Hola Todos!
As I mentioned in my last post, Apple Watch is the most anticipated Apple product since the iPhone and Apple has gone to unprecedented lengths to promote this new product leading up to the April 24th launch. This week, two full days in advance of online pre-ordering, all the reviews hit the blogosphere and here a few of the best ones:
–Re/Code’s Lauren Goode
–Daring FireBall’s John Gruber
–Yahoo Tech’s David Pogue
–The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern
–Australian Financial Review’s watch editor Bani McSpedden
These last two have excellent short videos that give you a good feel for what the watch can do now.
What I found most interesting with all the reviews I’ve checked out over the last 48 hours is even these Apple experts are having a difficult time deciding what it is and what it can do. Everyone says the same thing: It’s a beautiful product unlike anything Apple (or any tech company for that matter) has ever produced – yet even with paragraph after paragraph of text, no one is really comfortable with Apple Watch (yet).
[UPDATE 4/16 – almost a week later, the tech press is still not any clearer on what they thought about the Apple Watch – as per Philip Elmer-DeWitt of the Apple 2.0 blog]
And I guess that understandable as they only had one week to use Apple Watch while they have had 7 plus years to figure out iPhone. It’s just too new of a category for everyone to fully get something as new or “different” as Apple Watch. Wired magazine more than hinted that even Apple doesn’t have it all figured out yet.
Just as iPhone is much more than a phone, Apple Watch is much more than a watch and it’s going to take some time for everyone to get comfortable with it. Am I going to buy one? Sure – eventually. I waited a year to buy my first iPhone. As intrigued as I was with the iPhone when it was released, version 2.0 in 2008 was way better than iPhone 2007 as the ecosystem around iPhone blossomed.
More than anything else, I think the fans of Apple made the decision for me. Last night, Apple’s entire allotment of Apple Watch sold out in less than 6 hours. This product will be in high demand and limited supply leading all the way up to the holiday shopping season.
Something to think about today…
Best regards,
Dr. Dan-o
Associate Professor of Marketing
Director, MBA Program
Stillman School of Business
Seton Hall University