The first logical question one considers when evaluating the Apple Watch is not Apple’s new naming convention, which gives up on the “i” prefix. After all, there is the Apple TV. The key question is: who is going to buy them?

Therein lines the difficulty in predicting the potential for massive sales of the Apple Watch. You just know that most everyone needs a mobile handset, and some are doing fairly well, though compared to any single model on any platform, the iPhone remains tops. That’s true even if the overall iOS share is but a fraction of Android’s share.

The key issue with the Apple Watch — and I suppose the same was true with the original iPod in 2001 — is that the media and industry analysts really haven’t a clue how well these products will do once they go on sale. When the iPod came out, it was panned, and regarded as a curiosity. Hundreds of millions of units later, the best that can be said is that the world has now moved on.

This isn’t to say Apple is fated to sell hundreds of millions of Apple Watches. But it’s interesting to note that the most favorable comments originate from fashion-oriented publications as opposed to the mainstream and tech media. It is obvious, after all, that the Apple Watch is an accessory and not the main device. Some critics point to the fact that just about all the functions can be done on an iPhone, though clearly not as conveniently.

But Apple isn’t selling to the “geek” audience that has bought a few million of those other smartwatches over the years. Apple clearly put a huge amount of time and money into developing the Apple Watch. There’s a lot of thought and attention to detail. The digital crown seems so obvious and simple when you see it in operation, but none of the other companies ever considered such a clever use for a traditional component of a regular wristwatch.

Even for people who buy watches, you have to wonder whether they’d pay $349 or more for one with an Apple logo. Are all the extra features and nifty looks so compelling as to make it indispensable, or will Apple cater to a niche audience of a few million that will keep the product alive over the years? Is there even a mass market for a smartwatch regardless of the design and functions?

I’m not sure I have the answer. For me, I’d have to decide whether it’s worth the expense for my needs. I have generally bought watches at discount stores for about $100 or less. They are mostly for telling time, though I don’t mind the chronograph features that include stopwatch capability. Of course, I can do that on an iPhone, though a watch is more convenient for just checking the time.

One thing is certain, though, and that is that the Apple Watch appears to have been built from a clean slate, without regard to what Pebble, Samsung, Motorola and other companies have done. Apple’s smartwatch reportedly went into development after the passing of Steve Jobs, so it’s being regarded as Tim Cook’s debut as a product visionary. Cook says he’s a fan of wearables, and he is known to exercise regularly.

There are legitimate questions, of course, about such matters as battery life. Having to recharge the thing every night might be a huge inconvenience for some, considering that my Guess or Casio watch will operate a couple of years before the battery need to changed. Of course anyone with a smartphone, tablet and note-book computer is accustomed to recharging every day, or maybe even twice a day, so maybe this won’t be a serious limitation. One expects that Apple would love to lengthen the cycle as technology improves.

The other question is longevity. People may buy a new smartphone every two years, at the end of the typical wireless contract. But they will keep their tablets far longer. It’s too early in the game to estimate a replacement cycle, and this may be one of the reasons sales have flattened. But you might keep a watch around for many years, assuming it still functions, so someone who buys an Apple Watch in 2015 may expect it to work perfectly in 2020 or even 2025. So Apple might have to consider the product’s longevity in a different way, particularly for customers who are buying them as fashion accessories and don’t care about getting an OS update on a regular basis.

I fully expect that Apple has considered many of these questions as much as I expect that Pebble, Samsung, Motorola and the other companies who build smartwatches are mostly focused on selling as many as possible now. How long they hold up, and how quickly they might be replaced, is a secondary consideration.

In any case, the Apple Watch launch has sucked the air out of the market. Many people who might have bought one for the holiday season may now be waiting until 2015, so they can try out Apple’s gadget first.

Ahead of Tuesday’s Apple media shindig, the skeptics were claiming that Apple was in disarray, and anything less than a grand slam would be a failure. They gave us chapter and verse on what Apple had to do to stay credible and survive, forgetting that the credibility of some of the critics might just be the real question.

So we have the example of one commentator, who shall remain unnamed and not linked, who claimed that the iPhone 6 was just more of the same, using components taken from the parts bin. Not mentioned was the fact that the mainstream model and the iPhone 6 Plus both use the same A8 and M8 chips, NFC, and other components, so basic performance capabilities out to be essentially the same, although twice as many pixels need to be moved around on the Plus. The major hardware differences, beyond the displays and screen resolutions, are optical image stabilization and a beefier battery for the Plus. Parts bin my eye!

