back to article Apple is GOLDBRICKING IT: BEHOLD the iPad Glister-Slab

Apple is rumoured to be preparing to unleash a blinged-up golden iPad to satisfy some perceived consumer demand for ever more ostentatious devices. Perhaps suspecting the fanboi world has adopted the sort of goldlust more associated with Mr T than Mr Cook, the fruity firm is reportedly planning to give its new iPad Air 2 the …

  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    Since this thread will soon be colonized by raging JH hating Apple fanboys, can I please divert the attention away from ad homenims for a few comments? I have a legitimate question for the faithful that I just don't really have time to research at the moment:

    ...what does the iWatch actually do? I have to confess to not having actually looked into the new generation of smartwatches, and I'm wondering what we're supposed to do with one. Also: how is it different from, for example, a Galaxy Gear or a Pebble?

    What's cool about it? Why should I consider getting one? If anyone knows the answers, please let me know! Thanks in advance...

    1. Aaron Miller

      It's primarily a wrist-mounted auxiliary touchscreen for your phone, with the ability to do some basic fitness data logging and run local apps, including but not exclusively watch faces. If you're already using a wrist-mounted fitness tracker and an iPhone, it's cool because it gives the same or better capabilities, plus a lot more. If you're already using an iPhone but not a fitness tracker, it's cool because it lets you do most of what you do with your phone without taking your phone out of your pocket, plus the fitness tracking capability. If you don't have an iPhone or don't like wearing bracelets, it's useless.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        A concise and well thought out summary! Many thanks, sir.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          So will you get one when it comes out?

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            @AC based on the description, it doesn't seem to do anything particularly interesting. I can't see any functionality that isn't already part of my Note 2, and I'm not worried about just taking my Note 2 out of my pocket and using it when I need to. I guess it is targeted at a different market than the one I occupy. Oh well, that's okay, there are 7 billion people on the planet. Not everything has to appeal to me.

            1. Dave 126

              >...what does the iWatch actually do?

              Like any computer, it depends on the software. The hardware - touch screen, rotary dial, two buttons, microphone, speaker, vibrator, sensors, CPU, Bluetooth radio - are available for the software to use. Like the iPad, there probably isn't one 'killer application', but it may be that there are enough little applications to make it worthwhile for some users. Time will tell.

              Apple demoed an American Airlines app that displays gate information and departure time - potentially handy if your hands are full of luggage.

              GPS navigation whilst on foot. This would certainly be more convenient than holding a phone up.

              Remote control for your iTV or iPhone.

              >Will you get one?

              I'd personally wait for version 2, just based on the history of first gen iDevices (iPod, iPhone, iPad).

              >How does it differ from other smartwatches?

              Tight integration with the iOS ecosystem, and a large R&D budget. Some features seem pretty smart - such as displaying a text message, then extracting from it three plausible replies for the user to send back.

              1. TheOtherHobbes

                The smart features are vapourware at the moment.

                I think it's most likely to end up being some kind of VIP-wannabe ID thing. Imagine getting into a hotel room/transport system/entertainment experience by waving your watch over a sensor - and other applications with NFC on your wrist instead of in your pocket.

                Calling it WATCH and chasing the fashionista market may turn out to be a dumb move. Pitching it as a not-a-watch personal digital somethingorother which is obviously a watch too (duh) but also does So Much More[tm] would have made it stand put from the competition.

                IMO the fashion part should have been left implied, as it usually is in Apple products.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I wouldn't really call it an "auxiliary touch screen" since the fact it is even a touch screen was downplayed during the event. There's a "digital crown", which is basically like a modern version of the control that many windup watches had on the side that you can use to control it, so that you don't have your finger in the way on the face. Having a touch screen as the only UI for a device with a screen 1.5" in size is stupid, because there's not much room for doing anything other than swiping in four directions or touching at most five locations (the middle and four corners) which doesn't allow for even as much control as an iPod's jog wheel provided!

        Presumably Apple has some undisclosed capabilities in their Watch - something Cook hinted at in interviews after the presentation when he said he couldn't show the reporters the operation of his watch up close. If not, it will sell a few million to iPhone owners as a better exercise tracker than an iPhone, but the "let you do stuff with your phone without taking it out of your pocket" market has a size of essentially zero, unless removing one's phone from one's pocket has suddenly become a lot more difficult than I have previously experienced.

        Apple's patent filings suggest it may go in the direction of providing some health information/support beyond simple fitness tracking. If it were possible for it to determine your blood sugar levels without a needle (via tiny amounts of sweat or gasses emitted from the skin underneath it) it would be a boon to diabetics. If it were possible to monitor the pulse rate to an extreme detail, maybe it could warn of problems like strokes or heart attacks more quickly - call the doctor for you. I don't know how possible things like this are, and if they can be done if they could be done cost effectively, but that's the sort of thing that would have to happen to expand the market beyond the fitness and technology obsessed to the mass market.

        One thing I thought was very interesting that has hardly been touched upon is that it has not one but three different types of sensors for sensing your pulse rate. Either it is doing that to be more accurate (since devices that strap to the wrist are notably finicky in that regard in my experience) or it is doing more than simply measuring the number of times your heart beats per minute.

