Bad combo - giant solar flare just as the internet itself explodes with iPhone 6 pre-orders.

You may as well just crawl in a cave that day and see what is left of society when you come out. Hint; take some Twinkies as our soon-to-be cockroach overlords love them.

Though even in the smartphone area they are waning in popularity which was inevitable

Well, except for the fact the are waxing instead...

I wonder if releasing lager phones which have been popular, will increase or decrease iPhone sales? HMMMMMMM.

So, you mean... nobody all will be buying them?

Point made and doubled.

Quite a bit? Is a centimeter's difference going to amount to:

I don't really have an opinion about the original theory, but the difference is about 3/4 inch taller (for the SMALLER new iPhone from the iPhone 5). I'm just saying it's not accurate to say they are the same size when they are not that close.

I was going to post "quite a lot of admin in there" but you really put it better.

Look again, the iPhone 6 (not plus) 4.7" model is quite a bit larger than the iPhone 5. It's just a bit wider, but quite a bit taller.

There are only so many needless gimmicks that even the most fanatic Apple fanboys are willing to buy

Showing once again the utter ignorance of Slashdot posters I see, it's not going to be Apple fanatics buying them (or at least mostly not).

Too bad you'll never understand what real people do or want.

In the Seattle area, buses are packed with the high income tier. But given they mostly work for MS, whipping out your iThingy might still be rude.

"Don't forget Poland!" - George Bush

in a shell that can't go into the sauna, sea and mud

The AppleWatch should be able to go into sauna and mud. It's water resistant which usually means everything except prolonged submersion.

They also have different bodies, some of which are "sportier" than others. One is an all aluminum body that should be pretty scratch resistant (though they all are to some degree). You could probably drag that through the mud.

an Apple rep looking to build more hype

Apple doesn't do that, they have no need. The tech press does that for them... you seriously think a post on Slashdot moves the needle either way on AppleWatch hype?

If they had put a phone in it I would never have bought one, knowing the battery life would be well less than a day.

Apple mentions charging overnight, so I estimate a 15-24 hour battery life.

right down to the "You need to use Safari to watch this video"

That part was intentional though, as a marketing tool they only live-streamed to Apple devices (and publicized that fact). So even though annoying, you can't really count it as an error.

I don't think you understand Cook has a dark side, I'm thinking darker than Jobs. Still waters run deep as they say... Jobs put all his emotion out on the surface, someone like Cook is far scarier.

What was exciting about Halo? No clue here, never heard of it before MS.