I installed the latest iOS on my phone and....

I can't bring myself to get worked up about it. Personally I hate wearing anything on my wrist and my phone is perfectly adequate for my communication and mobile computing needs. If I found myself buying a smart watch just so I wouldn't have to reach into my bag or pocket for a phone then I'd probably think about reevaluating my life. 
 
People have been wearing expensive designer watches since forever and I don't recall them ever sparking an epidemic of violent crime, no more than anything else that's worth pinching. But I probably wouldn't walk around the South Bronx with one. 
 
The bottom line is that some people will find a use for these, buy them and be happy. There will be some people who buy them for the status - a fool and their money are soon parted, and I have no problem with that whatsoever. Others like you and me will give them a miss and spend our hard earned wonga on something way more interesting, like yet another vintage compressor we probably don't need. 
 
As for the icon - do you not have a "crap" folder hidden away on screen 3 or 4, into which you put all of your undeletable icons? I've got 'em all in there. Doesn't bother me because it's on the third screen and all the apps I ever need are on screens 1 and 2 (I have the giant iPhone now so I can get a lot more icons on the home screen). 

sharke
As for the icon - do you not have a "crap" folder hidden away on screen 3 or 4, into which you put all of your undeletable icons? I've got 'em all in there.

 
^This
 
 
As to the watch, if I wanted to go the smart watch route I'd get the new Pebble that's coming out over the Apple:
 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-awesome-smartwatch-no-compromises?
 

Shambler
How soon before someone gets fined for using a smart watch behind the wheel?
 
https://www.gov.uk/using-mobile-phones-when-driving-the-law

Not soon enough I'm afraid. I see people using their phones behind the wheel ALL the time. It's not as if they had any attention/faculties to spare in the first place...

My iPhone replaced my watch and I see no sense in carrying both. I have gotten very used to not having something strapped to my wrist.

In some lines of work you have to have instant communication to stay competitive. I get emails requesting quotes and if I don't answer within 5 minutes, they'll go with someone who contacted them straight away. I also get job requests through the Thumbtack website which allows 5 companies to respond to a quote request. I swear I have sometimes responded in 2 minutes and have been told "This person has already received 5 quotes."

I wish I could be more laid back about email and phone calls but these days I'd go out of business if I left my phone at home.

Rain

sharke
In some lines of work you have to have instant communication to stay competitive. I get emails requesting quotes and if I don't answer within 5 minutes, they'll go with someone who contacted them straight away. I also get job requests through the Thumbtack website which allows 5 companies to respond to a quote request. I swear I have sometimes responded in 2 minutes and have been told "This person has already received 5 quotes."

I wish I could be more laid back about email and phone calls but these days I'd go out of business if I left my phone at home.

Just to be clear, I'm not pointing finger - it's where we've been lead to little by little collectively. I'm actually very grateful to be able to exist outside those boundaries. But I also know that it doesn't take much to be swept in - because I've been there for years too. It's a matter of financial survival. Sadly.
 
Sad that all those things which were designed to save us time only enslaved us to a point where many don't have a second to breath.

You have to put your foot down in some way though. I used to answer emails and even take calls up until midnight but now I don't do anything after 7pm. If people complain then screw them. I've had clients email me at 1am and complain they didn't get a reply. They have no idea of boundaries. Last week I called a customer to ask her if she wanted to keep her weekend appointments. She sounded surprised and said that she'd already called the day before, at 6:30am. I told her no, I didn't get a call, I was 100% sure of it. She said yes, she called, but the guy sounded like he'd just woken up. Looked at my call history and sure enough there was a call at 6:30am which lasted 45 seconds. I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of talking to her, lol!

jbow
Now I have an Apple Watch icon that I CANNOT delete! I have less than no interest in an Apple watch. I hope Apple does a huge face plant with this watch. IMO, people are going to be more distracted while driving if they wear one because it will be right there next to the steering wheel and I suspect it will take two hands to do things with it and it certainly will require the user to look at it.
Besides that it starts at 350.00 and goes up to 17,000.00 so the people, especially kids whose parents get them one will always feel inferior because there will always be those few parents who want their kid to have the best.
 
I'll have to search to see if I can get this AW icon OFF my phone, I do not want to look at it. It is like they put an AD on my phone desktop that I cannot remove. I know I don't have to open it but I still have to see it sitting there.
 
OK, rant over!
 

Agree with you.

But, try the pricing system in France, 699 € for the Apple watch - you USA people are lucky .......... As such !

Also, here's what to do. Create a folder called CR@P and drop,the icon in that folder. Then you don't have to look at it. Works for me for all dross from Apple i don't want to use.

I am tapping this on an iPad 2 - up to date with iOS 8.2 and so far no sign of said icon - incompatability perhaps (ouf) ?

Cheers.
Jerry

Edit : put in the price

iPad Air here, iOS8.2 and no sign of the dreaded phone app on this either. Yet....

And I've already got a junk folder for the apps I never use so I know where it's going should it ever appear.

One of the things I really don't like about the Apple iDevices is you can't just uninstall the stuff you don't want or need. Their computers aren't much better.

Gouged in Australia bring the new Apple Watch at an affordable $799 and up. Got to be kidding and it will barely run 24 hrs without a charge.
And yes, the watch app has turned up on my iPhone but not on my iPad.

I took the advice a long time ago and didn't get an Apple product. 

mudgel
I've been the non Apple route with Samsung and other android phones and pads but have to admit that Apple just gets it done. Even synching with Windows I find better with Apple than Android.

