Moving on to watches, the new $550 Pixel Watch is exciting mainly because it’s Google’s first effort, although it’s clearly unsuitable for comparison with the much-improved Apple Watch, now in its eighth generation.
One of the thinnest Wear OS watches ever, the Pixel Watch slides seamlessly between tiles and apps, features a range of customizable faces with Apple-style complications, proficiently tracks workouts and heart rates and even offers fall detection. You can do just about anything with your Apple Watch here, including stream music directly to your earbuds, tap to make payments and connect to mobile data networks (with the more expensive cellular model).
The Pixel Watch can put your messages and calls on your wrist and track your fitness.
But Google is tapping into its hourly power, too. The voice assistant and smart home apps are better than Apple’s, and Google Maps step-by-step instructions are great for walking and biking.
But the Apple Watch S8 (from $630) is nicer and more capable. Side by side, the Pixel looks sluggish, and its massive black bezels are very noticeable. Apple Fitness Rings are more digestible and track more complete than the Google Fitbit solution, and the Apple Watch battery lasts longer.
It’s a similar story with the Pixel Buds Pro ($300) versus the second-generation AirPods Pro ($400). Google is less expensive and offers a product that outperforms most of Android’s contemporaries, but Apple is more experienced in this category. Noise canceling on the AirPods is more complete, and the dial controls are less prone to accidental touch, but both are comfortable and sound good.
When you look at ecosystems as a whole, you can see where the big differences are.
loading
Apple makes small iterations every year, but it’s clear that it’s moving toward where its products are indispensable for real-world as well as virtual world navigation. Introducing an always-on display for iPhone 14 Pro has instantly jumped a long-running Android app with widgets and information that helps keep the phone at the center of your communications, work schedule, smart home, entertainment and fitness. Meanwhile, the watch’s extended compass features — which let you drop virtual markers and guide you to them later — and the decibel-reducing AirPod signal a desire to augment the natural world with technology in a way that would be cumbersome on a phone.
In comparison, the Pixel line has long been aimed at Google’s offering of Android software and AI capabilities, and we see this in the latest phones with features like the ability to transcribe voice messages, translate between languages in real time, and output crisp images. Old photos with a lot of motion blur. The move into the smartwatch space is an expansion of that, and it shows how the massive Google Maps, data, and AI capabilities can be put to work on people’s wrists. As with Android on phones, this will likely come not only to more useful Pixel devices in the future, but from other manufacturers that take advantage of (and support) Google’s software as well.
Originally published at Melbourne News Vine
No comments:
Post a Comment