        It is also using two different types of movement sensors, which may be to increase accuracy so that, along with the heart rate data, it can make a reasonable assessment of the amount of calories you're burning doing normal activities. The Fitbit is notoriously inaccurate outside a narrow range of activities, so there is a ton of room for improvement there. Not saying the Apple Watch would necessarily improve that by much, but it appears it may be trying to do so.

    2. dogged

      I expect the Applistas to find it enjoyable, above anything else.

      I used to have a Sony Bluetooth Watch which tethered to an old Sony candybar dumphone. It was a mechanical face with a small set of alphanumeric LEDs in the bottom half which would marquee display caller ID when I got a call, show titles of received email and SMS (yes, even dumbphones did email, remember? It was just slow) and song titles if I happened to be playing music.

      The ability to screen calls based on caller ID was nice. The occasional skip track in the car was also nice. I wouldn't say it was incredibly useful but it was enjoyable functionality.

      ----

      Where this stops being relevant is... None of it required a touchscreen and therefore, battery life was around 2 day mark even on old Bluetooth. If I could have just what I used to have picking up notifications from my current phone, I'd be a happy man and using Bluetooth LE I'd expect a 5-7 day battery life.

      Throwing a touchscreen at it just because is a huge mistake and will murder the battery (and get smeary fingerprints all over it and be set off by your jacket all the damn time). It's the same as the Moto360 having the screen off by default (thus making it useless as a watch, dammit) unless you like only having a 4 hour battery life.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Why would having a touchscreen murder the battery? The delta between two displays that are identical except one is a touchscreen is almost zero, it is actually touching it and making something happen that burns CPU that runs through battery.

        I expect the Apple Watch will have a battery life closer to a week than a day. They never said how long the battery life was, there was one offhand statement Cook made that people assumed meant nightly charging. Since it doesn't have a cellular radio it would burn very little battery in standby even compared to a phone. Given that an iPhone 5/5S has a battery maybe 5-6x larger than the Watch's battery will be, and have standby of well over a week including cellular (if you've got a strong signal) with a much larger screen and bigger CPU/GPU I think getting a week out of the Watch is quite doable.

        Don't mistake Samsung Gear's battery life for Apple's. Apple is better at getting more out of a battery than the competition, and the Gear has cellular capability which is a battery killer in such a small device - not only because it draws the battery but because the antenna must be smaller and less efficient, and that's made worse by having it on your wrist.

        1. dogged

          It's normal in the absence of other data to extrapolate based on existing examples for example, the 4-hour battery life of the Moto360 if you actually plan to use it as a watch.

  2. Aaron Miller

    I wonder if the headline writer knows

    that "glister" is an alternate form of "clister" or "clyster", which is an archaic word for an enema.

  3. 45RPM Silver badge

    I remember having a proper, full-on, hissy fit at infant school after I’d done a particularly excellent piece of work (in itself unusual, since usually I really couldn’t be bothered with that learnin’ malarkey). My teacher, Mrs. Robinson, was so pleased that she gave me a gold star - the source of my ill-mannered tantrum. Gold, I considered, was desperately tacky - and I demanded a Silver star instead (far classier). For some reason, she refused. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t awarded another star ever again.

    Which is a roundabout way of saying ‘gold iPad? - fuck that shit’. I’d very much like one in grey through. Who’s buying?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Your teacher was called Mrs Robinson?

      Do you perchance drive a 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 Duetto ?

      1. Steven Raith

        If he was at the stage where he was getting gold stars for his work, I'm not sure if that would be an appropriate insinuation to make....;-)

      2. Mark 85

        Only one word needed: "Plastics".

      3. 45RPM Silver badge

        I was driving a bright red and yellow Sharna tricycle tractor with trailer. Very racy. And I only had eyes for Linda Carter or Catherine Bach.

        I expect that she was driving either a Mini or a Beetle - and probably a hand-cranked vibrator. There was something very elderly spinster about her. That said, I was four - so anyone older than ten was elderly in my view.

        1. Kepler
          Pint

          "And I only had eyes for Linda Carter or Catherine Bach."

          My "up" vote was for Lynda Carter and Catherine Bach!

          (Sounds like it must have been 1979! The only year in which they were both on TV (first-run), from late January to early September.)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gold Plate a Dog Turd, then...

    ...put an 'Apple' badge on it and flog it for $599.99.......You might scoff, but it would be the 'only' Apple aproved Gold Plated Dog Turd in existance. You're thinking about buying it now, aren't you?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh joy..

    ..a golden iPad at last, this will go fantastically well with my Gold Lamé Tuxedo, my Silver one clashed so badly I can tell you. This is truly a Lamé changer.

  6. Matt_payne666

    didn't you mean to type a 13" ipad to copy the size of the surface 3 tablet???

    1. John Bailey

      "didn't you mean to type a 13" ipad to copy the size of the surface 3 tablet???"

      No.

  7. Ted Treen

    No surprise...

    "...New fondler set to come in Midas form, whisper sources..."

    Jasper's hearing voices now.

    Inevitable.

  8. Kepler
    Joke

    Remember: Too much gold can be deadly!

    As anyone who saw the movie I'm Gonna Git You Sucka* will remember, too much gold can be deadly!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vInmy1-i-w

    .

    * I have always considered this movie to be the pilot film for the TV show In Living Color. Which in turn — for better or worse — introduced the world to Jim Carrey.

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