Apple Watch Try-On, Unsorted Thoughts
The Milanese Loop is by far the most comfortable band. It drapes around the uneven curves of your wrist like a fabric, but feels cool to the touch like a metal band. The spaces between the links breathe more than any of the other bands. It’s trivial to change the tightness of the band while you’re wearing it. In the summertime, when you’re constantly going from steaming hot weather outside into shivering cold air-conditioned offices, I expect that this is the band that will feel the most comfortable, all the time. The magnetic clasp is stronger than I expected, and has a rubber gasket around the perimeter that enhances the grip and prevents slippage. I’m happy that I chose this one for myself.
The stainless steel Link Bracelet is beautiful, and one of the most comfortable metal bands I’ve ever tried. Both styles are darker than I’d expected. The regular stainless steel absorbs the ambient color around it: your skin tone, your clothes, the room. The result is a color that is darker and more subtle than you might guess from the photos online, which are bathed in unblemished electric white light. So unless you’re Powder and live in Jony Ive’s secret prison, expect the stainless steel Link Bracelet to look grey, not silvery, in most contexts.
The Space Black Link Bracelet is just what is says: black. It looks even darker in person than it does online, again because most everyday lighting isn’t as bright as the lighting used for the product photos. Get this one if you want a black watch. Don’t get it if you’re looking for tungsten/charcoal.
The brushed texture of the Link Bracelet looks bad in constrast with the mirrored finish of the Apple Watch face. Either one separately is beautiful, but side-by-side the two textures clash like stripes and plaids. The Space Black style hides this mismatch better than the regular style. The Classic Buckle, Milanese Loop, and Modern Buckle — which have a mirror finish for the metal components – all look better in practice than the Link Bracelet.
The Leather Loop feels cheaper than it should. It doesn’t have the supple, leathery feeling I was expecting. Those ridges are cored with hard magnetic rods. The result is a feeling of a thin leather coating around hard rods, not a leather band. Your fingers make you doubt you’re even touching genuine leather. I do like how easy it is to change the tightness of the band on the fly. Cheap feelings aside, it is a comfortable band. If you like the look I would not hesistate to get it.
The Sport Band felt luxurious and satiny under my finger tips, but around my wrist it felt pretty uncomfortable. No one’s wrist is a perfect oval. There are lumps and uneven curves where tendons shoot through fat and bone. The thickness of the Sport Band means that it applies uneven pressure against your wrist bones as it is tightened. Perhaps it will break-in over time, but I imagine it could feel uncomfortable after long periods, especially in hot, sticky weather. If I owned this one I’d be constantly adjusting where the pin is lodged. Speaking of which, it’s a little fiddly getting the sport band attached with one hand – lodge pin, bend remainder, tuck in the tip, flatten the remainder – but not bad. Your mileage may very. I’m a restless, fidgety person. It’s easy to make me physically uncomfortable.
The Modern Buckle is elegant. The leather is much thinner in person than it looks online, and in a good way. If was buying one as a gift for someone with a restrained taste, this is what I’d choose.
Screenshots of Every Screen of Apple Watch Settings.app
This Flickr album doesn’t include screens not available in the demo units available at the Apple Store, (e.g. Bluetooth), but it’s interesting nonetheless. This one’s for all those folks out there (like me) who have to drive over an hour to get to an Apple Store.
Full-Time Hobbyists
From an article on indie game development by Daniel Cook
We don’t talk about it much, but a large number of successful ‘professional’ artists are in a relationship with someone else that pays their way. They aren’t successful entrepreneurs with a deep understanding of sustainability. Instead they are full-time hobbyists in a fortunate financial situation. They accumulate excess leisure time and spend it on game development.
This sort of blessing is very difficult to admit. But embarrassed silence dupes less fortunate artists into pursuing an unrealistic fantasy of how to thrive. If you are kept developer and are living off someone else’s money, talk about it. Indie finances could use a little sunlight.
This whole article is brutal, fascinating, and probably just as true of all independent software markets, not just games.
Riposte, the App.net App, Permanently Removed from Sale
As part of an agreement reached over an alleged trademark infringement, Riposte (the App.net app I made with Jamin Guy) will be removed from sale on the App Store. We’ll also be taking down the riposteapp.net homepage.1
Even though we haven’t updated it in a while2, it saddens me to see Riposte go away. It may not have been a successful business, but it was a success to us. We had a lot of fun making it, and are grateful to everyone who supported us along the way.
We will keep the push notification servers for Riposte and Whisper running as long as we can — not forever of course. So those of you who still have Riposte and/or Whisper on your devices should be able to continue using them for a long while.
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We will take down the app and homepage for Whisper (the private messaging app we made for App.net) as well. ↩
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Riposte was a labour of love, lasting as long as it did thanks to the generosity of the App.net Developer Incentive Program. Jamin and I each have children and full-time jobs. There’s just not enough time in a day to take on all the projects we want to do. ↩
Kottke on the Apple Watch, But Really on All Technological Progess, Ever
In the entire history of the world, if you make it easier for people to do something compelling, people don’t do that thing less: they’ll do it more. If you give people more food, they eat it. If you make it easier to get credit, people will use it. If you add another two lanes to a traffic-clogged highway, you get a larger traffic-clogged highway. And if you put a device on their wrist that makes it easier to communicate with friends, guess what? They’re going to use the shit out of it, potentially way more than they ever used their phones.
Link.