Apple Watch

About

The Apple Watch is a smartwatch created by Apple and designed to be used in tandem with an iPhone as a piece of wearable technology. Upon its release in April 2015, the device has been generally praised for its advanced fitness-tracking and communication features, albeit not without criticism against its steep retail price, which starts at $350. The release spawning dozens of unboxing videos, parodies and commentaries on YouTube and elsewhere online.

History

Tim Cook announced that the Apple Watch was being developed on September 9th, 2014 during Apple's annual press conference. The device became available for pre-order on April 10th, 2015, and promptly sold approximately one million units in about six hours, selling out the inventory available for pre-order. The Apple Watch began shipping on April 24th, 2015.^[1]

The watch is available in three styles: Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and Apple Watch Edition. The prices for the device ranged from $350 to $10,000, depending on the size and material the watchband was made of. The most expensive watch band was made from gold.

The device initially shipped with version one of a unique operating system called watchOS. Version two of watchOS was announced June 8th, 2015.^[2]

Reception

The Apple Watch was praised by initial reviewers, but with caveats. Some reviews, like that by Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times, said that the watch was a great device if you could learn how to use it properly, a process which, for him, took several days of wear. He went on to say that "the Watch became something like a natural extension of my body -- a direct link, in a way that I’ve never felt before, from the digital world to my brain."^[3]

Other reviewers criticized the watch's cost, saying that it wasn't that different from other, less publicized smartwatches on the market, and that it didn't do anything that most people couldn't already do on their phone.

One community which praised the Apple Watch extremely highly were people with disabilities. The device's haptic abilities, where it notifies users via a brief vibration of the skin, were praised for the blind and the def, and the ease of having the device be worn on the wrist and respond to speech command were useful for the physically impaired.^[4]

Apple Watch Destruction

Due to the fact that a watch is something that you wear on your wrist every day, particular focus has been paid to the durability of the Apple Watch. Videos featuring the destruction of Apple Watches have become very popular, including one where a $10,000 gold model is crushed by industrial magnets. Posted by TechRax on June 13th, 2015, the video acquired almost 2 million views in five days.

On March 3rd, 2015, 4chan's /b/ board attempted to create a series of fake advertising panels which presented the false "iDive" (water resistant) and "iShake"(kinetic recharge) features of the Apple Watch. The goal of these false campaigns, as stated by the 4chan users, was to get someone to destroy the watch.^[5]

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Apple Watch

^[2] Facebook – Apple Watch's post

^[3] New York Times – Apple Watch Review: Bliss, but Only After a Steep Learning Curve

^[4] Mashable – How the Apple Watch is opening up new ways to communicate

^[5] Imgur – Its Happening Again. /b/ has "discovered" new iShake & iDive Technolgy on Apple Watch