, is a different matter. You already have a portable computer in your pocket (because the Apple Watch won’t work without an iPhone), and 1.6 inch is not much screen real estate.
eldorado
i have a 1st gen ipad and it’s use was immediately obvious to me. video/movie watching and books. still using it for that today. too bad it can’t update anymore.
different-church-lady
@Arclite:
Trends baby:
2004: “Look how small my phone is!”
2014: “Look how big my phone is!”
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: This is why, when shopping Tissot, Hamilton or any of the others, I don’t bother with the battery-powered ones and stick to the automatics. With anything above Swatch brand itself, under the label on the face it’s circuit-board-and-motor, and the name buys a fancy case and longer (but not necessarily better, as you discovered) support; with an automatic you’re getting the value in the movement, plus NEVER having to replace the battery.
Pee Cee
@jl:
I have a lot of that set in my classes at the community college where I teach. Most of them don’t wear watches, and that number has been going down every year I’ve been here.
We actually had to add clocks back to the classroom a couple of years ago because students weren’t allowed to check their phones during a test, and it stressed them out not knowing how much time they had left.
? Martin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The problem I have with most analysis of the watch market is that they’re almost all made by men and almost all argue against the Watch because the iPhone is just so darn convenient.
Problem is that when I talk to women I get a completely different picture. As phones have gotten larger, they’ve gotten less convenient. Women already have a deficit of pocket space and bigger phones make the deficit even larger. My daughter already has reported that many of her friends with larger Android and iPhones has shifted from carrying them in their back pockets and are now putting them in purses or backpacks. The convenience of phones argument is only argued by men based on the experiences of men. Women seem to appreciate the added functionality of the larger screen, but almost all comment to me on the phone rarely being handy for them for quick things. My wife still wears her watch because the phone is too hard to get to in order to tell time, and she misses probably ⅓ of my texts for the same reason.
I think the market will be much larger than people anticipate, in large part because Apple has done an okay job of getting it to a reasonable size (by the 3rd iteration it’ll be there) but will do a great job of getting the fashion components in place – different kinds of straps and the opportunity for 3rd party ones, etc. It will be close enough to jewelry to escape the uncanny valley that existing smartwatches currently live in. Not expecting overwhelming sales of the first iteration, but that’s just how it goes with these things. It takes a few iterations before it all falls into place.
Shakezula
There’s been a sort of advertisement floating around for a few months and I had that same reaction when I first saw it.
? Martin
@Belafon: Samsung went from being top phone brand in the US to 2nd (Apple #1). Then went from first to 4th in China (Apple #1). Apple is the top brand in Japan, and is rapidly closing in on Samsung even in South Korea.
Samsung is in trouble. Units are down, profits are way down. Apple has really cut into their market in a big way.
jl
@Pee Cee: Also, electronic transactions by cell phone much more established in Europe, so I wonder whether Swatch will have more attractive and convenient aps ready to go than Apple.
I will not know much about that, since I am a luddite about dong electronic transactions from cell phone.
I often find wristwatch handy, though I am not a minimum wage service industry worker (yet…) Don’t have one now, since types I liked disappeared from stores I frequent a few years ago. So, I might go looking for one soon. Swatch of course will be my choice if I gotta go to some semi fancy place (Swiss pride!, you know).
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: “Look how bad my eyes have gotten in the last ten years looking at this tiny fucking screen.”
Pee Cee
@? Martin:
This is an excellent argument for a line of smaller phones (and one reason I’m reluctant at the moment to upgrade to a newer iPhone). Not as much of a strong argument for a wristwatch that is a phone accessory, though.
Mandalay
@Belafon:
Are you sure about that? From last Thursday….
? Martin
@different-church-lady: Actually the big breakthrough was allowing apps. People forget that initially, Apple said no 3rd party apps on the iPhone. They backed off a few months later, and the app store showed up the next year.
Apple’s intention was to ship a general purpose computer (Blackberry’s were designed as expanded-functionality pagers) and yes, the on-screen keyboard was a key component of that, but they initially screwed up by not recognizing that 3rd party software is what makes general purpose computers useful. Apple themselves couldn’t foresee the huge range of applications that developers could come up with – they assumed they could provide everything worth having. A proper browser was just part of that thinking.
Apple was also prescient enough to make a deal with AT&T such that the carriers couldn’t fuck with the device – a problem that all other handsets still suffer to varying degrees.
Tree With Water
I wonder- will the watch will come with mouse ears?
? Martin
@Pee Cee: I do hope Apple keeps the 4″ phones around. My 14 year old daughter doesn’t have a single pocket that can accommodate an iPhone 6.
