John Gruber:

Further, I don’t think any of the stainless steel bands will be available for retail purchase. They’ll sell sport bands, which you’ll be able to use on any Apple Watch, but I don’t think any of the nicer bands will be available for retail purchase. Don’t hold your breath for a space black Link Bracelet to put on your $349 Sport model. The nicer bands aren’t accessories that Apple hopes you’ll tack onto your purchase; they’re signifiers of how much you paid for your stainless steel or gold Apple Watch. [emphasis mine]

Agree. This reminds me of how Rolex has two bracelets for their timepieces — Jubilee and President. Because Rolexes can come in three very similar-looking metals — stainless steel, white gold, and platinum — Rolex offers the President bracelet for only white gold and platinum. So when you see a Rolex with a President band, you'll know the wearer paid for more than a stainless steel Rolex.

It's great to see a smartwatch-maker finally thinking fashion-first, not technology-first.

Kit Eaton:

Fans are happy because 19 hours of “mixed” use, with the watch mainly on standby and in typical-to-heavy use for only about 2.5 to 3.5 hours a day is actually quite generous—it means a nightly charge during a typical 8-hours of bed time is going to be more than enough. [...]

19 hours sounds very reasonable. Picture yourself looking at and interacting with your watch for 2–3 seconds at a time as you read notifications, with the occasional 10–20 seconds used to respond to something like a tweet or text message. Add in less frequent longer interactions lasting a few minutes (like making a phone call or playing a game—even though we don’t know exactly how much game play Apple will ultimately allow in watch apps) and then that 3-hour “heavy” use window looks quite generous. You wouldn’t want to stare at such a small screen for much longer each day anyway.

I've written before how the Apple Watch's battery life is a top priority. I still believe it is, but it will take a few generations before it'll be what Apple really wants it to be.

Until then, as Kit speculates, maybe 19 hours of "mixed usage" won't be that bad. I can relate to Kit's assertion that we won't be actively fiddling with our smart watches for long periods of time. As a Pebble owner, I've played with a few Pebble apps and found I fucking can't stand holding my wrist up to my face longer than 5 seconds at a time. In those longer-than-5-seconds situations, whipping out my smartphone is just way more practical.

That said, I'm curious to see how apps will mature on smartwatches. Taking a smartphone app and shrinking it down to wrist-size is not going to cut it. App developers will really have to embrace the idea of glanceable and passive user interfaces if they want to make something revolutionary.

In response to reports of TAG Heuer looking into selling smartwatches, Matt Richman writes:

TAG Heuer’s smartwatch won’t sell. There’s no market for it.

Apple Watch requires pairing with an iPhone, and TAG’s smartwatch will need to pair with a smartphone to even have a chance of being as feature-rich as Apple Watch.

Apple isn’t going to re-engineer iOS for TAG’s benefit, so TAG’s smartwatch won’t pair with an iPhone the way Apple Watch does.

In order to have even stand a chance of being as feature-rich as Apple Watch, then, TAG’s smartwatch will have to pair with an Android phone. However, TAG wearers aren’t Android users. Rich people buy TAG watches, but rich people don’t buy Android phones.

I didn't even think about that. But another thought: how luxurious will Android Wear ever get?

If Android Wear makers don't go for luxury, they probably won't be very fashionable, which means we'll just be seeing more of what we already see right now — uber geeky watches that are too big and/or too masculine for the common female shopper.

If Android Wear goes for luxury, then, as Matt has pointed out, Android Wear makers would be trying to sell luxury smartwatches to a customer base that doesn't really appreciate luxury products.

Ben Bajarin on two possible scenarios for the upcoming smart watch market.

Scenario #1:

Apple had a near monopoly on the iPod/MP3 market. We can see a similar scenario playing out where Apple effectively “iPods” the smart watch category, maintaining dominant share over the next five to seven years. While the early success of the iPod was driven by Apple releasing iTunes for Windows, we don’t see the need for Apple to support other platforms in order to hold sway over the smart watch category. Apple’s existing iPhone customer base is large enough to keep it the foremost smart watch vendor and their smart watch platform as the reigning one in the smart watch category.

Scenario #2:

Another possible scenario is the smart watch category shapes up very much like the smart phone category. Apple succeeds at their goal to acquire the top 20% of the market and rake in the majority of the profits. While Android Wear, or another third party licensable smart watch OS, provides the software platform to the vast majority of hardware companies making smart watches.

In this scenario, the vast majority of Chinese and Hong Kong produced smart watches adopt Android Wear (or something else) and flood the market with very low cost smart watches. Also in this scenario, Swiss watch makers competing in the sub $1000 watch market start making smart watches because Apple Watch cannibalized nearly all the sales of Swiss-made watches in that price range.

I think Apple Watch will take 3-4 years to become a mainstream hit, but I don't think it'll be as huge as the iPod because it's currently designed to only work with iPhones. (Maybe in a decade we'll see Apple Watch mature into a legit standalone device, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

My big question is: will Android Wear ever appeal to enough women to become mainstream? I just can't imagine women buying into low-cost smartwatches. Well, maybe fitness bands. But most mainstream women don't wear fitness bands all day.

