Existing MP3 players offered a pretty rough user experience; the iPod was a pleasure to use in comparison. Largely the same was true of iPhone as compared to existing smartphones. The first generations of iPod and iPhone also had hardware that was strikingly attractive and even more important, ready for prime time: well able to meet the needs of their software and of the use cases they were designed for. The Apple Watch has lovely fit and finish but looks portly and awkward, and faces serious questions on the basic criterion of battery life. The UI looks promising, but from what there is to see so far it doesn't look as if it's going to blow Android Wear out of the water. (The "digital crown" looks promising, though!)
Moreover, even without a second 5GB of storage or wireless, the iPod had a compelling "value proposition" that was soon clear to everyone, even if it wasn't immediately clear to CmdrTaco: "portable MP3 player that doesn't suck". What's the comparable pitch for the first-gen Apple Watch; what does it offer that feels like a must-have, rather than a nice-to-have, and which you can't do fairly well using your smartphone?
None of this is to say that the Watch is terrible, or will fail, or will never amount to anything. But the CmdrTaco analogy seems clearly inaccurate to me at this stage.
"Existing MP3 players offered a pretty rough user experience; the iPod was a pleasure to use in comparison."
You clearly didn't own one of the first gen of iPod. Amazing as it was, crashes, reformatting and general bugginess were daily occurrences.
What the iPod brought to the table was a (buggy) new interface and click wheel which allowed you to browse your massive collection of pirated MP3's and ripped CD's much easier than other methods. Also form factor/hardware design was more pleasing to the eye to many.
At first glance, OPs comment was comparing what I believe is the first really usable wearable device to something that looks similar in form factor but is eons behind in day to day usability. So the analogy seemed quite accurate to me.
And yes, I do remember the Nomad. At the time the iPod launched, my music player was a Sony Discman and pre-ipod, I would have bought the Nomad in a heartbeat if I could.
You're right; I was somewhat OT as antr's comment was about exercise watches.
I don't think the analogy is very strong even looking at Apple Watch as an exercise watch competitor, though. Firstly, I'm not closely familiar with the recent exercise watch/widgets on the market, but I'd be surprised if all of them are as unpleasant to use as the Nomad was. Second, even if the UX advance is really that big, it seems the (first-generation) aWatch is going to have other stumbling blocks, like the need to own an iPhone 5 or higher and the need to have it with you for GPS. Those aren't just missing checklist ticks or things which will annoy a minority of technically-minded users, they're issues which affect whether "the rest of us" are going to enjoy using the aWatch or bother buying one at all. (Yes, the iPod originally required a Firewire Mac, but precisely for that reason it didn't really take off commercially until that requirement was lifted.) Thirdly, the iPod addressed a huge market, even if many users didn't even realise they were in the market for a portable music player until they heard about the iPod. Even if the aWatch wins over nearly everyone who currently uses an exercise wearable, and also draws in a substantial number of people who don't currently use one (and that's a super-optimistic outcome for as long as an iPhone remains a required accessory) is that really a big enough market to make for a commercial success on the scale of the iPod or iPhone, the kind of scale Apple now needs to keep its investors from being disappointed?
Or consider the first iPhone which had no 3G. Building your first iteration specifically not to go up against a particular competitor can be intentional, in hardware and software. Two or three generations down the road this watch could prove interesting (or may be not, like the iPad.)
No 3G, no app store(!!), no copy and paste, no GPS, worse call reception than the phones it replaced, the list goes on. It was still a massive success.
A pretty big difference is most other smartphones either didn't have these, or if they did the feature was so unusable it could just as well have been left out.
I remember it being fashionable here in the UK, mainly for the Carlsberg app that used the gyroscope (accelerometer?) to pretend that you were drinking a drink.
And for showing that you had a lot of money compared to us pauper Nokia users.
People were really disappointed with the lack of MMS, as I recall.
I'll ignore your slightly pedantic tone. I'm not calling this a failure or lame. Don't read between the lines. I'm just saying that at $350, for people who take sports seriously (a very very very small niche), there are better alternatives. This is Apple Watch 1.0, I'm sure there are better things down the line. Thinking otherwise is just a mistake. I said it before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8292596
There are better alternatives-- IF and only IF you value certain features that the Apple watch lacks over the features that it has, but that the frontrunner lacks.
The front runner has GPS so you can get GPS without carrying your phone around. That's great. But what use is that GPS? (seriously, I don't get it- it's a 80s era LCD display).
The Apple watch has GPS (in the phone) but also gives you maps and haptic feedback to send you along your route without ever looking at the watch. I presume the frontrunner doesn't do that (how do you put a route into a watch without a map display?)
I think Garmin forerunner will be to the future of wearables what Nomad was to the future of music in 2002.