Nobody could really anticipate moving their attention off of their PC to the phone either. It’ll move. There’s enough low-interactivity things that are suitable for a <2" screen. Apple Pay is doing quite well and it'll work straight from the Watch. These little things will all add up with enough developer attention.
Zandar
And for the record, I have a simple Pebble smartwatch I got for $99. The idea that people are going to drop $349 for an iWatch just to pair with their iPhones is…yeah.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@? Martin: Yup. Samsung has hit a rough patch. But they’ve been through them before. They’re a huge company – they’ll figure a way forward.
What is Apple going to do when everyone has a “good enough” iPhone? Screens aren’t going to get much bigger, and they’re probably “Retina”y enough as it is. Add another GB of RAM? Wooo. The tablet market is dying, they’re too big to survive on a shrinking PC market, iPods are dying, etc., etc. Maybe the iWatch will be a big hit, but I doubt it. The market can be unkind, as I’m sure Apple historians remember…
Of course, 20 years from now everything will be different. It’s good Apple (and Google) are thinking ahead. But some rough patches with much lower growth are likely ahead. (Sure there are billions of people who would want an iPhone, but they don’t have any money.)
Cheers,
Scott.
RareSanity
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I have a smartwatch now and it’s pretty awesome.
Along with the “Fit Bit” kind of stuff it does, where it really shines is not when your phone is in your hand, but when your phone is in your pocket. Being able to look at various alerts (SMS, Email, IM) process and dismiss them without having to take your phone out of your pocket is pretty convenient.
Plus when the phone rings, I see who’s calling on my watch…and again, if I can’t take the or don’t want to, I can reject it from my watch without taking my phone out of my pocket.
I disagree with Martin, these wearables are not ever going to try and be a mini computer on your wrist. They’re meant to be a “second screen” for your phone, a biometric/fitness accessory, and try to shift as many “simple” tasks as possible to it…so you don’t have to have your phone in your hand all the time.
Leave the phone in your pocket, for the most part. Only take it out when you REALLY need to. For all the simple stuff, just do it on your watch.
Larv
@Amir Khalid:
Do you have some sort of super-fancy Tissot with a special battery? I just take my PR50 Ti-7 (great watch, btw) down to the local jeweler or watch shop when I need the battery replaced.
Botsplainer
@boatboy_srq:
Love my automatic Longines.
MattR
@RareSanity:
This makes sense to me. A stand alone smartwatch, not so much.
? Martin
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: They add services. TouchID, Apple Pay, better camera. Computationally, mobile devices still significantly lag because the cost of mobile chips (aside from Apple’s) isn’t high enough to warrant leading edge processes, but that’ll close up in the next few years. Network speeds will improve. Sensors will get added. Each of these opens up new opportunities, plus the network effects of having more people on the device.
But yeah, it’ll mature in time, but not quite yet.
pseudonymous in nc
@? Martin:
Yeah but no: at least not right now. The battery problem isn’t really solved, and the timeline on that is less amenable to Moore’s law than getting raw computing power down to something you can slap on your wrist.
There is still room for something interesting that isn’t trying to compete on battery life, or at least is coming at it from the direction of 30-odd years of addressing the problem as watchmakers, not computer makers. Swatch saved the fucking Swiss watch industry in the 1980s after the quartz crisis; I don’t think they’re going to take on Apple head-on, but I think they can do something interesting from an angle. (In case we forget, the first big makers of quartz LED watches were Silicon Valley companies.)
trollhattan
@Zandar: So very many folks have ditched (or never began wearing) watches (“My phone tells me the time.”) I’m not the least convinced there’s some giant untapped market here. As with most Apple baubles I’m meh about the watch thingie, but then I just don’t particularly like Apple.
catclub
@SatanicPanic: Yeah, if having the most profitable quarter by any company, ever, is having your lunch eaten, Apple may say: bon apetit.
? Martin
@RareSanity: No, they’ll be a full computer on your wrist. That’s what the whole ‘internet of things’ is about. It won’t work like a computer on your wrist in the sense of having a keyboard, etc. – the interface for doing ‘big’ things will most likely be your iPhone or iPad, but it’ll be a general purpose computer in the sense that you can load 3rd party apps on it that can do independent things – like that Tesla app I linked to above. It’ll be more than a device that just displays notifications and does a bit of fitness tracking.
Amir Khalid
@Larv:
Nope. It was a pretty ordinary analog wristwatch with battery-powered mechanical works. My employers at The Star aren’t the kind to spring for a fancy watch just because some lowly ink-stained wretch like me put in 15 years and wrecked his health in the process. (He said without any bitterness whatsoever.)
trollhattan
@pseudonymous in nc:
Wrist-top GPSs have horrid battery life, at least compared to a typical quartz watch, and don’t have the display drain equal to what a “smart watch” will sport, so yeah, big hurdle.