Worse, the columnist didn’t even get the specs right, imagining that the iPhone 6 limited you to 720p videos. The specs specifically state both models offer 1080p video at both 30 and 60 fps.

As usual, some sites reviewed the new iPhones on the basis of known specs, rather than how well they work in the real world. This is the same mistake usually made by commentators who never seem to get Apple, and continue to want to judge the company in ways that superficially favor the competition. One article claimed that the Samsung Galaxy S5 was the one to beat, although reception has been decidedly lukewarm. Nowhere was it mentioned that the Samsung’s fingerprint sensor is barely functional. The iPhone 6 series depends on Touch ID to perform some of its magic, including authorizing Apple Pay transactions. That would be impossible on a Galaxy S5 because you’d have to swipe the button sensor over and over with no guarantee of success.

Besides, how can you possibly review a product that has not, in fact, been released? True, some journalists already have one or both versions of the iPhone 6 in hand, and the reviews will be published next week. Once those reviews, and actual benchmarks appear, there will be genuine comparisons. But not now.

The skepticism about Apple Pay is predictable. It’s a new service, and previous mobile payment schemes from Google and other companies have largely failed. Apple’s advantage is to build a rich ecosystem that includes the hardware components, software, enhanced security and, most important, credit card companies, banks and retailers. If everything works as advertised, with relatively few glitches at the checkout counter, tens of millions of users will be ready to use Apple Pay for mobile and online commerce as they acquire new iPhones. That could jump start the industry, and push more people into considering an iPhone or Apple Watch above that the competition offers.

But it’s a long-range plan. As older iPhones that do not support Apple Pay are retired, the user base will continue to soar. And the rest of the mobile handset industry will be left on the sidelines, since Apple will not open its technology to other hardware makers. Still, it’s an experiment, but the potential is tremendous.

That takes us to the Apple Watch. Again the skeptics assert that we don’t need yet another mobile accessory, that people by and large have given up on wristwatches. Besides, existing smartwatches haven’t really done so well, so where does Apple have the temerity to believe that their gadget will be different?

Besides, isn’t a $349 starting price a bit much? It’s almost like paying $399 for a portable digital music player, but we all know how that turned out.

True, the Apple Watch is likely to get real expensive as you move up the product line, and I read suggestions that the 18-karat gold versions may carry five figure price tags, typical of fine jewelry. But customers will have choices for many budgets, and enough options to make one their own. Just starting with two sizes — the so-called men’s and women’s models although they aren’t identified that way — makes them more useful than existing gear.

The other skeptical voice is about battery life. Apple implies it’s one day in mentioning nightly charging. Further, it’s reported they are working to improve battery life ahead of the early 2015 release date. I suppose power efficiencies and better batteries might give it up to two days use under normal use, whatever that’s supposed to be, but I’ll make no predictions.

Besides, there will ultimately be an Apple Watch Two, and Apple Watch Three, and so on and so forth. The technology is young, and Apple doesn’t enter a new market without long range plans. Whatever shortcomings appear in the first version will be massaged away as development continues.

Sure, it may well be true that the Apple Watch won’t sell in near the quantities as the iPhone, or even the iPad for that matter. But being heads and shoulders above the rest might move the nascent smartwatch market to far higher levels, whatever they might be. Regardless, Apple doesn’t have to sell 50 million of them a year to be successful.

Now the real value of the new gadgets and services won’t be clear until they are actually available. That makes sense to me, although some might have other points of view.

Special Note to Our Readers: I’m sad to report that the print version of IDG’s Macworld — one of the original Mac magazines — is being discontinued. There will still be an online version, but most of the bylines with which you are familiar will no longer be there. They are in the process of being laid off. As some of you know, I wrote for Macworld for a while during the 1990s, only to switch to the main rival, MacUser, a few months before it folded and was absorbed into Macworld. Thus continues the march from print to web.

So what was the biggest news from Apple Tuesday morning? Forget the Apple Watch, the Apple Pay digital wallet, or even the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. What may be the most important announcement is that Tim Cook and U2 arranged to have the band’s newest album, Songs of Innocence, released free on iTunes. That makes it available for up to 500 million users through October 13.

