An opinion too far: Asking the wrong people about the Apple Watch
"Apple Watch Gets Mixed Reactions From IT Analysts" (tip o' the antlers to @JonyIveParody)
Yes, when considering the Apple Watch, what we must first determine is how will it scale in the enterprise with managed deployment in a Windows NT server-based zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
No one cares. No one.
But let's reach into this sack full of dull cats in business suits anyway and see what a few of them have to slowly and disapprovingly meow about.
"It can be the greatest watch in the world, but it's still a tiny screen."
And does it run Internet Explorer Because all our applications require Internet Explorer.
Oh, and Java. It needs Java.
Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT...
[blank stare]
"Apple may be the only smartphone maker with a customer fan base that is dedicated to the point of looneyness."
It's "looniness", eWeek. And, yes, that's it. We're all just totes cray-cray. All 75 million iPhone buyers a quarter. That's the only explanation that explains everything.
"The company's biggest differentiator is its app developer community, but it's too soon to tell if they'll help make or break the Apple Watch."
Sure, developers jumped on the iPhone and jumped on the iPad but it's perfectly possible they'll entirely sit out the Apple Watch because I live in a rich fantasy world of my own devising.
"Unless the company and its developer community can help evolve the Apple Watch into a must-have device, I expect it will be remembered as a profitable yet short-lived showpiece."
Well, that's pretty good for Apple Watch negativism, but the horny one thinks there's an opportunity to turn it up to 11 here. Hmm. How. To. Do. That
Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group...
Yahtzee.
In fact, he said, by adding some smartphone functions to a wristwatch, such as the ability to make a phone call, it may actually be less useful for some users.
Oh, he said that Rob did Rob has doubts about a new Apple product Huh. That's very interesting and not at all just a thing Rob does every damn time a new Apple product comes out. And surely these are comments Rob has not summarily pulled from places from which things should not be pulled.
"In a noisy room, you are going to be screaming at the watch to be heard and trying to hold it up to your ear on your wrist," said Enderle.
So, because it doesn't work in that one use case -- one in which smartphones also struggle -- it's making the Watch less useful and therefore useless. As opposed to it being incredibly convenient in another use case, say in the car. Cool analysis, bro.
"It's just much more convenient to hold a phone up to your ear, plus you look less stupid than if you are holding your watch up to your ear on your wrist."
Please accept this wadded up glob of congealed opinion on social interaction that I'm pretending is technology analysis. That's what you called me for, right Well, whatever, that's what you're getting.
If the first buyers of the Apple Watch feel stupid using the devices, then a second wave of buyers will not happen, said Enderle.
The Watch can take phone calls. Therefore that is all the Watch can do. And taking phone calls on a watch is stupid so the Apple Watch will fail.
This is the analysis you call Rob Enderle for. Sure, someone could easily make a bot that would do that same thing but a bot lacks Rob's je ne sais quoi.
(Really, what the quoi is that Is it Hai Karate We have no idea.)
Worse, because of the watch's small face, as soon as people try to use it in airports to go through ticket scanners at gates, they will likely cause delays because they'll take multiple scans to be properly read, said Enderle.
Now he's just makin' crap up. Like when he advised IT managers to report iPhone users in their organizations for violating Sarbanes-Oxley rules and when he said the iPhone was doomed because kids would use it to text while driving and Apple would get sued into oblivion. Making crap up is Rob's only setting when it comes to Apple.
So, inside the outside layer of "Who gives a crud what IT analysts say about a consumer product" we find Rob "Just making stuff up" Enderle. This piece is a like a Russian nesting doll of pointless commentary.