Yes, I have to agree. No problems with the iPhone, it just works! There is just stuff I don't want on it and cannot seem to lose... but I can put it where I don't see it! The iPhone is a great product and I hope to get an iPad Air this year.. after I get a high end set of open (head) phones.

iPhones are fantastic, I just wish that Apple/Google/Microsoft wouldn't make it such a pain to sync between their various ecosystems. While I like the idea of sticking to one of them for simplicity, it's just impossible sometimes - yet they all seem determined to make life as difficult as possible for people who cross boundaries. 
 
Case in point. I do all the scheduling/billing for my business with calendars. Part of the billing process requires a 3rd party app which exports all of the week's info from Google calendars in a format in which an app I wrote myself can use to create the invoices. However, Google calendars are ridiculously lame and lacking in basic features, especially when it comes to editing them. I much prefer to use Outlook for that. So there's an Outlook/Google sync tool. My phone's calendar syncs with Google, so I have a 3 way sync going on. Except the Outlook/Google sync tool is horribly problematic and has been for years. It frequently makes a mess of my calendars (e.g. I'll delete 5 appointments in Outlook but only 3 of them will sync to Google). I've been back and forth with Google support for months but they are absolutely useless and to be honest have no interest in fixing the problem. Why should they? It involves a competitor. 
 
I also have my business email going through Google Apps so I can use the Gmail interface. Up until last year, you could sync Gmail to your iPhone seamlessly via Exchange. But then Google decided to stop supporting Google Sync (which uses Microsoft's Active Sync). You can only get Gmail pushed to your iPhone using Exchange if you're a paid Google Apps customer, otherwise you can only do it via manual fetch (meaning emails aren't instant). Luckily, I'm a paid Google Apps customer. Only ever since I upgraded to iOS8, the Exchange sync is very sketchy. Sometimes I won't get emails for hours and then a whole bunch come at once. It's totally unacceptable. When I contacted Google about this, once again they had no interest in the problem and told me that I shouldn't use the native iPhone mail app, I should use the Gmail app instead. Except the Gmail app sucks in many ways.
 
I have no doubt that all of this is because Gmail/Apple/Microsoft want to encourage you to use their ecosystem, and only their ecosystem. If that's not an option for you, you have to put up with the various annoyances and problems which none of them are interested in fixing because they don't want to cooperate. I guess that in time, someone will come along and offer me exactly what I want without any of these BS problems, and I'll happily pay good money for it. Until then, it sucks. They all suck. 

Rain

mudgel
I've been the non Apple route with Samsung and other android phones and pads but have to admit that Apple just gets it done. Even synching with Windows I find better with Apple than Android.

I don't know about their phones, but software-wise, our Samsung Smart TV is the worst electronic device I've ever owned - by far. 
 
I could live with the unbearably long Smart Hub launch time, I could even live with regular playback errors, and the odd bug here and there.
 
What I can no longer live with are the Samsung Apps updates. Seems every time I launch the Hub and try to access Netflix or Amazon, there's an update to install. 
 
You're hoping to sit in front of the screen with your dinner and catch up with a series but by the time you're done with your meal, the update is barely installed.
 
Worst - for the last month or two, I even get crucial update messages during playback. Meaning I have to quit playback, re-launch the app, wait for it to determine whether the update is actually there or the message was just BS.
 
I have my issues w/ Apple (ask me about Yosemite or the latest iOS upgrades). But I'll take that before anything else.

Wow, thanks for the heads up. I've been thinking about getting a "smart TV" later this year... there has to be a cheaper way to have TV and internet than Comcast... but I will be sure to read reviews regarding this updating issue... that is the last thing I want.
 
J

craigb
Doesn't sound so smart to me (and their phones rock!).

The concept is nice, but the implementation leaves to be desired. We usually have one TV night during the week, on one of my wife's days off. Sometimes two if we're lazy. Updates became ridiculously frequent in recent months. Seems every week there at least one. Plus the bogus messages.
 
Where Samsung itself is to blame I'm not always sure. But things sure seem to have gotten worst since the last big Hub update.
 
Amazon for exemple gives update messages almost systematically if I pause playback for a few minutes. I have to quit and restart the App - no update required. Other times, it'll simply freeze, and the only thing left to do is to shut down the TV and restart. That means waiting for it to access the hub after the restart, launching the app and waiting for that to load, navigating to whatever it is that you were watching and finally, resuming playback.
 
Netflix is buggy as heck. Actually, the last major update made navigating a nightmare. It also seems to have removed previews. And Hulu+ will interrupt playback/skip to end at least once every show.
 
Overall, the experience is just very disappointing. 
 

 
when's the last time anyone complained that iTunes came by default on their iPhone?
 
How about now. I hate iTunes. I keep NO music on my iPhone because if I do, every time I use my auto stereo's USB to charge my phone it tries to play my music, it goes straight to iPOD mode. Not to mention all the space songs take up on a phone... but mostly I don't like it deciding that I want to play music from my phone every time I just want to charge it. I hate having to use iTunes for anything. I use Bluetooth and Spotify for music or I listen to the radio. I want my phone to ONLY do what I decide I want it to do, when I want it to do it.
 
I downloaded the Pandora APP and had to delete it because my stereo is Pandora ready and it also tries to use Pandora no matter what... I can't stand that.
 
J