Of course, they made it seem as if this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but of course it had been in the works for a while. There’s even a TV spot to announce the free album.

But let’s get to the more-or-less expected developments at the media event, which was held at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino, the site of the launch of the original Mac in 1984.

After a very brief introduction from Tim Cook, Apple VP Philip Schiller got down to the business of talking up the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. But if you tried to watch the event live, you might have felt as frustrated as I did. Clearly Apple’s servers — perhaps the entire Internet — were slammed as millions of people across the world tried to watch the stream.

I actually tried using my Apple TV, but the stream kept freezing there too. Finally things settled down on my iMac for awhile. However, the people handling the audio feed screwed up, as you heard the English track with an Asian language feed in the background that made it difficult to follow. This flaw might not have been the case for everyone, but I confirmed the problem with multiple devices, and it was extremely distracting for a while until the audio was fixed. I still had to constantly refresh the stream when it stopped, and that’s on a broadband connection with an average download speed of over 40 megabits.

In the end, it might have been better to hold your breath and watch the recorded version, after all the Web traffic died down.

Now the new iPhones were fairly predictable what with all the rumors and prototype photos and videos. The 4.7-inch version is the iPhone 6, whereas the iPhone 6 Plus has a 5.5-inch display, and there goes the sole meaningful advantage of any Android smartphone.

Predictably, battery life is said to be better, particularly on the phablet version, which has room for a beefier battery. The A8 chip is much faster, and some preliminary benchmarks are already online. Camera components are better, though Apple continues to stick with eight megapixels. The opposition will continue to ride Apple on that, although an iPhone still takes better pictures under more conditions than much of the competition.

At long last, there’s NFC hardware, but with an Apple twist. While makers of Android smartphones have had NFC for a while, Apple included the hardware as part of a new ecosystem called Apple Pay. Initial deals have already been made with U.S.-based credit card providers, banks and retailers, and the list will only grow as time goes on. Apple Pay will debut in October.

With recent hacks to major retailers, such as Target and Home Depot, Apple made a huge deal of the fact that Apple Pay data is secure. Indeed, the actual credit card numbers, says Apple, won’t be stored on your device or on Apple’s servers. According to the press release, “Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on your iPhone or Apple Watch. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique number using your Device Account Number and instead of using the security code from the back of your card, Apple Pay creates a dynamic security code to securely validate each transaction.”

Now remember when the iCloud accounts of celebrities were hacked, it resulted from figuring out their usernames and passwords. None of that applies to Apple Pay, and if your device is stolen, Find My iPhone can be used to stop payments. You don’t even have to request a new credit card.

So what Apple has done is to address the limitations of NFC, and create a sophisticated Apple ecosystem to manage the payment and digital storage features. Compared to Google Wallet and Samsung, this is a huge change. Of course, it requires the new Apple mobile gear to work.

Pricing for the iPhone 6 is the same as the current iPhone 5s when it debuted last year. But each $100 step gets you more storage than before; $299 for 64GB, the sweet spot, and $399 for 128GB. The iPhone 6 Plus will retail for $100 more with the same storage options. And, despite the claim that the iPhone 5c was a huge failure and would be discontinued, it remains in the lineup as the free iPhone with a contract. In any case, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will ship beginning September 19, and iOS 8 will be available for download two days earlier.

The return of “one more thing…” had also been predicted. While the Apple Watch spots lots of sensors and features to crow about, I was particularly impressed with the digital crown, which very much resembles the one you see on a regular watch. It’s used to scroll and select and thus reduce dependence on the touchscreen.

Just as important, Apple intends to make a fashion statement with the new device, dividing the lineup into three collections in two sizes, with multiple choices of removable watchbands. The Apple Watch will debut early in 2015 with a starting price of $349. It’ll no doubt be far more expensive if you opt for the 18-karat gold version.

The Apple Watch will mate with any model from the iPhone 5 or iPhone 6 series, but battery life hasn’t yet been rated. So this is, predictably, one area where the critics are already ragging on Apple.

The critics suggested that Amazon had it all wrong pricing the Fire Phone at $199 with atwo-year contract, not to mention having it available at just one carrier — AT&T. In the past, Amazon, famous for generating cash flow but little or no profit, has sold hardware at roughly cost. The hope was to generate enough sales from Amazon’s storefront to make it all worthwhile.

