It's a lot more compelling though when they realize how fast third party applications can be as useful as the built in "Activity" - just one post on Lifehacker detailing the technique and millions would be using it for key apps.

essentially, you're describing using complications as a launcher, but it is a launcher with 4 (?) launch able apps

Yes, but the key is PER WATCH FACE. It's just a moment to switch to a watch face that is customized for a specific task.

There is still one tap/load but that's enough that a desired task would be quick to get to - and no reason one of the complications could not be +30 (for your app) that would launch you app telling it to jump 30 seconds on launch...

Sometimes companies intentionally order small numbers for their initial run of a product. If it doesn't sell well

In other words, companies set initial production based on estimates of purchases, with some buffer... since Apple had months of backlog in production, the expected sales far exceeded even the buffer of safety they had devised.

Like I said, if you forget to charge it overnight.

And like *I* said in the post you responded to, if you do forget you charge it while in the shower and that's enough to last the day easily.

Right, a fitness tracker is designed to always be with you, a camera is not. That's the difference.

But since all they do is track fitness they are inherently a niche market. There are many, many people who don't want to wear something that ONLY tracks fitness.

What's it's "killer app"?

You are someone who cannot see the forest for the trees. The killer app is metaphorically the forest.

Or think of it this way - what is the "killer app
  for the Computer? The Smartphone? It differs for every person. It is the culmination of what they can do that is the killer app, the assembly of a thousand joins to make a robust structure.

The biggest issue it has is battery life.

From real-life experience, that's not been an issue at all. You just charge it at night when you go to sleep, or if you forget while you take a shower, and that is enough.

It has other issues, but battery life simply is not one of them.

Sure for fitness tracking it's good but there are better fitness trackers out there

Just like there are better cameras than an iPhone, but the iPhone takes more photos than any of them because the REAL better camera/fitness tracker is the one you have with you. I never, ever would have bought a fitness tracker, I didn't even want that from the Apple Watch at all, but I actually use that feature all the time because it's so well done - and it is there.

Whereas the Apple Watch is just more of a gimmick

I totally agree the Apple Watch is not a game-changer. I don't think everyone will want or need one.

However, there's no way it's a gimmick. It is quite useful already, and with just a bit of understanding of what apps can do with WatchOS 2, you can see a lot of third party power being brought to bear on how useful the device is - but even without them core features are compelling enough that there will be a substantial number of people who enjoy using the watch.

Customer satisfaction numbers for Apple Watch owners are even higher than the iPhone, higher still among non-technical users - THAT is a huge clue to anyone willing to think about the implications. A product with satisfaction numbers that high is not a gimmick, and will have staying power in the market because people will keep using them, and furthermore tell friends they enjoy using it.

it should do just fine for non-photo/video use.

It doesn't because it's really hard to read indoors. The display was by far the biggest disappointment to me about the Time. The color limitation did not really bother me at all, I don't think the watch is a great place to look at photos anyway and that's a reasonable limitation for the battery life you get in return. What I guess they really needed was a much stronger backlight, even if that would have cut the battery life in half.

Also the actual backlight illumination is kind of flaky to turn on, you can set it to on by default all the time but that is way too much (though I would do that if it helped much).

Don't know if that's the display technology or just an availability/price issue

I'm sure it's a price issue because no-one else is using color e-ink that I know of, so probably even that small increase in size would have been a pretty large increase in cost.

Whether it is a failure or not depends upon Apple's expectations for the device.

Since it was on backorder for months that obviously means sales beat internal expectations by a large margin, or they would have manufactured more to start with.

Why should Pebble have to spend the CPU cycles, RAM, and battery life on that?

Because it makes a device they are trying to sell substantially more useful.

They have no control over what Apple does or does not do security wise - you can debate until the universe dies about the wisdom of user apps being able to arbitrarily intercept notifications, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple DOES NOT allow that, nor will they probably any time soon (they may sometime, just as once they did not allow third party keyboards and now they do).

Given the reality of what is, Pebble can opt to make the device a fully featured competitor, or basically cede the market to Apple for smart watches. If it were my business, I know what I would do - because I make things work when they can instead of bitching about how hard something is.

P.S. It's not even that hard, a simple string lookup against a hash table, so it;'s not like it's a world-ending problem on a device with 7x the battery life to start with...

I've used my Apple Watch many times until 2-3am... please do some research before you complain about problems real people do not have, or you look like an idiot.

P.S. don't worry about the tag, I've done that before so I totally understand. :-)

That would be an Apple-imposed limitation

Yes, for sure it is, they are dong what they can. But it's also a security issue for applications to be able to intercept notifications for any app in the system... I think the Apple security choice in this case is a good one that protects users more than it limits them.

However for this specific problem I was thinking, why can't Pebble filter it out on the watch side? I think along with the notifications they get bundle ID's of the app the notification is from and so they could filter it out from the watch side.

That's not the only reason the Apple Watch is better, but it is a factor.

Does the iOS Pebble Time app not have this screen?

Not that I can tell, apps on IOS cannot control the routing of notifications.

one of the first review videos I watched for the Apple Watch complained that notifications were all-or-nothing; when did Apple begin allowing you to control that?

From launch of the device, you can also control what apps that have Apple Watch apps show up on the device also. I'm not sure how they could possibly miss it since "Notifications" is at the top level of the Apple Watch control app.

iOS doesn't allow Android-style widgets on the phone

iOS developers have been able to add custom widgets to the Today view (easily visible in lock screen) for some time now.

The Apple Watch is useful for quick interactions - in the context of a longer activity, where it makes sense to lock in the screen on raise to the current app.

Going forward your own remote app will make more sense when you can tie into a complication, so the user can just raise the wrist, tap on the complication showing current play time and then open the app to control. It's really easy to set up multiple watch faces you switch between so I see where users would set up task specific faces that would let them jump to things relevant to that task.

I have a Pebble Time, and an Apple Watch (I'm developing apps for both).

I tried using the Pebble Time exclusively for a week, but it's just not as useful as the watch...

The Apple Watch apps are better (even with the simpler API of WatchOS 1.0), and I am pretty sure there are more of them than Time apps.

The biggest issues though is the integration of the Apple Watch just makes it more useful - with the Pebble Time, any notification goes through to the watch. With the Apple Watch, I have carefully narrowed the set of notifications that actually reach the watch to a small number, so a notification really means something if it goes to the watch instead of my phone.

Also the Pebble Time screen is really, really hard to read under lots of normal conditions like being indoors, or in the dark... the backlight is not very strong. It's much easier to read the Apple Watch screen in full sun than it is to read the Time screen anywhere with dim lighting.

The Apple Watch is worth about 10x the Time because it's vastly more usable, especially so when WatchOS 2.0 apps come out.

I don't see it as a problem that every app maker does not have an Apple Watch app, because not every application NEEDS an Apple Watch app. The Apple watch is not "searching for a problem", it has some very specific things it does that solve problems better than the phone does. But because of the narrow focus not every app will need to be on the watch.