I'm getting older, so maybe my desires don't match up with the majority of tech people's anymore, but does anyone really want an iWatch (or whatever it ends up being called)? I am just not sold on the usefulness of such a thing.
Many moons ago I ran a research study for Microsoft on their SPOT watch initiative, and despite countless focus groups among many different consumer audiences, absolutely no one wanted a smart watch. Granted, their smart watch had some fairly large deficiencies due to the lack of mobile tech infrastructure available at the time.
I'm very intrigued to see if Apple can pull it off...
That's the weird thing about fashion, which is precisely what this is. If Apple can make this thing fashionable so that people want to show it off, it will take off.
It's incredibly hard to predict whether they will succeed or not (although after the fact most people will say what happened was incredibly obvious beforehand). They'll bomb or they'll take off.
I didn't see the point of the iPhone or the iPad before they announced them. I haven't worn a watch for 20 years... but if they do announce a watch (I expect it will be a wearable more than a watch) I bet I will buy it.
Because I don't think they'd make it if it weren't worth making. Apple has never tried to create a new category when they didn't have something substantial to offer.
Any newer entries? Post-iPhone, Apple (i.e., not Apple Computer) has been a very focused company.
There was an interesting presentation that Tim Cook gave where he said that every product Apple currently sold being was on a single table in front of him at the presentation - can't find the link now.
It's not just you. I don't get the whole smartwatch thing either. For $400 (or whatever it ends up costing), I can just pull my phone out of my pocket.
I think there's going to be some sort of breakthrough using it as an authentication device. Possibly using heart rate as biometric identification combined with a clever universal challenge-response mechanism (using audio, maybe). That's my prediction. :)
People do not want a watch like the current crop of i-watches. They hope that Apple will create a watch the masses want to buy.
That's what the excitement is all about, either pro-Apple people that want to see Apple creating another iPhone/iPad/iPod market, or anti-apple that want another Apple TV to finally prove that Apple could not recover from Steve Jobs death.
Best of all, unlike monads, this is a topic everybody can have an opinion about, that's weeks worth of traffic guaranteed. Apple announcement themselves are valuable product for the media.
I didn't get the point of a watch either, then I started surfing and needed to know when to stop to make it to work on time :)
There is a whole market of people that want apps for running, surfing, and other things that are nice to have in wearable form, but cumbersome to use in a phone form factor--assuming the phone is even waterproof.
I'd love for it to be able to be an input device for macbook & imac. Something like the Leap Motion but worn on the wrist and auto linking with the nearest device.
Personally, I'm not interested in an iWatch. I haven't looked at the specs, but I'm assuming the iphone connects to it. If it can notify meetings, texts, alerts, phone calls, etc. it might be really useful gadget for my wife when she is busy running behind kids around the house and at work.... bonus if it gave her an insight into how much energy she spent throughout the day, haha.