While $199 is not a bad subsidized price for a high-end smartphone, that space is essentially dominated by the iPhone and various Samsung handsets. Worse, reviewers weren’t wowed by Amazon’s first foray into the mobile handset market. I won’t bother mentioning the silly fluff that passed for features. At the end of the day, customers weren’t interested in buying a smartphone that was essentially designed as an entry point to Amazon’s storefront.

This is why, after just a few weeks on sale, the price has been cut to 99 cents with a two-year contract. That’s a big comedown, and clearly AT&T has lots of unsold inventory to move. Indeed, it has been reported that a mere 35,000 units were sold in the first 20 days. Now that makes pathetic sound pathetic.

If it was Amazon’s hope to somehow stifle the impact of the iPhone 6, cutting the price isn’t an alternative; there’s little chance customers will suddenly flock to buy something they have already rejected or ignored. What’s more, there will be a free iPhone — or nearly free — with a two-year contract after the Apple announcements. It will likely be a far better, more usable product than a Fire Phone.

Of course, Amazon isn’t the only company to attempt to blunt the impact of Apple’s expected announcements. Last week, both Samsung and Motorola Mobility released new gear. Both garnered a small amount of publicity that faded into the fog as the run-up to Apple’s media event became more intense. By the weekend, it was a case of Sam-who? or Moto-who? as far as getting control of the message was concerned.

With Tim Cook’s interview promising that Apple would do better to help customers make their iCloud accounts more secure, that particular problem also appeared to fade. While it’s certainly important if people — prominent or otherwise — have their accounts hacked, that’s been going on for quite a while. Don’t forget how many millions of credit card numbers were stolen from Target last year, or the more recent thefts of data from Home Depot and other vendors.

But when Apple is mentioned, particularly in connection with celebrities, it becomes a major issue that must indicate the company is in a bad way. I know online accounts are sometimes hacked, but I’m just as worried about data thefts from such retailers as Target. You see, I made a purchase with a bank debit card at a nearly Target store during the period where the episode happened. I quickly had the card replaced by the bank just to be sure, although I didn’t see any evidence of bogus transactions.

In any case, the Amazon/AT&T fire sale is nothing new. A few years ago, HP launched a tablet featuring Palm’s WebOS with huge fanfare. The TouchPad got plenty of publicity, sold at a starting price of $499 for the 16GB version, same as the iPad. But sales tanked. Few were interested, at least until a $99 blowout sale was announced a few weeks later to dump unsold inventory.

That misbegotten enterprise quickly ended HP’s foray into the tablet space to compete with the iPad, at least for a while, and they also ditched WebOS, which these days powers LG TV sets. It was an ignominious defeat to be sure. More recently, HP managed to sell more PCs than expected last quarter, but remains in search of a vision under the leadership of Meg Whitman, once the CEO of eBay, and a failed political candidate.

Looking at the ashes of the Amazon Fire Phone affair, the price cut doesn’t necessarily mean the product is history. If there’s enough business, perhaps Amazon will push the handset to other carriers, still at a lower price, in hopes that the same approach used to sell Kindles will work with smartphones. Maybe it will, though I doubt it. A Kindle makes sense, particularly as devices to read digital books or watch videos. They are surely cheap enough, and Amazon’s e-book library is rich with choices to fill your leisure hours with enjoyment. Amazon Instant Video is growing with more and more exclusive content.

A smartphone sold with the same goal, to entice you to buy stuff from Amazon, is a less compelling alternative. The display is too small to show off Amazon’s products to their best advantage, so it may be that the Fire Phone won’t have the longevity of the Kindle. Or maybe Amazon will go back to the drawing board and consider other smartphone options for the future, maybe with features that actually make sense.

Meantime, while I was writing this piece, I got an email from Amazon touting the 99 cent deal for the Fire Phone. Yes, it also includes a one-year Amazon Prime membership, which normally goes for $99 after a recent price increase. That actually might be a decent deal for some, particularly if you buy lots of stuff from Amazon and would like to take advantage of getting free two-day shipping for most products, plus free Amazon Instant Video.

For the rest of you, this is all about yet another failed iPhone killer.