Benedict Evans:

Facebook is trying to co-opt the next Snapchat. Yes, the smartphone is a social platform that makes it easy to use multiple social apps, but you still have to get someone over the hurdle of installing the app in the first place, and they have to get all of their friends to install it too so that they have someone to send to. Facebook is trying to bypass that - you can drop your content straight into the existing Messenger install base (600m MAUs). Now just one person can get a cool app and send messages to their friends even if their friends don't have it, and if it's cool enough they can tap on the link and install it too.

This is super powerful stuff.

My biggest gripe about today's social apps is 99% of the time, they don't provide any value to you unless your friends are signed up. Even after that, your friends have to be active for it to be any fun. It blows my mind how many social apps still haven't figured that out.

One app that did figure it out was Instagram. In the beginning, they included the genius feature of posting your photos to Twitter and Facebook as you posted to Instagram. So even if you were one of the early adopters of Instagram and didn't have any friends on it yet, that was okay — just push your photos onto Twitter and Facebook for your friends to enjoy. From there, Instagram's early growth was just purely organic, piggybacking on the social graph you already built on Twitter/Facebook.

I'm really excited about this for Facebook.

As for Apple and Android, I'm wondering if they will ever bake something like this directly into their operating systems. How would the mobile apps landscape change if you could get value from an app without even having to install it? What potential security issues would arise? How would shady companies try to exploit this? Could this possibly kill the web as we know it today?

As Benedict repeatedly says, the landscape of mobile computing is still in flux. For all we know, in the next several years, saying "I downloaded an app from the App Store" might not mean anything like what we know today.

A typical response I see on the daily. But here's what really happened.

NY Times on December 18, 2011:

Over the last year, Apple and Google have secretly begun working on projects that will become wearable computers. Their main goal: to sell more smartphones. (In Google’s case, more smartphones sold means more advertising viewed.) [...]

Apple has also experimented with prototype products that could relay information back to the iPhone. These conceptual products could also display information on other Apple devices, like an iPod, which Apple is already encouraging us to wear on our wrists by selling Nanos with watch faces.

A person with knowledge of the company’s plans told me that a “very small group of Apple employees” had been conceptualizing and even prototyping some wearable devices.

One idea being discussed is a curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist; people could communicate with the device using Siri, the company’s artificial intelligence software.

Fifteen months later, Bloomberg reports :

Samsung Electronics Co. is developing a wristwatch as Asia’s biggest technology company races against Apple Inc. to create a new industry of wearable devices that perform similar tasks as smartphones.

"We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long," Lee Young Hee, executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business, said during an interview in Seoul. "We are working very hard to get ready for it. We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them." [...]

Samsung’s disclosure comes after people familiar with Apple’s plans said last month the U.S. company has about 100 product designers working on a wristwatch-like device that may perform similar functions to the iPhone and iPad. The global watch industry will generate more than $60 billion in sales this year, and the first companies to sell devices that multitask could lock customers into their platform, boosting sales of phones, tablets and TVs.

Sorry, Apple haters. The Apple Watch was well into development before Samsung came along.

Even then, Apple has never cared about being first. Tim Cook explains:

These are lots of insights that are years in the making, the result of careful, deliberate...try, try, try...improve, improve, improve. Don’t ship something before it’s ready. Have the patience to get it right. And that is exactly what’s happened to us with the watch. We are not the first.

We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone. But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch—the first one that matters.

Michael Wolfe:

"Why do I need a laptop? If I really need to get some work done, I’ll just go back to my desk."

"Why do I need a cell phone? I already am paying for phones at home and work, and I can use a payphone in a pinch."

"Why do I need a smartphone? I have a cell phone, and I can grab my laptop if I want to get on the web."

"Why do I need a tablet? I have a laptop."

Typical responses by mainstream consumers whenever an innovative new technology is on the horizon.

Jack Linshi:

The Apple Watch’s biggest advantage in China is deceptively simple: Few Chinese consumers laugh when Apple touts the device as a luxury item. Apple became China’s top luxury brand for 2015, outranking labels like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. More recently, Apple’s status has risen as Chinese consumers of luxury goods prioritize functionality over ostentatiousness—a taboo that China’s President Xi Jinping deplored as “unhealthy,” criticizing Chinese elites’ obsession with status symbols like Rolex watches. [...]

While Americans will compare the Apple Watch’s $349-$17,000 price tag to the cost of consumer electronics, Chinese consumers are more likely to stack it up against luxury timepieces. The worldwide median price of a luxury watch is about $10,700, according to DLG. That means the Apple Watch Sport (starting $349) and Apple Watch (starting $549) are inexpensive by comparison, while the gold and silver Apple Watch Edition models that start at $10,000 aren’t crazy purchases.

As an American, it's too easy to forget that there are other markets out there just as big as the United States. While the gold Apple Watch has been getting slammed here by the media, Tim Cook is keeping his eyes on the prize — China is a huge opportunity and a high priority for Apple.

Tim Bajarin:

Qualcomm is using ultrasonic waves to scan all of the ridges and wrinkles of your fingers. Why ultrasound? Qualcomm says it can do a far deeper analysis than the 2D image created by a fingerprint mashed up against a capacitive sensor. It can look beyond the grime and sweat on your fingers and even penetrate beneath the surface of your skin to identify unique 3D characteristics of your print. It’s the same biometric technology developed for government security applications, Qualcomm told me.