Bokonon
@boatboy_srq: Those of us who like mechanical watches are in the minority. For better or worse.
pseudonymous in nc
@Pee Cee:
This is why I’m not even thinking about the iPhone 6 or anything of that size. I know that it matters in certain markets, but I personally do not want a big fucking phone, and my options are limited to cheap, undepowered fucking phones. I might just buy a 15-year-old Nokia dumbphone and be done with it.
RareSanity
@? Martin:
Good lord man, does Apple pay you to make these comments?
The Apple processors aren’t anything special, they are just custom SoC devices, that combine the functionality that used to be handled by a few different chips into one single chip.
There are far more powerful (as far as processing power) mobile chips out there than the A8, they just might not combine all of the same functions on one die. That’s just the difference between making a special use chip, compared to a more generalized use chip.
They’re all ARM based processors, so Apple doesn’t have any “special sauce” in theirs. The Snapdragon 810 and Exynos 5 blow the A8 away in raw performance. Once the Exynos 6 octo-core processors start shipping in Samsung devices, performance numbers are going to be unreal. Then Qualcomm will counter with a Snapdragon to match it, and Apple will still be using the A8 for the next couple of years.
Apple has a higher perception of performance, because they use some pretty ingenious software tricks to hide some of functional weaknesses of iOS.
However, perceived performance and actual performance are not the same thing.
RareSanity
@? Martin:
Everything you’re talking about is just a different interface to the app running on whatever device it’s paired to. There aren’t going to be apps that run solely on the device, there will ALWAYS be a part of it that runs on the phone/tablet/whatever. The watch screen is there for convenience, it’s display, and it’s sensors.
They will never be platforms unto themselves…that would use too much power, and you can’t have phone-sized batteries on a watch.
I didn’t make an exhaustive list of what my watch can do, it was just a few examples. It can’t only do those things, and when Apple’s watch is announced, it won’t do anything more than what the current smartwatches do.
It will just be doing what ever it is “Apple’s way”.
Just like I have been using Google Wallet to make purchases with my phone for almost two years…but all of the sudden when Apple does it it’s suddenly some brand new function.
Shana
IIRC, Swatch is in partnership with Mercedes-Benz in making the SmartCar. Or at least they were.
pseudonymous in nc
@trollhattan:
Yeah, it’s compromised hardware. OTOH, people accepted a lot of compromises with LED watches (press the button to see the time) and LCD watches (press the button for a crappy light to see the time at night) and they’ll certainly accept compromises with the Apple Watch.
The Withings Activité, as Felix Salmon says, is really interesting. It’s coming out of an environment where getting 2-3 years of battery life out of a nice quartz movement or recharging the battery with movement is a done deal, and seeing what room there is for augmentation. If it had something like an Eco-Drive or Kinetic movement in it, where you could not only measure movement but keep it running on that energy, then bam.
My guess is that Swatch is doing something similar: see what you can add to what’s already there after 30 years of working out how to sip from the battery instead of slurping it.
? Martin
@pseudonymous in nc: Well, the Apple Watch has the same computational power as the iPhone 4, and since you can push apps to it, it is genuinely a general purpose computer (with limited application due it having an immature OS and APIs). It’ll take another year or two for the OS/APIs to mature enough and for Apple to get economies of scale rolling on this thing. There are indeed a lot of lessons that Apple needs to learn, and it’ll take them a bit of time to learn them. Like I said, it’s usually about the 3rd iteration where the product really takes off.
Moore’s law isn’t the big problem here – the problem is that we don’t have a good solution for backlit high refresh color displays. The screen is what’s causing all the trouble here and if someone can tackle that problem (and a lot of people are getting close) then things really open up a lot. Next problem is the power budget of the radios and sensors than of the CPU. The SoC is probably 0.75 watt max, and that’s with the radios going. Sitting there showing you the time it’ll be < 0.25W, but the screen with backlight going will be pushing a watt or more at that resolution.
pseudonymous in nc
@RareSanity:
In other words, Android is still a hideously inefficient OS? “Ingenious software tricks” is a nice way of describing a better-optimised architecture.
pseudonymous in nc
@? Martin:
Well, yeah. We’re still in the ‘LED watch’ stage, where the technology’s not really there yet. I don’t think it’s coincidence that Apple’s design cues are very 70s.
But the LED watch died (taking with it Armitron and HP and Commodore’s LED watch divisions) when the LCD came along, because once there was a choice that offered decent battery life, everyone took it.
srv
@? Martin: I love these Apple hater threads. I need to start bookmarking them, we’ve had droid rulz! wankery for years here.
Again, I can’t wait for my uber timex running some creaky Linux derivative.