Either way, I'm bullish on smartwatches as a category and I'm bullish on Apple becoming the leader. Recruiting and convincing all of the right people in fashion, fitness, and medical industries will make all the difference.

Jeremy Horwitz, 9to5mac:

Where will the Apple Watch fit in Apple’s history? Today alone, we’ve seen predictions ranging from “2015 is the year of the Apple Watch” and “could change the way people live” to a somber prediction that it won’t be “the homerun product that iPod, iPhone, and iPad have been.” Similar opinions have been circulating for months.

After reading both dire and overenthusiastic predictions, as well as measuring demand several months out from the release, my belief is somewhere in the middle: the Apple Watch will do better in its first year than the first-generation Apple TV, falling somewhere between the first-generation iPhone (6.1 million units, below Apple’s target of 10 million) and the original iPad (14.8 million units, wildly surpassing most estimates). The iPhone is huge now, but it wasn’t a “gigantic hit” in its first year, while the iPad roared out of the gate and has stayed pretty strong since then. Below, I’ll explain why I think the Apple Watch will wind up between them.

I think the Apple Watch will be a slow starter for the first three years, and then catch fire in its fourth year, much like the iPhone 4.

As for the competition? They won't come anywhere close until they realize they have to think fashion-first like the Apple Watch, not gadget-first.

Out of all the first-gen Android Wear devices, I like the Moto 360 the best because it actually looks like a watch (albeit a big, masculine watch that looks good on big guys like me but not for most mainstream consumers). But what I find interesting about Motorola's two ads is how they're promoting the not-so-silent vibration mode as a marketable feature.

I think a vibration sound is annoying. Just ask my puppy who freaks out every time he hears my Pebble vibrate.

Apple Watch's "Taptic Engine" is completely silent and according to bloggers with first-hand experience, it literally feels like someone is tapping you.

In the next decade or so, I believe the smartwatch will replace the smartphone (and even the PC) for most of our everyday tasks. This vision, however, will require a total reimagination of the user interface; specifically, inputting data.

Samsung understands the vision. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to get there.

What they've done here with the Gear S is taken a smartphone and shrank it down to the size of a wristwatch. Who cares if a wrist-size keyboard won't work in the real world. A smartphone on a wrist sounds pretty cool, right? Keyboards worked on smartphones so obviously they'll work on the wrist, right? The Apple Watch won't have a keyboard but the Gear S does, so that makes the Gear S superior, right?

This is a perfect example of what happens when companies just say "yes" without understanding "why".

Patrick Salyer:

Consumers have been longing to get rid of passwords for years. Ad nauseam, we’ve heard the clamors for the end of passwords because of the deluge of usernames and passwords we have amassed and the inherent security issues and frustration they create. Imagine never needing to create another user name or password again for any site or app by using your Apple ID. That’s what Touch ID promises.

Ultimately, Touch ID and Apple Pay are proxies for Apple ID, which is becoming paramount to what is sure to be a strategy to overtake other identity providers.

Consumers will love using Apple ID for authentication on sites and apps because of the seamless experience – imagine being able to authenticate quickly not only at point-of-sale systems and mobile apps using your thumbprint but also on third-party sites just by having your phone in close proximity to your computer.

Businesses, or relying parties, will love it because they’ll get more registrations, identify more customers across devices, and have lower shopping cart abandonment. Apple, in turn, will establish more permanence with users, further entrenching them into the Apple ecosystem.

I've believed the exact same thing since TouchID was announced.

I've also been bullish on the Apple Watch being key to killing passwords.

TorrentFreak:

While it’s been fun and games for a while, makers of some of the world’s most expensive and well known watches are now targeting sites offering ‘pirate’ smartwatch faces in order to have digital likenesses of their products removed from the market.

TorrentFreak has learned that IWC, Panerai, Omega, Fossil, Armani, Michael Kors, Tissot, Certina, Swatch, Flik Flak and Mondaine are sending cease and desist notices to sites and individuals thought to be offering faces without permission.

I'd love to see the day these luxury watchmakers design official smartwatch faces and sell them online (at a premium). Hell, they could even design limited edition watchfaces and sell a fixed number of them. I'd personally throw down money for an official Panerai face.

If people are willing to spend on trivial things such as stickers for chat apps or epic beasts in World of Warcraft, why not embrace the digital marketplace?

MG Siegler:

I like that Apple is seemingly being thoughtful, measured, and realistic in this roll out. This SDK makes it clear that Apple will not be promising the world with the v1 of Apple Watch. Instead, we’re likely to get something much more akin to the first version of the iPhone. As you’ll recall, that initial device, while magical, only ran apps produced by Apple. Third party developers were required to use the web to reach users on the device. Apple is clearly being more lenient here — but not that much more lenient. The only apps that will run natively on Apple Watch to start will be made by Apple.

Slow and steady is the way to go. We've seen Apple do this time and time again, with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

In a decade we'll see the Apple Watch will grow into the most important device for mainstream consumers, akin to what the smartphone is for people today. Until then, Apple will take their time to do it right, adding the right features as the necessary technology becomes technically and financially feasible.

In the meantime, Samsung has rushed out their sixth version of their smartwatch line in one year, all of which have been flops. Because apparently, at Samsung, quantity and doing things first is more important than doing it right.