Qualcomm execs said the technology could also change the way fingerprint scanners are implemented on devices. Since ultrasonic waves go through glass, aluminum, steel and plastic housings of any phone, they don’t need a dedicated touch pad or button to work. In fact, depending on how it is implemented, you could conceivably touch any part of the smartphone with a finger to gain access to the phone itself. This could make it possible for smartphone makers around the world to be more creative in the way they implement two factor authentication in these devices and will go a long way towards making all smartphones more secure. In Qualcomm’s scanner, high-frequency acoustic waves penetrate the dermal layer of your skin to extract your unique print, down to the ridges on your skin and even your sweat pores. Since sound can travel through things like sweat and other elements, your daily maneuverings don’t get in the way of capturing that perfect print. In fact, condensation generated from your regular activities may actually improve the scan, making it a more reliable method than the current capacitive technology.

Assuming this works as reliably as it sounds, it looks like Qualcomm's fingerprint scanning solution is a leg up above Apple's Touch ID. Sweaty hands and dirty fingers happens a lot more often we'd like to admit, requiring you to make the extra effort to clean them before using Touch ID.

Also, because ultrasonic fingerprint scanners can be placed anywhere on the device, industrial designers will have a lot more freedom.

9to5mac:

Here are the Apple Watch dimensions:

• 38 mm model: 38.6 x 33.3 x 10.5 mm
• 42 mm model: 42 x 35.9 x 10.5 mm

And here are some of the dimensions of popular Android Wear devices:

• Asus ZenWatch: 51 x 39.9 x 7.9 ~ 9.4 mm
• LG G Watch R: 53.6 x 46.4 x 9.7 mm
• Moto 360: 46 x 46 x 11.5 mm
• LG G Watch: 46.5 x 37.9 x 9.95 mm
• Sony SmartWatch 3: 51 x 36 x 10 mm
• Samsung Gear Live: 56.4 x 37.9 x 8.9 mm
• Huawei Watch: 42 x 42 x 11.3 mm

Since we're just beginning the Smartwatch 2.0 era and we're waiting to see if smartwatches will gain traction with the mainstream consumer, there are two important questions to ask:

• How many women will wear a smartwatch?
• How many women will pay to wear a smartwatch?

If the answer to the first question isn't favorable (at least a few million), there's no point in even asking about the second one.

So when I look at the dimensions of these Android Wear 1.0 watches, the question comes up: how many women will wear a masculine-looking gadget on their wrist that is over 46 mm?

Apple, on the other hand, has designed a watch in a size suitable for women. Now, I'm not saying that all women will buy an Apple Watch, but I bet there will be a hell of a lot more women in the Apple Watch corner than the Android Wear corner.

Non-Techie Girl #1:

That changes the game for messaging I think for really young people. And it's right on my wrist. It's so easy, I love it!

Non-Techie Girl #2:

If I'm at a party and a guy is being super creepy, I could just double-tap it, that will be like, "Come save me, right now! Rescue me!"

Girl code taken to the next level.

As I've said before, I really do believe Digital Touch is an underrated feature that will become a fan favorite. Something like how front-facing cameras on phones were never considered revolutionary, yet people LOVE selfies and it's become a big part of our culture.

While I don't think people will buy an Apple Watch for Digital Touch, I do see people falling in love with it once they start using it.

And this won't be a feature that people will use with all their friends. Rather, it will be used with their closest friends, which is actually even more powerful.

(Note to the haters: this BuzzFeed video was NOT paid for by Apple)

When it comes to Apple announcements, there are two kinds of people:

• those who see it as reality-distorting marketing designed to brainwash people into buying overpriced commodity products.
• those who see Apple's meticulous craftsmanship, design, and engineering that separates their products from the competition.

Matthew Panzarino:

People that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck.

One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period. That’s insane when you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated our social interactions over the past decade.

This is exactly what I've experienced since getting my Pebble smartwatch last year. It's helped me greatly in getting me to stop fiddling with my phone when I'm out with friends while still allowing me to stay on top of urgent notifications, usually from my boss.

It really doesn't seem like much, but the time you save by not having to whip out your smartphone every time you get a notification really starts to add up. Being able to stay on top of your notifications with a half-second glance has done wonders for allowing me to live more in the moment instead of behind my iPhone.

This time and attention-saving solution is definitely not the most sexiest feature to market, but it's something that everyone will benefit from once they actually experience it.

Neil Cybart:

Samsung was more focused on mentioning key words such as design, hardware, camera, and mobile payments, instead of discussing why certain things were being done or removed from the phone. This lack of clarity has been Samsung's problem for years as the company has mostly relied on offering consumers choices that other smartphone makers decided not to pursue. The problem is Apple is now selling larger screen iPhones, and Xiaomi and other local Chinese smartphone vendors are selling decent hardware at lower prices. Samsung's differentiation has disappeared. Samsung may not be at the point of utter desperation, but they certainly came off as remaining quite nervous. Samsung says they want to be first in mobile, but they show great discomfort in leading.