? Martin
@RareSanity: I doubt I’ll convince you, so we’ll just wait and see.
But you miss why Apple Pay is standing out. It’s because Apple didn’t piss off the entire financial services industry by demanding that nobody get paid. Apple went straight to the banks that issue your card and who are the ones liable for losses and said ‘what do you need?’ and then built it for them. They needed control over validating the user – not the merchant and not Google or Apple and that’s what Apple Pay delivers. Apple doesn’t advertise Apple Pay, but Chase does, and Citigroup, and Bank of America. They’re investing in this because it helps them secure mobile payments and doesn’t have the problems that Google Wallet has with things like returns (which are problematic because it relies on temporary card numbers). Apple is building dedicated shared customer support systems with the banks so that if there’s a problem, the bank member doesn’t have to jump between a bunch of support systems. Everyone wins with Apple Pay – but Google never bothered to make the needed investments and get the appropriate players on board. Apple started working on Apple Pay in 2008. It’s taken them this long to get everything in place.
RareSanity
@pseudonymous in nc:
That’s kind of funny that you used the word efficient, because Android is significantly more efficient than iOS since it is constantly running more tasks in parallel.
Although the use of Java instead of running apps naively has some inherent performance hits, the additional functionality that the underlying OS provides makes up for it.
I don’t have a “side” in this. I have a Android phone and watch, an iPad, an iPod Touch, a MacBook Pro, and a Windows desktop. I’m only comparing technologies.
I’m just someone that had been writing and managing the development of embedded software for wireless devices for over 15 years. So I have a bit of expertise in the arena.
trollhattan
@srv:
Wake me when Apple finally fixes that steaming heap of code otherwise known as itunes, then we can talk about how they get 1.7x for their computers and why their mobile devices aren’t fitted with microSD slots.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I do remember the days when people looked at things other than their phones.
greennotGreen
I have an Android smart watch that I love, though I haven’t loaded a bunch of apps on it. I like that it vibrates when I have a text or call or email and tells me what the text is or who’s calling or what the email’s about and I don’t have to pull my phone out of my pocket. I find that pretty darn convenient…and it was only $99. For $349 an Apple watch would need to include teleportation.
pseudonymous in nc
@RareSanity:
How very engineer of you.
Apple built iOS to be ultra-responsive to user touch and interface refreshing, and subordinated other considerations to it. (See also: ‘year of the Linux desktop’ jokes.) You can be running a dozen tasks in parallel, but if the face you present to the user is laggy as shit, your OS is functionally as laggy as shit. Embedded software isn’t really the same business.
WereBear
@RareSanity: That explanation makes so much sense.
I have an iPod touch (the iPhone without the phone.) I adore it and can see the usefulness of seeing notices go by on your wrist. But then, I sit at a computer all day and know what time it is that way. Haven’t worn a watch in years and I don’t miss them.
? Martin
@RareSanity:
Uh huh. Here’s an article from 2013 telling us that Samsung is imminently going to release the Exynos 6 14nm 64 bit SoC in the Samsung Galaxy S5. Except that the S5 didn’t ship with an Exynos 6 and the Exynos 5 it did have in some variations wasn’t remotely as fast as an A7, let alone an A8. The Note 4 has an Exynos 7 which is still a 32bit part and still at 20nm and not remotely as fast as an A8. That Samsung appears to have dumped the Qualcomm 810 suggests that they aren’t even going to try and compete here.
Face it, Apple blindsided everyone on mobile CPU performance. They’re shipping Intel volumes of chips and have pushed the unit cost high enough that nobody else can follow because there aren’t enough high-end Android handsets in any given configuration to justify the R&D and ramp to keep pace with Apple right now. And at the low end Qualcomm and Samsung are getting eaten up by Rockchip and Allwinner and those guys.
They’re in a tough spot – Apple has taken all of the good money off the table and the Chinese white-label guys have taken all of the volume. Qualcomm is living almost entirely off of their radio patents and so their SoCs are basically selling you their baseband with a free CPU thrown in. Samsung is living almost entirely off of their own handset sales. Neither of those are going in positive directions. TI saw the writing on the wall and gave up.
different-church-lady
@RareSanity: I am firm in my opinion that every “problem”/solution you have described falls into the “first world decadence” category.
I mean, seriously and god damn… I need a device on my wrist to to manage the device I’ve got in my pocket? At this point people starving in underdeveloped nations ought to rise up and beat the crap out of us just because.
I’m not saying you personally are whining. I’m just saying, … god daaaaaaaaaaaamn…. can we listen to ourselves here?
WereBear
@different-church-lady: That’s fine… until your job requires that kind of thing.
Then, it’s a necessity.
? Martin
@trollhattan: Why do you care about iTunes? Don’t use it. It’s not hard.
