quote:

I got mine on launch day, but I think it's ridiculous that someone who ordered 10 min after the start of a preorder that was 2 weeks before release day has no idea when a watch will be arriving and no one seems to know. I was in the T-mobile iPhone 6+ debacle and remember the anguish.

quote:

This is the worst email ever. Did you just want to remind me that I ordered a watch? Wait, you mean I need to update my iPhone? Whoa! Thanks for that. I was wondering if I needed to do that? I guess that will keep me busy during the two week waiting period.

You mean in the two weeks since I ordered the watch you cannot narrow down the expected delivery date by even a few days? Do I really want to see Apple's celebrity friends sporting their watches that they got for free while I am sitting here in limbo-land?

quote:

If you really want a kick in the teeth.
I ordered mine at 12:04 42MM stainless with classic buckle. My buddy forgot to order and got up about 5am and ordered his. He ordered the exact same watch I did, his is in the ready to ship state, even though it says May for delivery, and mine isn't. I got the email last night also, and he didn't.
So I don't know what is going on, but I feel they have REALLY dropped the ball on this one. All sorts of people all over TV have them, celebrities have them. And yet I sit and wait because I pre-ordered like they told me to.

quote:

I can go along with this statement. Apple has made mistakes before (even with launches), but this debacle does take the cake by a mile.

However, Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson would have never given Beyoncé and others free watches when Apple's best customers that order in the first few seconds won't be getting it on launch day.

Apple didn't have to give celebrities watches to make it 'cool'. That leaves a bad taste in the mouth of Apple's faithful customers. That had to be Angela Ahrendts's call - and how it was done at Burberry. Tim allowed this where Steve wouldn't.

It does take some of the excitement out of the new product and the wind out of its sails.

quote:

I'm just curious to see how people are treating the watch. Personally, I think the watch will definitely be my "most personal device" and I think it will be the most important device I use instead of the iPhone, but I feel like putting it simply on my bedside table is lame

Since it is a wearable device, I'm going to make of the small drawers (actually is a jewelry drawer) in my dresser as my Apple watch drawer were I but the watch to charge every night and were I keep all the bands.

Salt Fish posted:

read and enjoyed the op personally

qirex posted:

I'm the inevitable "apple is constraining supply to raise demand" comment

ultramiraculous posted:

macrumors and its ilk are filled with fans whose mental stability is linked to their image as apple's chosen people, for example

these guys are in near-physical pain over not getting their watch on launch day:




this guy is sure stebe would never have given beyonce a watch:



this guy is planning a shrine to his apple watch:


post your favorite apple histrionics, whether it's calling for angela ahrendts resignation for totally not-sexist reasons, bitching about beyonce getting a watch early, or just someone getting deeply, deeply weird with their apple fetishism.

Squeezy Farm posted:

what if we took this concept and applied it to bitcoins or redditors?

Smythe posted:

On Twitter and Facebook, in my email, and through IMs, I keep hearing a similar refrain: Why am I so sad? Why am I feeling such a strong reaction to the death of someone I’ve never met?

Many of us feel tremendous sadness in light of Steve Jobs’s death. I can’t speak for my friends about why they feel so affected by his passing, but I imagine their reasons for tearing up mirror my own.

Welcome in my home
I can’t tell you the name of either one of RIM’s CEOs. Though I know his name, I honestly couldn’t pick Google CEO Larry Page out of a lineup, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard his speaking voice, either. But I know just what Steve Jobs looked like, and just how he sounded. Not every CEO can—or should—show off his company’s products. But watching Steve deliver a keynote or host an Apple Event, I wasn’t struck solely by his much-lauded showmanship. Part of what made a Jobs-helmed event so exciting to watch was his very real, very tangible passion for the products he was unveiling. Steve didn’t just run Apple—he loved it, and you could see that love, that pride, beaming from his face.

You hear people talk about television actors as the people we don’t know who we let into our homes, since they show up in our dens each night. Every Apple event, Steve showed up in my home too, wherever my Mac was. I would read the liveblog first, then watch the video as soon as Apple made it available. I’ve watched countless interviews with the man, too. So part of the reason I think his death hits me hard is because I really do feel like I knew him—even if he didn’t know me.

What he built
Another part of it is the intimacy we feel with Apple products. We know intellectually that Steve didn’t singlehandedly build the iPad, design the MacBook Pro, or invent the iPhone, but those products clearly bear the stamp of his genius. And I don’t merely use my iPhone; I love it. The same goes for my Mac and my iPad. Even though it’s not literally true, using Apple’s brilliantly-designed products feels like using technology that Steve Jobs personally touched, personally signed off on, personally built for my benefit.

Steve—quite rightly—gets credit, along with Steve Wozniak, for inventing the modern home computer. And so while Apple’s not directly responsible for the Internet, there’s little chance the world would feel connected in the ways it does today if not for their vision. I can work for a San Francisco company from my home in New Jersey—heck, I can video chat with my nieces and nephews in Israel from my home in New Jersey—because of the Internet, and I believe that the Internet exists the way it does because of Steve’s influence. So in part, I’m sad that Steve’s gone because—again, without ever knowing me—his influence on my life was deeply personal.

And I’m sad because, regardless of how many products Apple already secretly has in the pipeline, Steve will no longer directly weigh in on the company’s future. Apple will certainly continue to succeed under CEO Tim Cook, but the notion that we’ll now be robbed of Steve Jobs’s continued decision making on the minutiae of Apple products is tremendously disappointing.

