Bloomberg appears to have decided to will an “iWatch” into existence today, and everyone is running with their report – apparently the nonexistent iWatch is a better investment for them than the nonexistent iTelevision, and the fact that they are advising investors on the merits of products that do not exist is just one more reason why the investor class should be ground up into free meatloaf for the unemployed. But I digress.
The problem is, I’m still struggling with the use case for a notional “iWatch”. With Google Glass, as I mentioned previously, the model is JARVIS – Tony Stark’s real-time artificial-intelligence assistant tied to a voice and HUD interface in the Iron Man armor. The idea of being able to look at something, have it identified and pop up its Wikipedia entry instantly? I like that. Not to mention real-time navigation and directions, possibly tied right to my calendar and incorporating things like traffic and train delays. “Sir, you need to leave NOW if you are to make the connection at Millbrae in time for the Warriors game.”
But the watch? What would I like to be able to see on the watch? Well, notifications, I suppose – it would be nice not to have to take the phone out to see who’s calling or who just texted me. I suppose there are worse things than having a couple of canned replies available from the watch as well. (On my way, etc) It might be handy to have calendar events visible and reminder alerts for same. Plus having the wrist alerting might be more reliable than the phantom vibrate that we feel for no reason (or the real one we don’t).
The other trick is Bluetooth 4.0, of course. What’s the range? Would this mean alerts in the shower while the phone is outside on the sink counter? (Assuming a similar degree of waterproofing as the Pebble, or my own watch.) How long before you have to charge the watch? Once a week is fine – pop it on the charger overnight on Saturday night – but if it’s only 3 or 4 days, that’s problematic. And how much power does Bluetooth 4.0 draw? Are the savings from not taking out the phone and lighting up that big screen going to be wasted in maintaining the Bluetooth connection? If the early returns on the Pebble are anything to go by, very possibly.
So what does that leave? Some of the Fitbit/Fuelband-type stuff, maybe? Activity tracking, sleep monitor, count steps and miles run and etc? Okay, sure, might be useful especially as I work to get in better shape. But enough to make it worth spending the money? Maybe if everything is rolled in together…at this point, I can see the appeal in waiting for the Apple version of such a device. It may not be feature-complete in its first incarnation, but those features will work. It’s like the original iPhone: no cut and paste, no 3G, no GPS no 3rd-party application SDK, but largely because those features couldn’t be implemented well or without compromising the battery. The features that it did ship with were well-implemented, which seems to be the difference. Google (and through them Samsung) will release a boatload of features and let you beta-test for them; Apple will release a limited device that does only the things it can do and do them well.
And maybe they’ll come up with some way of making those things make sense, and come up with some function I didn’t know I needed until I can’t live without it. But until then, I’ll stick with what I’ve got…