I suspect you wouldn’t argue with someone who buys a $40K BMW over a $13K Honda Fit, even though both will get you to work in the same amount of time. At the very least you would recognize what that $27K is buying you even if you wouldn’t spend that money yourself. Substitute for food/wine/clothing/housing etc. This notion that value = cost of components died at least 10 years ago in the tech space, and yet many of you guys can’t seem to get past it.
People buy iPhones because they like them. That’s about 90% of why Apple is where they are now. And nobody I know like SD cards. They are sometimes a necessary evil, but everyone hates them because they lose them. Just sync your shit to the cloud and call it a day.
different-church-lady
@WereBear:
And that’s actually part of where my animosity is coming from. I’m sitting here thinking, “Oh gosh, I can hardly wait until the working world figures out why I must have a computer AND a smart phone AND a tablet AND a smart watch just to do my job.” Like somehow we didn’t go to the moon without all that shit…
Gin & Tonic
@? Martin: sync your shit to the cloud and call it a day
Micro SD’s come in 128G already. Sync *that* shit to the cloud and you *will* be calling it a day.
? Martin
@different-church-lady: I don’t disagree, but how is it different from any other amenity in our lives? I don’t really need my dishwasher either, but it makes my life a bit easier and my quite nice $700 dishwasher has lasted 5 years now, which is what, $0.40 a day? That’s ⅓ the cost of a cup of coffee. My iPhone costs about $1 a day which is also less than coffee. An Apple Watch would cost about $.50 a day.
Nobody rides me for my daily cup, but my little tech doo-dads cost no more and yet people feel like it’s a fair point of criticism. Look instead at your car. Average car in the US costs $30K. It’ll last 100,000 miles. At an average speed of 40 MPH, you’ll drive it for 2500 hours, or $12/hr – not including gas, insurance, service, and so on. Most people are paying $20/hr for their car, but we don’t feel like that’s a valid point of criticism. Its an interesting double-standard we have.
srv
@different-church-lady: Cell phones have revolutionized underdeveloped countries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayo-rgayDJE
@? Martin: I can’t believe people own dishwashers. The only thing worser are leaf blowers.
different-church-lady
@? Martin: No, it’s not so much the dishwasher itself, it’s more as if people would be spending time and money on the “problem” of “I can’t see what’s going on in my dishwasher while I’m in the basement!” and decided they needed a $75 device in the basement. And then spent a lot of time debating which device was better on the internet.
When the sci-fi writers thought we were going to be slaves to machines, I don’t think they imagined it would be voluntary.
different-church-lady
@srv: And I bet they don’t spend any time bitching about how inconvenient it is to take them out of their pockets.
? Martin
@Gin & Tonic: But I do sync that to the cloud – I have a 64GB phone and a 64GB iPad and both are backed up to the cloud continuously. It’s a problem if you acquire 128GB every day, but virtually nobody does that. You build that up over weeks or months. I’ve got 4 people in the house on a shared 10GB data plan, and that’s with 2 iPads in the mix and we never get close to the cap.
Turns out most of the data syncing that is needed happens at home or at school or at work where you usually have WiFi. What’s left – the daily photos and some other stuff doesn’t actually use much space.
The only place I see use for mobile SD cards is carrying movies while traveling, and for those situations just use the plug-on SD card reader, transfer the movies and stash it away.
srv
@different-church-lady: What if you can’t afford pockets?
But seriously, think of the hundreds of millions, maybe billions in dropped/damaged phone costs. I bet everyone here has broken a phone or two.
The watch is just another display point – it could replace the phone or just evolve to be the controller for the RF unit/cpu/memory unit. Something more rugged you keep in your pocket or on a belt.
RareSanity
@pseudonymous in nc:
First off, fuck you.
Second thing, just what the hell do you think iOS and Android are? They are embedded operating systems. I don’t know what your definition of embedded software is, but clearly it is quite narrow and uninformed.
Third, the user interface of Android has, in the past, been quite the source of pain for its’ users. That has been something that Google and the OEMs have been focusing on for the past couple of years, and have achieved significant improvements.
Those improvements are still coupled with an operating system and overall framework that is more functional than iOS. The ability to run actual background services, and the entire intent/sharing framework is more functional…period.
@? Martin:
You won’t get an argument from me on how terrible Google is a rolling out products. But again, I’m just talking about the technology. I want Apple Pay to spread, because it means I can use my phone in more places.
As far as the Exynos 6, my statement was “when it starts shipping”, not “as of right now”. Also, 32 bit and 64 bit have absolutely no affect on the performance of these systems, because they’re not yet having to address greater than 4GB of RAM. It’s a big nothing right now.
