Comments on post “Apple Watch”
Peter Böttges
@boettges
I need to play around with that dial...I'm not convinced by that interface decision at all!
I would have preferred a circular touch-activated bezel around the screen, which would allow touch gestures analogous to the iPod wheel dial. Swipe your finger clockwise or counterclockwise along the bezel to zoom in/out or make selections.
Furthermore this would have allowed the watch to be worn on either the left or right arm, without locking out left handed users.
With both interface elements (dial, button) on the right side only, it seems too unnatural to be worn on one's right arm. Controlling the dial with the thumb of your left hand or reaching over/around the display to control it with the other fingers is very uncomfortable.
The use of that dial undoubtedly wants to pick up on the language of the watch dials of classic wrist watches. But I think this was the wrong element to be chosen.
In the last decades you didn't have to wind up or reset your clock on a daily basis. Maybe you used the dial once per year? Or on occasion when traveling to a distinctively different timezone.
To me it would have made much more sense to have picked up on the symbolic character of the "tachymeter", the turnable scale around the rim of analog chronometers, which we all used to play around with constantly anyways.
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Eric Metelka
@eric3000 · Product Manager, PowerReviews
@boettges "Maybe you used the dial once per year?" I wear a dumbwatch. I use the dial about once a month. Most common use case is to change the time (travel, day light savings) or change the date (skipping the 31 on months with only 30 days). So a bit more frequent then you suggested, but still not daily or weekly by any means.
I will say I use the tachymeter even less, as in not at all. Useful if you're a diver, but not much to use it for otherwise.
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Peter Böttges
@boettges
@eric3000 Oh right, I forgot about the bi-monthly day skip. That was my reason to switch to a watch without a calendar a couple of years ago.
Not saying that the tachymeter is actually used more often, it is rather a question of the message about it's accessibility that this element conveys.
Just having this rotary element on top of the watch seems more natural than on the side.
The crown was specifically placed on the side (sometimes even hidden under a ring) to make accessing it hard to avoid accidental misadjustment.
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