Jeff Stahler for September 11, 2014

With the advent of the cell-phone, with a face displaying time, watches as time-keepers started to go. Untl they came back as fashion accessories or jewellery i.e high-end watches started doing well.I’m curious to see if this may knock them off again.

^Rolex and Tudor (the Bentley to the Rolls Royce “Rolex”) are both selling quite well.

Meh. Smart watches have been out for several years now. Samsung, Apple’s main smart phone rival, is coming out with their 3rd generation smart watch. Apple’s entry into the smart watch market doesn’t really change anything… except for the Apple fanboys. The same goes for Apple’s other “innovations” like NFC. They’re just playing catch up to what the competition has been offering for several years.

I prefer my regular watch. Who wants to wear that clunky Apple Watch just to use Apple Pay to pay for their Starbucks coffee instead of carrying a credit card? Jeez. This one’s for the uber-geeks only. Steve Jobs would turn in his grave

The watchmaker would have gone out of business anyway unless they train up to do cellular and other small electronic repairs.

I hate to say it but I think Apple is running out of the “next great things” to do. They had a fantastic run with technology that was able to morph itself through three generations of products but the last couple of years it has been more me too ideas. The large screen was already on sale by competitors, the watch is the current fad of wearables which I personally think will never be really big because most of us won’t be interested, and the near field payments existed except Apple is looking to monopolize a new revenue stream. Most phone companies are trying to bring prices down so the huge population in the rest of the world can afford them. I may be wrong but all shooting stars burn out after a while.

If you watch Apple, traditionally they have not been first to market. MP3 players? Lots out there. Smartphones? Late to market.What they do, typically, is do them BETTER. And they disrupt the market by adding new functionality or new styles of engagement with the device that mean the minimum gets forever improved.MP3 players were painful to use, annoying to transfer information to, and were generally only for serious computer geeks — until the iPod, which with iTunes made music easy to rip, buy, and transfer. Everything they did is now standard operating procedure. And they changed the e-music market, too.If you don’t think they changed the smartphone market, just look at the phones being sold before the iPhone came out, versus those now. However good the new Samsungs are, they would not exist in their current form had the iPhone not come out first. Blackberry died because they couldn’t catch up, even with a huge market advantage.Ultimately, the consumer benefits, because Apple raises the bar for everyone else, and then everyone else starts innovating on top of that higher standard.Now, I don’t know whether the Apple Watch is going the same way or not — I don’t have enough information to say. The only thing I am sure of is that it is far better in terms of design — an Apple hallmark — which often means that people are more likely to buy it and use it because it looks like an attractive wrist decoration instead of a geeky box you had to strap on.If smartwatches are worth having — and I am by no means sure they are — Apple will help convince people to get them. And the competitors should thank God for that, since none of theirs have sold for beans.Fascinating how Samsung and Microsoft have focused their ads totally on selling against Apple lately — the traditional strategy of #2 companies (or jealous people) instead of selling on their own strengths…

Are the Apple watch buyers a little cuckoo?

As a jeweler, and a jewelery insider for 30+ years I can assure you that it isn’t small portable consumer electronics which put the watch repair shop out of business. It was the lack of trained professionals to actually do the repairs. As for cell phones taking the place of the wrist watch, at best a cell phone is a multi function pocket watch, and a wrist watch is far more convenient to use than a pocket watch.

Until the day I die, I prefer to live in Norman Rockwell’s world.

I have a Zune HD 32 Platinum. As much as I love it, I have the same problem with it as I do Apple products: It requires you to use the official company software to transfer files to/from the player.Having owned Apple and Android devices, I see that they both have their trade offs. One’s strengths are the other’s weaknesses. What really irritated me about Apple’s announcement was the false sense of innovation that was conveyed when they were little more than playing catch up with their competitors. Tim Cook was quoted as saying “And I think now we’re making the first modern smartwatch,” but the only real difference between it and existing smart watches is it works with the iPhone.

Misterdantes: Years ago I found a Tudor Submariner, there are several versions. I paid to have it repaired a couple years ago, hadn’t checked prices for a while. The version I have is now selling for from $7,000 to $9,000, based on condition of course. The newer, cheaper (oddly enough) are only about $3,500! Crazy prices, and I’m tempted to part with it, as it’s too bloody heavy to wear every day…

No, I am not on Apple’s payroll. For the record, I use both Apple products and others — I have typically had both Macs and PCs for the past twenty years, I have had Blackberries, other phones, and an iPhone, etc. I happen to like Apple products on the whole.I read reviews, and I study relative values. My point is NOT that Apple is always superior, but when they enter the market they introduce new things that shake it up, and that is simple fact, not my opinion. You can argue whether those things SHOULD have shaken them up, but that’s another story.

“What planet have you been living on the last 15 years?”Planet Earth. Regardless of any innovations Apple was truly responsible for in the past, it’s current generation of devices are playing catch-up to the competition.The “innovative” new features of the iPhone 6 have been offered by several of Apple’s competitors for several years. Larger screens, NFC, and electronic wallet functionality have been available on other platforms for several years. iOS is still missing other functionality offered by Apple’s competitors such as the ability to run multiple apps on the screen at once. There’s limited use on the phone, but it’s very useful on tablets.As I noted earlier, Tim Cook was quoted as saying “And I think now we’re making the first modern smartwatch.” The problem is the new Apple Watch doesn’t include anything that isn’t already offered by it’s competitors.

“You don’t have to have a computer to operate and iPod, iPhone or iPad. Downloads can go straight to the device. But it is convenient to back the devices up locally to a computer. The ‘official company software,’ iTunes and the iOSs are free.”That’s true for content you downloaded from within the iOS device, not content residing on your computer that you want to transfer to the device. iTunes may be free, but it organizes the files its way. I want to organize the files myself my way.The first generation Zune was brown, but they offered a several color options with the second generation. The Zune was axed by a new CEO who didn’t have the patience to “tough out” the necessary marketplace catch-up.

Try reading motivemagus’ post when your calmer. Wow such anger. You would think this was a political cartoon..Apple rarely innovates, yes they were first to adopt the USB port and the icon interface on the i-devices, but usually polish like they did with Siri and yes with the MP3 player. If your not familiar with file formats, at least you know if it plays in iTunes, it’ll play on your iDevice..About the user experience. When my wife first purchased her Windows 8 computer she wanted to hook up the external hard drive and move some files. 40 minutes of research and I could not find how to recognize an external drive on Windows 8 (on Windows 7, it was under “my computer”), on my mac, hook up the drive and within a few seconds the icon pops up on your desktop..As a musician I use my iPad to lay down musical ideas. I can save it on “the cloud” and access the same file on my mac and finish it.