It's the lacking/half-assed implementation that are what is the issue, to me anyway.

Proprietary charging connectors still for the iPhone/watch (the watch one looks pretty curmudgeonly) that will no doubt cost a mint to get a replacement

Contactless payment support that will only work in a few places (to start at least), requires another 3rd party to act as go between for the communication.

A watch with what is (to me) a poor UI/UX (the pressure sensitive touch screen is cool) experience (which is actually quite typical of first gen Apple devices). The only thing I like from it is the use of the crown to control zoom/home, not seen a demo of someone wearing it on their right hand so will see how that works in terms of hand position as the crown isn't centred on the side of the device. I think the camera viewfinder is quite gimmicky as a feature

If you want your device to be splash/waterproof, you have two choices. Standard charging ports with covers or contactless charging. A watch with port covers would be, well, rubbish. If you're going to do contactless, there's no actual standard anyway. or, more bluntly, there are three 'standards'. So what the hell.


All contactless payment schemes have started off working in few places and rolled out or, in some cases, not rolled out. How many places have you been that Google Wallet works, for example? Apple are a US centric company, which is an issue, but not really an unexpected one. As to the actual process, the transaction is no different to the way any other contactless transaction works. As far as i can see the only thing Apple is actually doing is using TouchID to ensure the person holding the phone has some right to do so. Which to me makes the hooplah they've put around Apple Pay pretty excessive, IMO.


I'd agree the Watch right now definitely looks like a first gen device. But then it is a first gen device.


The button to call up your contact list - the requirement for which is what has ended up pushing the crown off centre - does seem to be to be a pretty off thing. I don't see why that feature gets it's own button, whereas nothing else does. I'd also agree it will look odd for lefties. I wonder if, when it actually launches, we find they do left and right handed versions...

Qi, Powermat, A4WP? If so why not just take the tech from one of those and build it into both the phone AND the watch? Forcing a user to have another cable to connect devices is just a bit silly given that from memory it didn't even look like an adapter for the lightning bolt connection

The charging connector could even be styled better instead of a blob on the end of a cable look at what Sony did for theirs on the Z3, use a cradle to connect up the pins


The TouchID thing with skin contact is interesting, but contactless payments for a country that has only just adopted chip & pin and I don't think it's even on the majority of cards


I was pretty underwhelmed by the style of it, even the original iPod/iPhone were a bit unexpected, I don't think there were many details about battery life either, but that is one place the technology is improving rapidly (even the Motorola watch has a shocking battery life)

Right, which one of those is the 'standard'?


True, could have been done that way; although interestingly, my Pebble watch does it the same way that Apple are. I don't think you claim one way or the other is objectively better though. A cradle suits your tastes better.


Everything I've seen suggests the battery life will be 'a day' and not necessarily a long day at that. The only way the Pebble gets 5 days is by using a B&W screen and that probably wasn't ever an option for the Apple Watch.

Well they like taking existing tech and making it their standard (which companies then end up adopting), like Firewire/lightning bolt and DP over HDMI so why not take one of those? I'm not saying there is a universal standard but they are good at implementing their own, especially with newer technology


When the pebble lasts multiple days without a charge it's less of an inconvenience to when you have to charge it every night


I've seen similar suggestions to the life, but removing certain functionality (streaming to the watch?) could help eke out a bit more life. Given their fondness for vibrant displays e-ink wasn't really a viable option though it's one I quite like the idea of (no watch glare etc). Though I thought colour e-ink was still in development as a display technology

IIRC I did hear about something called 'colour e-paper' which apparently used a similar system to e-ink. It was being developed by a company in Cambridge of whom many great things were expected, but it seems to have disapppeared without a trace...

You con't do animations with e-ink due to that awful flicker it does every time it changes. Until that's changed (and, judging by the Kindles in Waterstones, it's not improved much) I doubt Apple would entertain using it.