Ben Thompson share more of his thoughts on the Apple Watch.

This makes the Pebble sound a lot like a smartphone circa 2006. The thing is, though, the iPhone was never targeted at 2006-era smartphone users: it was targeted at everyone, and that meant it had to destroy our expectations of what a smartphone was in order to build a new one that happened to look exactly like an iPhone. Similarly, to be the sort of tentpole product Cook promised the Watch would be it must target more than current watch wearers: it must be a product so good that non watch-wearers will put something on their wrists, put up with nightly charging, spend hundreds or thousands of dollars every few years, and all the other sorts of behavior that no one thought any rational phone buyer would tolerate just eight years ago. In other words, it must swing for the fences, just like Apple seems to have done.

This brings a sense of déjà vu for some of us tech watchers. I’m reminded of how the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad were ridiculed by people who did not see their potential when they were announced.

Benedict Evans shared his thoughts on ways to think about watches.

In fact, one could argue that the closest precedent for puzzlement is the mobile phone itself. If you tell the young people of today this they won’t believe you, but in the mid 1990s most people thought that mobile phones were an expensive niche product without mass-market potential. We already had phones, and pay phones, so why would you need this other thing? Mobile operators around the world (the disruptive innovators of the day) had to run advertising campaigns suggesting reasons why having a mobile phone might be useful. Price was obviously one reason this was hard to imagine, but there were more basic factors. Simple behaviors we take for granted today were different. People made plans to to meet their friends before going out in the evening, for example. We managed without mobile phones, and had to be persuaded into them.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of puzzle around a new… thing. One is that you already have a thing that does this. For tablets this was the PC (and the smartphone) and for the iPod it was the Walkman – for the iPod the advantage of the new thing seems obvious now, but people took some persuading even at the time, and for tablets the scope of replacement remains unclear. But for another kind of new product, you don’t already have a thing that does this because there is no ’this’, and it’s not clear what ’this’ might be. A mobile phone is not a landline that doesn’t have a wire – it changes large parts of how you can live your life, so much so that it was not obvious in 1995 what would change. So too a smart watch. Yes, it tells the time, but what else?

We had discmans and walkmans, why would anyone want a portable MP3 player? We had mobile phones that came with keypads, why would anyone want a smartphone with a touchscreen? We have netbooks and laptops, why would anyone want a tablet?

Are Technica reported on Android Browser flaw bring a “privacy disaster” for half of Android users.

Baloch initially reported the bug to Google, but the company told him that it couldn’t reproduce the problem and closed his report. Since he wrote his blog post, a Metasploit module has been developed to enable the popular security testing framework to detect the problem, and Metasploit developers have branded the problem a “privacy disaster.” Baloch says that Google has subsequently changed its response, agreeing that it can reproduce the problem and saying that it is working on a suitable fix.

One of the last things that Apple did during the iPhone 6 and iWatch event was give away a free U2 album to every iTunes users out there – whether you wanted to or not. Depending on which side of the fence you’re on, you’re probably overjoyed at the freebie, or appalled that Apple can just push a music album into your device. If you fall into the latter category, you’ll be happy to know that Apple has put up a link to remove the album from your iTunes library. This should put an end to the complaining. It won’t. But it should.

You may have previously caught snippets of Tim Cook on Charlie Rose, but now the whole interview is available on Hulu, and it’s a good watch.

AppleInsider reported on Samsung’s ‘rushed,’ ‘half-baked’ announcements.

Analyst Brian White:

“In our view, this strategy was ill-advised because we found the event ‘half baked’ with no details around the price points, launch dates a bit fuzzy, limited technical specifications, and ‘gimmicky’ features,” White said in his note, a copy of which was provided to AppleInsider. “With the potential threat of this event now out of the way, we believe this just made Apple’s ‘Fab Fall’ launch a lot easier because the company’s #1 competitor does not appear well prepared to take on Apple’s new iPhones this fall.”

The point of rushing their announcements before Apple’s event is to steal the limelight and put a dent on Apple’s new products. Either they are ill-prepared or they are waiting for Apple’s move before they innovate on the features and match the prices.