Apple Watch: More Zune Than iPad?
Right now, it does not look like the Apple Watch is going to go down in history as a revolutionary piece of consumer electronics. If I had to guess right now, it feels way more Zune than iPad. But at least for now, we can be consoled by the idea that a few cool people will get paid for their efforts in helping to market it. One example: Tame Impala, whose “The Less I Know The Better” soundtracks a new ad. Another: Wu-Tang abbot RZA, who appears in a new commercial for the product, as Miss Info points out. We see him playing piano and bidding on old keyboards on eBay at the same time.
Abdel already rounded up the newest batch of Apple Watch’s weird, hybrid iPod throwback ads, and while they quietly feature celebrities doing their thing (or whatever contrived event Apple asks of them, like, say, “playing piano and bidding on old keyboards on eBay at the same time”), they dont really do much to sell the true potential and purpose of the product. The training-focused ads come closer (my favorite, of course, being GGG’s shadowboxing to ODB’s greatest hit, appropriately foreshadowing the fighter’s lopsided, brutal eighth-round TKO win on PPV last Saturday), but even they barely scratch the surface.
There’s a reason: Apple doesn’t want to promise too much too soon.
When we first launched WatchAware, an Apple rep reached out to us and was quite firm in his “request” that we don’t hype the device with too much speculation. I ignored that of course, and I stand by it. (Plus, what in the world else were we going to write about?) Far from being “more Zune than iPad,” Apple Watch’s potential lies elsewhere, in a different sort of data consumption altogether. The Zune:iPad analog is meaningless in the true context of what the wearable is meant to be, but Apple is holding back its goals — for competitive reasons or fear of failing to deliver or both or something else altogether — to its decided detriment. Just look at how people in the mainstream view this thing. The above excerpt is evidence enough of the skepticism that surrounds the product even a half-year after launch.
Apple could fix that. I wrote months ago that the company’s ingrained brand of corporate hubris was actually hurting Apple Watch, as they were ignoring the potential and purpose of the device, instead content to let it ride out on nothing but the company’s mobile “home run” reputation. However, taken another way, I’d now argue that Apple’s lack of hubris is hurting the thing: They aren’t being bold enough about what they believe to be the future of the Apple Watch.
And that future isn’t anything iPhone or iPad or Mac or Apple TV can do. Sure, Apple Watch will have those “delightful” tidbits of tie-ins to its bigger siblings, but the actual point of the wearable is not quick, glanceable data or microgames or distilled apps or fashion accessories. The future of Apple Watch isn’t to break down existing apps to their essences. The future of Apple Watch isn’t its place as a redundant second screen for notifications or stuff your handset can do better and faster. The future of Apple Watch isn’t Digital Touch or animated emoji or two-way communication or fielding phone calls.
No.
The future of Apple Watch is as a bona fide medical device. Sure, there’ll be a few native apps that take true advantage of the platform in ways impossible on any other mobile device, but that will be the 10 percent bonus to the 90 percent raison d’etre: medical monitoring like this and this and this and this and etc. (Note: Loosely included in this groundswell use-case category is something Apple Watch actually does really well right now: fitness tracking. But again, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.)
It almost feels like beating a dead horse at this point, but until Apple finds its cojones and starts touting what it believes Apple Watch will become, the lull between now and then can only hurt the device.
TL;DR: Apple needs to stop worrying about over-promising. Over-promisisng is exactly what Steve Jobs did to great effect, and it’s a lesson the company’s current execs haven’t learned yet. Over-promise today, over-deliver tomorrow. If the purpose — the end goal — of Apple Watch is never announced, the fire to reach that summit may never burn as brightly as it should inside the walls of the Cupertino campus.
Apple needs to make sure this thing doesn’t fizzle out before it has a real chance to change the world.