The measure of performance is not measured in fabrication process, it is measured in Dhrystone MIPS, where the Exynos does more.
Samsung wants to use it’s own processor in its’ devices, it’s cheaper for them which means more profit. They only use the Snapdragon in their U.S. models based mostly on carrier requests and the RF bands that it operates on.
if Samsung could get away with it, they would use the Exynos on everything, but not because the Snapdragon has in some way failed, or is inferior performance-wise.
We’ll see how it all shakes out, Apple may have “blindsided” everyone in the beginning, but the others have made up ground very quickly.
Also, let me reiterate, I have absolutely no loyalty to any of these companies. I buy what I want at that time. Which is why I have such a heterogeneous collection of devices. I like both Android and iOS for different reasons.
? Martin
@different-church-lady: You know, sometime in the 1960s my grandmother complained to my grandfather that she couldn’t hear when the dryer buzzer went off in the basement and so she couldn’t get the damp shirts out of the dryer to hang before they wrinkled, so my grandfather the engineer installed a light and buzzer in the kitchen that was wired to the dryer.
We’ve always had these desires, but people didn’t have the skills to do it. But these devices are starting to unlock allowing everyone to do it. Putting computers in your power meter is why California hasn’t had to build a power plant in almost 40 years in spite of population growth. Everyone thinks that 3D printing is a novelty but we 3D print almost 10 million hearing aids every year. Everyone gets a custom-fit hearing aid now. One of the theories behind the drop in violent crime is that everyone is carrying a camera on them, and so it’s much harder for people to evade identification when they commit a crime (including the police). People with disabilities often benefit from the kinds of features these devices bring – but they’d be incredibly expensive without the volume of sales that come from them. In effect, we’re subsidizing enabling technology for a whole range of people, including as srv mentions people in developing countries. When my dad was in Togo he told me of the people that subsistence fish in the ocean. They all have phones and tell each other where there are schools of fish – and they’ll go running down the beach to catch them. If they catch a lot, they’ll use their phone to contact a market to buy their fish. It’s really made a big difference.
RareSanity
@different-church-lady:
Show me where I describe anything as a “problem”, and also where I described the watch as anything but an “accessory…go ahead, I’ll wait.
What the hell does what you need have to do with what I buy?
Seriously?
Did you read the post? It was about a Swatch smartwatch, I was discussing my smartwatch, which is on topic for the post. It’s the first time I’ve every brought it up.
I am not going to feel guilty, and walk around in a constant state of dread and depression because there is bad stuff going on in the world. I do what I can to help where I can, and that’s all anyone can do.
I assume you don’t use any fancy electronics and live a basic, Amish lifestyle. If not, then you’re just projecting what you value on to me. Why don’t you sell all of your appliances and send the money to the starving people? You don’t need them, any function they perform, you can perform by hand.
srv
@RareSanity: Calling droid/ios embedded OS’es is a generous reimagining of the word embedded.
droid/ios are neither compact or efficient, and they’re probably nowhere near the realibility expected of legacy/traditional embedded OS/RTOS.
Also, too, many Amish use cell phones now. Dishwashers can’t be far behind.
RareSanity
@srv:
Are you smoking?
Compared to Windows 7/8 or OS X, both iOS and Android are miniscule. You don’t think it causes efficient use of resources to run all of the RF circuitry, the display, the speakers, etc., off of a battery, and have it last more than a couple of hours?
The functionality, and size, of embedded systems has grown over the last 10 years, but that does not disqualify them from still being embedded, real-time systems.
? Martin
@RareSanity: Ok, come on. You should be smart enough to know that 64 bit affects more than just RAM addressing. It’s bus width, it’s the size of your instruction set, the ability to process 64 bit integers in one clock vs several. There was a CLEAR performance benefit going from 16-32 bit that went far beyond RAM access. I was there. I was there for 8-16 bit as well. The other benefit of making the move is the software latency. How long after 64 bit ARM chips drop before there is widespread support? How long must that 32 bit support remain in there? What are the costs in die and OS/API support costs to remaining in that state. Apple has told developers their apps must be 64 bit by mid-year. The A9 won’t even have 32 bit instruction support and iOS on the A9 won’t either. They’re going to rip that shit out as fast as they can if only so they can reclaim that bit of the die and not have to support that code any longer.
And nobody uses Dhrystone any longer. That’s fine if you’re doing integer modeling (and who the fuck even does that any longer), but it’s not a measure of overall performance. It doesn’t include FP, GPU performance, memory performance, etc. It’s an SoC – system. Measure the system performance, not that of the integer units, because the user sees the system performance. Hell, the integer units are damn near the smallest part of the SoC.