Who he was
I’ve written previously about Steve’s influence; his impact went far beyond technology. Logically, of course, I wouldn’t be writing for Macworld today if Steve hadn’t created the company. But Steve actually motivated my working for Macworld much more explicitly. It was this passage in his oft-cited Stanford commencement address that pushed me to leave one career for one that I was more passionate about :

I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

I’ve yet to watch an interview with Steve Jobs that felt anything but inspirational; I’ve long loved this answer he gave at the D8 conference one year about his management style. His answer—that the best ideas should matter, not company hierarchy—wasn’t a new or revolutionary idea, but the obvious sincerity in his words was moving to me.

Like all of us, Steve wasn’t without his flaws. But what I’ll miss most of all is his passion. He was an undeniably smart man, and his words were as inspirational as his accomplishments. I’m saddest of all because we won’t get to experience more of either.

Dirk Pitt posted:

I tried on the Rose Gold with White Sport Band Edition watch yesterday. I am not getting a gold one. I just wanted to try on one of the gold ones. It was so beautiful. I actually started to think to myself "I could do this, I could pay $12,000 for an apple watch"

ultramiraculous posted:

this guy is planning a shrine to his apple watch:

Larry Parrish posted:

Yeah! Lets make fun of creepy entitled apple users! That's not hypocritical at all.

PleasingFungus posted:

I kind of assumed the point of this thread was to collapse into an ouroboros of yospos helldumping, tbh

Dirk Pitt posted:

I am going to make this as short as possible. I am from Alabama, USA. I was born in January 1986. Obviously computers weren't much then and I don't remember seeing any macs until I was in grade school in the computer lab playing Oregon Trail on floppy disks. In my time, windows was the shiznit. 95, 98, even God awful ME was the big deal. I tore apart computers my mom could barely afford and it taught me skills that I use today managing Windows environments with Exchange, AD, etc. My older brother started down the mac path long before I did and when I first saw the iPhone I said I want to see what Microsoft does. I was 21 at the time. After about 6 months of no one doing anything close to iPhone I got one. I loved it and decided I was wrong about Apple. Then I got an older model Macbook Air and didnt like it and I have stuck with Windows PCs until last July. I bought the newest MacBook Pro. LOVE IT! LOVE MY iPhone! Love my iPad mini (mainly for my son) I have owned a few iPads but quickly sell them because I use my mac or iPhone mostly. Today I own iPhone 6, Macbook Pro 2014, and iPad mini. My wife owns iPhone 5s. I got up at 2 am to order an Apple Watch and sold the Pebble my wife got me in January (my birthday) the next day. Apple is getting better everyday because they have the resources to do whatever they want. The sad fact is that it does not include getting watches to people that woke up early to order their newest gadget. No offense to everyone else in the world but Apple is an AMERICAN design and American people should have it FIRST. The fact that British people have theirs and ordered after me is a SLAP in the face. I know I cannot change the corporate machine that is now Apple. All they care about will be share holders and there is nothing I can do to change that. I will keep my watch order active until the 8th. After that I AM DONE with Apple. I hope someone out there knows how to start a company that can make high grade products and deliver with effective communication. Done with rant for today.

Hed posted:

i legit read this until I was far enough in that I realized it was the tragic tale of a cj

io_burn posted:

I have some thoughts on the Apple Watch and the retail experience when buying/selling one. Disclaimer: I am not an Apple employee.

1. The watch distracts from knowledge of Apple. The Specialist role has been demeaned by the customer watch try-on process. What I mean by this is a Specialist used to be about knowing Apple products inside and out. Not just about the computers, but convincing you why you needed to buy a new copy of Mac OS X. Why buying a Mac is worth it for owning an iPod. What iMovie and iDVD could do. I remember when a Specialist needed to explain to me the differences between Tiger and Leopard, etc. Now they can't even tell you that HFS+ is the file system. All of these detail oriented processes and knowledge-based interactions with Specialists have now become 100% dumbed down. This trend is going to get worse when a Specialist now spends 50% of his or her time simply helping a rich person try on a Watch instead of knowing the details of every product. It would be like a BMW salesperson only knowing about the Z4 instead of the M5.

2. The "try-on" experience is dehumanizing. Where the Specialist role used to be about sharing the experience of Apple, it's now about helping rich people try on jewelry. I watched an interaction at my local store, and the specialist looked like a full on servant/steward when helping an old man put it on. He literally put the Watch around the man's wrist. When did working at Apple become being a peon? Something intangible about that put a nasty taste in my mouth. I had a fleeting thought of Bob Cratchit and Scrooge. Of course Apple has always been expensive, but Specialists were never forced to lose their dignity.

3. Apple is not incentivizing Specialists to care about the Apple Watch. This is happening because despite the Watch needing a purpose to sell, and Specialists needing to convince you why to get one, many of them won't own one themselves. Why? They simply aren't paid enough. And Apple is only giving a 50% discount. How are your Specialists supposed to care about selling something they can't enjoy themselves? It really irks me that Apple simply assumes that a couple of hours of training is all it takes to launch this product that is entirely new in both category and interface and design. Specialists not being able to afford the watch adds to the servant feeling by the way.

4. The joy of launches is gone, because launches are gone. I understand Angela is new, but I cannot support the way the new MacBook and Watch launches were handled. What is the point of opening 500+ stores in the US when you aren't going to launch your products in them? How are your employees supposed to actually enjoy the Apple Watch when they aren't going through the most exciting times of the role? Any Specialist will tell you that the time you enjoy the most is a launch. That has been taken away from them on top of everything else.

Dirk Pitt posted: