I'm not a native English speaker, so I had trouble when translating the follow sentence in this article. So what does crop of mean in the following context ?
There is no shortage of wearable gear out there, and really what I’m writing about here is the latest crop of smartwatches, most of which run on Android Wear.
This context is about wearable smart watches.
The phrase "crop of smartwatches" is drawing on the image of a crop in a farmer's field: a batch of seeds planted together, which grow and mature together. The implication is that the various new models for the different brands of smart-watch have appeared all around the same time (to compete with each other) in the same way as harvests of wheat by different farmers would be taken to market at the same time of year.
A farmer's crop is also an ephemeral (time-limited) commodity - much like such consumer goods which date quickly, so it is a good metaphor in that way too.
Hope that's useful.
N.
