"To serve mankind"...

So.... how are you fixed for firewood and natural gas?

The problem, as always... is distracted driving, not mere use of an electronic device while driving, because as you have noted, not all electronic devices require any kind of concentration to use, or would actually be a distraction. Arguably, simply talking to another person in the vehicle can present a greater distraction than using steering-wheel mounted controls for the car's audio system.

And vehicles with stereo controls mounted on the wheel are explicitly designed to minimize the distraction from driving while using. If such things are illegal to operate while driving then it would stand to reason that it would also be illegal to buy such a car in that jurisdiction... again, this is because of what positioning of the controls are *explicitly* designed to achieve.

Further, some electronic devices are necessary to use for normal and safe operation of the vehicle itself, such as cruise control. or even signalling. My point being that "electronic device" is overly vague, and can be enforced arbitrarily.

I don't philosophically agree with everybody who I'd even call a friend, let alone with everyone I ever have any association with... that doesn't stop me from associating with them in areas where we do agree.

Nope. Shills always write GOOD reviews...saying something nice is NOT defamation.

You're right.. it's false advertising.

Still not welcome

But y'see, the reason I stopped wearing a watch is that I have to carry a phone (on-call) and the phone tells me the time. Why should I wear a watch again? Especially as whatever it does will necessarily be a subset of what the phone already does?

And although the drop happened more slowly, the iPad line, originally starting at $499, now starts at $299 in a smaller form factor, or $399 in a full-size version. One reason its price wasn't inflated much at launch is that it was relatively mature technology when first released—other than software differences, it's basically an iPod Touch or iPhone with a larger screen, and as we all know, making things bigger is a lot easier than making them smaller. :-)

I don't think Apple generally reduces prices. Usually they keep the price and margin steady but improve the hardware.

Let's see.

• The iPod started at $400. Within a year or so, the price had dropped to $300. Four years later, you could get one for $200, and $150 just a year after that.
• The original iPhone started at $500 and $600 (subsidized price). Within a couple of months, they killed the $500 version and lowered the $600 version to $400. One year later, they released the iPhone 3G that started at $200 (for the same capacity as the original $600 version). And of course, you can now get much better iPhone hardware for free.

So then there may be hope for this product, because somewhere out there is a richer/foolhardier version of yourself who thinks of $350 just like you think of $100.

Doubtful. I'm in the Silicon Valley, where we already think of $350 like an average person thinks of $100. It's hard for most people to justify spending more for an accessory than they spent on the phone they're using it with. :-)

Like I said, I'll probably buy one after the inevitable price drop.

Haven't realized? Are you kidding?

They fully realized it. But they'd be first admitting to eating babies alive before they'd willingly talk about that. And they'll fight tooth and nail against anything that could come close to merging "phone" and "data". The reason is very simple: Phone IS already data to them. But data they can sell very, very, VERY expensively.

Ponder for a moment how much data a voice call is. Realize just how well it can be compressed.
Ponder for a moment how much you pay per minute for cell plans.
Now take a wild guess how expensive a kb of that data is for you.

Multiply by a few thousand and you come close to the real value of "voice data" to your carrier.

There are of course natural entities that are lethal, but they are lethal as a by-product. No parasite, no virus, has the death of its host as its primary goal. Usually, the host dies from the unpleasant side effects of the parasite's primary goal: self preservation and propagation.

If you turn those objectives upside down (i.e. primary goal: Maximum damage, secondary goal: sustain existence) you sure as hell can increase the potential for lethal effects!

Actually drugs would be a lot more desirable without limitations that force people to resort to less and less sensible routes to cook them.

Who said I have to use my body to multiply them?

On a completely unrelated note, I have here a new breath mint you just HAVE to try...

If price is the only hurdle, then Apple will be fine. Your line of $100 is someone else's line at $350.

Not necessarily. I drew my line at $100, too, and I've spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 on a watch before. Based on Apple's product history, there are likely to be several major differences between this and a nice watch that diminish its value from my perspective:

• Most people who can afford a nice watch already own one. So to justify its cost, it would need to be worth as much as its purchase price plus the cost of the nice watch you'll no longer be using. For me, with an atomic-clock-synchronized watch, that's a hard problem to overcome.
• Nice watches that cost $300 typically have warranties that start at five years, because people wear them for decades. This will probably have a one-year warranty.
• Nice watches will be usable for decades. You can expect this one to become unsupported in the first OS after its third birthday. At that point, its usefulness will begin to diminish rapidly, as the unpatched security holes and lack of new app support turn it into an anachronism.
• Nice watches are timeless in their design. Their design changes at a speed that can only be described as glacial by tech standards. I'd expect this watch, by contrast, to be supplanted by a thinner version within about a year.
• Nice watches don't have to be charged every night, or even every couple of days. This watch would mean one more device-specific charge cable to carry with me on every trip, one more poorly made cable to break where the wire goes into the plug on either end, one more power outlet that I have to find in a hotel that tries to hide them from you, one more outlet adapter if I'm in Europe, one more thing to remember to pick up when I leave.... Every extra rechargeable device adds a lot of hassle.

This is how I arrived at a hundred bucks—maybe $125 if it had a camera and reliably ran for at least two or three weeks on a single charge. Mind you, this is all speculation about a product that doesn't exist yet, so there's a small chance that Apple will prove me wrong on many of these points.

Of course, what most folks here are missing is that this is a first-generation product. Apple builds those mostly as a proof of concept. Not many people buy them, but the products get them real-world testing, and they get a year or so to find ways to cut manufacturing costs. Then, they release a second-generation product at a third the price, and pull in several times the volume. For me, it will start to be interesting at that point.

But I'm not sure I'd bother wearing it after the first few days even if it was given to me. That is a bigger problem than "too expensive".

As one of the few people on Slashdot who still wears a watch, I'd definitely use one, but I can't see myself buying the first generation—particularly given that you just know they're working on a second-generation version with a camera, and if they release such a product, the resale value on the first-generation version will drop to almost nothing.