The Apple Watch 2- What Apple needs to make to come back to win from failure.

Opinions on sales of the Apple Watch seem to reflect our own predetermined points of view more than reality.  Sales figures are vague, projected, oblique, it's like a Rorschach test of our expectations.  Personally I think the product is below par.  We've prices marked down, unexpected special editions like Rose Gold on the Sport model, and we see abandoned watches filling upper middle class walnut draws around the coasts of the USA, we've a developer ecosystem both tired and unexcited. 

For the first time in over ten years I think Apple made a mistake:

They made the Apple Watch with some fundamental errors.
1) They didn't see how people behave.
2) They didn't see technology in the context of the ‘personal device ecosystem’
3) They tried to do too much, too soon and with too many compromises.

If they've learned from this, the Apple Watch 2 could be big. Really big.

I think the Apple watch will has "failed"  because it's a device that is compromised, it's trying to do too many things, that we don't need to have done, and as a result is bloated, large, power hungry and ugly.

Apple for the first time have over engineered.  Apple normally brings to market others peoples tech, they are reductive, endlessly focussed on use cases and benefits, but this time they got it wrong.  They made something that overlapped too many times with things we've got the best solution for already, in our phone. 

The little that was new was both duplicative and substandard,  sure I could  look at this image of my wife on my Watch screen, but why the hell would I?

We need to consider how things work together. Between Apple, Microsoft, and now Amazon and Facebook, we're seeing the creation of stacks and systems of technologies designed to work with each other. Some software like iTunes, Apple Pay and iPhones, some hardware like Windows Phones and Windows Laptops, some like Amazon or Facebook span commerce, platforms, voice activation AI and even drones and VR or messenger apps.

These I call personal device systems.

 Personal Device Ecosystems.

Life used to be much more simple, rather like cars or houses we bought technology as standalone devices. You'd not really consider what the TV was like before buying a MiniDisc player, or what the Record Player meant to the Radio, everything was alone, about as interlinked as things got were remote controls that pretended to control other devices.

But in 2014 we live in an era of a personal device ecosystems, where things interact with each other and where the boundaries matter. When buying we need to consider whether our family is a Android based one or iOS centered family (or in theory Microsoft or Blackberry), but we also need to consider where the gaps are.

I perhaps regrettably got stuck into the world of Apple a few years ago, so until recently I had an Apple TV, an 2007 MacBook, an iPad, and an old iPhone 6.

I recently upgraded to an MacBook Air, whereupon I stopped using my iPad altogether and spent 60% of my time browsing on my MacBook Air and 40% on my iPhone 6. My iPad was then used only for showing recipes and watching movies on flights. I use it to control my smart home when I feel like punishing myself. More on that another time. 

I then last week upgraded to an iPhone 6s, so now I've put my iPad up for sale. I bought an Microsoft Band and then got a cheap Microsoft Phone to use at the gym because I felt vulnerable with a massive phone while working out.

This is my "ecosystem" ( minus the gym phone) and what the various devices do.

You can see above how my Laptop, Phone and Microsoft Band have superb functionality that nothing comes close to, how the iPad is pointless and how the iPhone is the most essential thing.

I was a bit fed up after missing out of the Apple Watch thing the other day, and decided to buy one to allow me to experience the other side. This is the theoretical new ecosystem of use for it.

I've merely created more overlap. There is nothing at all I can no longer now do, that I could not do before.

There are no improvements to use cases, it won't be better to do gaming on a watch than on a Phone, or to look at a map, or to glance at a picture. Everything that the watch will do that a phone can do, it will be worse at.

And I can't use the watch alone, the only possible ( yet dangerous) game the Apple watch could have played was as a potential device that allows someone to leave a watch at home. It could have been a gym or going out device that allows you the safety of leaving expensive equipment behind.

And in accomplishing these totally pointless functions, Apple have made the device massive, quite expensive, and most of all, ruined it's battery life.

A wrong way to think

It's like Apple used a Galaxy Gear as the starting point, or an iPhone and tried to make it smaller.

Apple Watch 2.

So what Apple should have done is figured out all the things we needed in a Fitbit or a payband and added only essential extras.

This would be my perfect device ecosystem.

 The Apple Watch 2 would be there for 4 distinct, unique functions:

1) Data gathering - it's primary reason would be to measure my health metrics. Everything.  This would make it very small, very cheap, very easy to wear.  Battery life would be easy to make 2 days plus.

2) Payment, tickets and ID - it have Touch ID , keep my store loyalty cards, my credit cards , my event tickets, and my ID, on file.

One day it should open my house. One day later it should store my health, passport, immigration details.

Every transaction from buying something, to entering a building to registering with a doctor would be a simple swipe of my arm via NFC. Its this simple function I'd use perhaps 30 times per day. And each time I would be very happy.

3) A tiny thin screen for notifications. Rather like the ticker tape on the LG G5, the band would have a small simple strip to see the time,  simple notifications , maybe the news, weather, on a ticker tape, that would stop me looking at my Phone.

4) Music - it would store a token 2-4 GB of Music and have bluetooth to connect with my bluetooth Headphones, this would allow me to run and exercise without a phone.

5) Remote- It would work as the voice input to my smart home to my Sonos System via HomeKit, it would connect with the Apple TV and the voice control there to ensure I could watch TV, change volumes, change inputs. 

6) Be small. This isn't fashion, get over it. Just make it small, make people not notice it. This step towards transhumanism is nothing to be proud of.

The Apple Watch 2 should be two odd things, more simple and less capable. It should do a few killer things brilliantly and that mean I have to think less about it, less about my phone.

This shouldn't be so hard.