I don’t see how anyone has made up ground when nobody is shipping. I hear a lot of promises of what’s going on in the labs and roadmaps and all that, and not a lot of shipping. Apple ships, and ships in volume. Let’s see what actually shows up here, but my bet is that Samsung is giving up the high-end and is starting to look at cost-cutting in their handsets to boost profits. That’s where they’ve been hit hardest. They’re going to give up on going toe-toe with Apple. After all, they’re making as much money selling Apple components as they’re making on handsets that compete with iPhone. Keeping that business going is arguably as important as beating the iPhone, and one way out of the trap is to stop competing with iPhone.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Owning ipods I have to use itunes and let me assure all, it sucks donkey nads in the Windows environment (after eight gajillion version no lesss). Thus, my aversion to getting any further into the Appleverse.
That, and taking all my photo, desktop publishing and graphics classes on imacs. Anybody want to buy an Aperture textbook?
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
No kidding. My music collection now maxes out my 120gb ipod Classic and guess which model they just discontinued? I could replace it with a nano or touch, if only they had a card slot giving me that extra space, like my Razr has. But, “Noooooh” [/belushi voice].
Don’t get me started on shoving several TB of image files to no damn cloud.
RareSanity
@? Martin:
What I’m saying is that although the 64 bit processor gives most of the benefits you are describing, as far a pure processing bandwidth, the Android manufacturer’s make up for it with higher core counts and increased parallel processing.
OK, you’re right on that one…lol
But I also still submit that manufacturing process isn’t the measure of performance either, which is what you said earlier.
So tell me, how do you measure system performance? Benchmark tests?
Because what I am saying is that there is a difference in how well an SoC is actually performing, and what that looks like from a user perspective. Like I said, Android has had some problems with the responsiveness of it’s UI. However, that is not a direct correlation to the capability of the SoC it’s running on.
As far as Samsung, I honestly have no idea what their product roadmap is going to look like, and frankly, don’t care. What I do know is that there will always be a market for high-end Android smartphones, and there will always be one or more OEMs making them.
I don’t care who “wins”, I just want the technology that best fits with how I use it. Right now hands down Android does that for me on phones, and iOS does it on tablets. If there comes a time where the iPhone meets my need, I will plop my money down happily, just like I did for my other Apple products.
BTW, I forgot to mention the Apple TV earlier…along with the Chromecast, and Amazon Fire Stick. :-)
I don’t care about company or operating system, I just want what works best for me. As a matter of fact, I prefer it not being all the same manufacturer or technology providing it. Choices are good.
mike with a mic
For what it’s worth the swatch group owns several luxury brands and makes the ETA movement, which is used in all sorts of mechanical watches from a few hundred bucks up to ones that cost more than a car. They’re still around.
As a guy, and a watch guy at that, I’d never wear a “smart watch”.
If it’s a dress watch it has to be pure mechanical. Minimum is something like a 5 grand Omega with an ETA movement, preferably something with a custom in house movement, though the cheapest there is something like a Rolex Sub at about 8.5 grand. For high end business meetings, something like a Patek or Jaeger, about 10-20k for something simple. Quartz mechanical movements, bleh no way in hell. Not even for a beater mechanical watch. My beaters are Seiko, Maratac and Marathon automatics. Aka military field watches, can be had for about 200-1000 depending on movement and other factors.
A digital watch, oh fuck no. They’re bad and they make you bad, they look stupid as all fuck as well. There’s only three types of digital you should wear. Something like a Timex if you run, something like a GSHOCK/SUNTO if you’re an outdoors type and need the functions/durability of them… or a dive computer.
The iwatch is stupid. It’s a stupid product. It’s attempting to be a classy watch but lacks anything that makes it classy at all. And as a digital watch it lacks the sort of stuff that you’d want in a digital tool watch with more extra shit thrown in.
Current watches.
GSHOCK Frogman, Timex Ironman, Seiko SKX007 diver, Marathon GSAR, Marathon Navigator, Maratac SR-1, Omega Speed Master Professional, suunto DX black, Rolex Submariner, Jaeger LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin, Grand Seiko SBGW047, Tudor Pelagos.
I’ve got watches for all sorts of shit, will not buy a smart watch.
joel hanes
@Belafon:
Samsung is eating Apple’s lunch right now
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: Maxed out the Classic? May I humbly suggest a Fiio X5?
pseudonymous in nc
@RareSanity:
My apologies: I didn’t realise your definition of “embedded systems” extended to, say, the Atari 800. Again, how very engineer. But please, keep talking about how those benchmarks and internals make ‘perceived performance’ less important.
@mike with a mic:
It’s no more of a stupid product than Omega’s ana-digis were in the 70s and 80s, and I’ll note that the Skywalker X-33 and Spacemaster Z-33 exist.
