...and if no provision is made on Apple's part to retain backwards compatibility, this would be the biggest dick move pulled by Apple, since...
Scratch the 'since'. This would be the biggest dick move ever pulled by Apple.
This is a company that has taken pains, that has trotted out representatives with every successive launch, mind you, to stress that older bands will remain cross-compatible with newer editions of the Watch. That they would walk back a decade of reassurances and turn every band released since the first generation of the Watch into little more than an expensive paperweight makes any guarantee from them from this point on not worth the paper it's printed on.
This is a problem that could have been avoided in its entirety by not making those guarantees in the first place, by not creating these expectations, by not lending their customers the impression that their bands would have anything but finite compatibility. We are under no impression that our older phone cases will remain compatible with successive generations of the iPhone precisely because no guarantee to that effect is made, because the evolving size and form factor of the iPhone is an established, even welcomed precedent. The absent of that precedent with the Watch's band attachment mechanism was a deliberate choice made by Apple that allowed the blossoming of a parallel ecosystem that turned their wearable into more than just a timekeeper, health assistant, and fitness tracker -- it made it a mode of personal expression -- a walking billboard for the company on the very wrists of their customers.
To write that off in one fell swoop would impoverish the user experience by eliminating countless possible permutations of style and creativity, and would all but kill off a core USP of the Watch -- the aesthetic aspect -- because even if they were to release a large collection of bands with the new attachment mechanism, the eventual loss of compatibility will have become established precedent by then, putting customers off amassing collections to the extent they would have done pre-change.
I hope this development will never come to pass. I hope these whispers will go the way of the rumour of the Series 7 adopting chamfered edges, which did eventually turn out to be wholly unfounded. But if it does happen, it would be enough to put me off the Watch in favour of an Oura Ring, its companion app, and a mechanical timepiece, none of which I own at present. I know a solitary backout on the part of a few collectors will do nothing to dent their finances or change their minds, but that would not be my intent -- I just wouldn't feel the level of investment in the product and ecosystem I once did, and it would be phased out of my life for something less fungible.
Scratch the 'since'. This would be the biggest dick move ever pulled by Apple.
This is a company that has taken pains, that has trotted out representatives with every successive launch, mind you, to stress that older bands will remain cross-compatible with newer editions of the Watch. That they would walk back a decade of reassurances and turn every band released since the first generation of the Watch into little more than an expensive paperweight makes any guarantee from them from this point on not worth the paper it's printed on.
This is a problem that could have been avoided in its entirety by not making those guarantees in the first place, by not creating these expectations, by not lending their customers the impression that their bands would have anything but finite compatibility. We are under no impression that our older phone cases will remain compatible with successive generations of the iPhone precisely because no guarantee to that effect is made, because the evolving size and form factor of the iPhone is an established, even welcomed precedent. The absent of that precedent with the Watch's band attachment mechanism was a deliberate choice made by Apple that allowed the blossoming of a parallel ecosystem that turned their wearable into more than just a timekeeper, health assistant, and fitness tracker -- it made it a mode of personal expression -- a walking billboard for the company on the very wrists of their customers.
To write that off in one fell swoop would impoverish the user experience by eliminating countless possible permutations of style and creativity, and would all but kill off a core USP of the Watch -- the aesthetic aspect -- because even if they were to release a large collection of bands with the new attachment mechanism, the eventual loss of compatibility will have become established precedent by then, putting customers off amassing collections to the extent they would have done pre-change.
I hope this development will never come to pass. I hope these whispers will go the way of the rumour of the Series 7 adopting chamfered edges, which did eventually turn out to be wholly unfounded. But if it does happen, it would be enough to put me off the Watch in favour of an Oura Ring, its companion app, and a mechanical timepiece, none of which I own at present. I know a solitary backout on the part of a few collectors will do nothing to dent their finances or change their minds, but that would not be my intent -- I just wouldn't feel the level of investment in the product and ecosystem I once did, and it would be phased out of my life for something less fungible.