Er, you do know that you sound like a terrible watch snob, right? But nice call with the Grand Seiko.
different-church-lady
@RareSanity: OK, first, I didn’t mean any of it personally, and I’m sorry I
stated itranted in a way that made it look that way. I frequently make the mistake of wrapping a general rant with a direct reply.And second… actually, there is no second. You make good points.
different-church-lady
@? Martin: I’m not anti technology. My comment had more to do with how we talk about technology and how we think about technology.
I am most certainly doing things on my smart phone that I hadn’t imagined I would be doing with it. But I’m still wondering if those things are worth the $500 a year I’m paying for it (and that’s plenty damn cheap compared to what other people are paying). For other people those things might be critical. For others they’re optional, or trivial, or downright luxuries. What gets me cranky is when we talk about the optional things as though they’re vital or important.
I’m sure there’s lots of very good examples of thing a person could with a smart watch that would make genuine improvements in their life. “I don’t have to take my phone out of my pocket” doesn’t fit in that category.
RareSanity
@different-church-lady:
No harm, no foul. :-)
@pseudonymous in nc:
My definition is correct yours isn’t, jackass.
This isn’t the 1970s asshole, your coffee maker probably has more processing power than the first computers. Technology has grown more complex, and the systems used to control that technology has as well.
You just keep thinking that it’s some kind of insult, saying how “engineer” of me something is.
iLarynx
@Belafon: There’s a reason Samsung is eating Apple’s lunch right now
Not sure what planet you’re living on or what epoch you’re living in, but on planet Earth for 2014Q4, Samsung is sinking and Apple had the most profitable quarter of ANY company EVER.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/27/apple-just-had-the-biggest-quarterly-earnings-of-any-company-ever/
Apple is doing fantastic! Samsung? Not so much:
What happens to iWatch is anyone’s guess. But right now, by ANY definition, Apple is eating Samsung’s lunch.
Botsplainer
@mike with a mic:
My dive computer mounts in a console with pressure gauge (don’t like the radio signal computers – they scare me), but I like wearing a decent dive watch as a timer backup.
pseudonymous in nc
@RareSanity:
What, that you have an obvious fixation on internal benchmarks and background processes and “raw performance” and sniff at “perceived performance”? That’s so fucking engineer, as is the prickliness about it. Your ideal car would have an 800hp engine and seats made of unpadded titanium.
And my coffee maker’s an Aeropress, so it has the processing power of a clear plastic tube.
iLarynx
@RareSanity:
I agree with you in that I cannot see how the iWatch would be a stand alone device, but instead a peripheral interface for an iPhone (or iMac, or iHome IoT, or CarPlay, etc.). That said, I also didn’t see the iPod of having any chance at success when it was first announced either. Wait and see on the iWatch.
However, I think you are overlooking some key points. Regarding Apple’s ARM SoC, I think you were in debate mode when you claimed they were “nothing special.” Most everyone else in the industry would disagree with that statement (certainly the ones who were caught flat-footed when Apple released their 64-bit ARM). You can make similar dismissive statements regarding cars (4 wheels, engine, seats, etc.) as being at the core very similar, but there is a wide variety of models that make some more powerful, some more efficient, some more desirable. As this recent article points out, the processor you mention are more general purpose designed for a variety of devices and a variety of tasks, while Apple’s chips are designed to bring specific features to Apple-specific devices. As such, they can “do more” and do it more efficiently.
FWIW – I hold engineers in high regard but I also understand the coders dis. Like any discipline, coders can get into their own world and, as in the PC world, look at processes from the engineering perspective and not the perspective of the end-user. What is “powerful” and “efficient” for a code-slinger or engineer may not necessarily powerful, efficient, or even useful to the end user. This is where Apple shines: designing from the end-user’s perspective. It’s why the iPod succeeded when the earlier MP3 players did not. It’s why the iPad succeeded when the “Tablet PC” struggled and failed for 10 years previous. It’s why Apple Pay works so well and Google Wallet continues to struggle. And it’s why the iPhone succeeded and everyone else has attempted to replicate it since. Code-slingers don’t understand it because they look at the device from the back end. Maybe the Apple process doesn’t make the most efficient use of CPU cycles or whatever in the guts of the machine, but it may make the device much more useful to the end-user.
You may be looking at the undercarriage of a vehicle and see the powerful engine and efficient drive train, while up top, the driver of the vehicle sees and AMC Pacer. You have different opinions because you are looking at different things or looking from a different perspective.
BTW – I don’t know if you care, but if you’re interested in a pretty good program on engineering, check out the Moon Machines series from The Science Channel. It’s the story of how engineers got America to the Moon and back. A really good story, told well, where the hero aren’t the astronauts, but the engineers on the ground.