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The Apple iWatch has been the subject of the level of mass internet speculation usually reserved for alien conspiracy theories. And other unannounced Apple products of course.
Wearable tech was undoubtedly one of the major trends of 2012 – from sports watches that measure how long you’ve been spluttering along on your job, to ever tit-bits of info on Google Glass, which feels like it’s been in development since around the time of the industrial revolution.
Along this theme, we’ve seen a lot of the big tech firms, Sony, Tom Tom, Samsung releasing or talking about come out with smartwatches – watches that can hook up to your phone or just generally do smart computer things from your wrist.
As with most things in the tech world, Apple’s involvement in this burgeoning sector has caused the most interest from slavering gadget fans around the world. Behind the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s, the iWatch is one of the most hotly anticipated gadgets out there.
Apple iWatch – Apple hiring staff?
Various reports have bubbled up implying Apple has hired a large batch of engineering, marketing and design bods for the development of the iWatch, or some form of wrist based computing device (which as a phrase doesn’t have quite the same zing to it).
Apparently Apple has registered the iWatch trademark in Russia and Japan – but may have difficulty in Europe and the US where some lucky party already owns the term. While this has been reported as some sort of barrier to Apple releasing such a product in these territories, it seems just as likely Apple could make the holder in question very rich buy buying it off them.
Apple iWatch, Siri and iCloud
Existing Apple technologies such as voice control system Siri and iCloud cloud storing service would seem to lend themselves vey well to a watch concept.
Siri control would at least partially solve the problem of not being able to have a decent size keyboard on your wrist – and more importantly will give you the look of Dick Tracy barking into his fictional device.
Pulling down info from the cloud as opposed to strapping a whopping great storage device to the end of your arm hands obvious benefits for design. You’re more likely to have a nice svelte design if you don’t have to worry about squeezing an SSD drive into it – and we know how Apple like nice svelte designs.
It has been pointed out that the iPod Nano with a wrist strap is also a pretty good template for a watch design Apple might come out with anyway.
Apple iWatch Specs and design
A curved glass screen has been widely touted as a possible design for the iWatch – with Corning’s development of ultra thin, bendable glass cited as an enabling component of this.
In terms of hardware, it’s tough to speculate – though as cited above it would seem to make sense if it pulled things from the cloud, given physical space constraints.
Many smartwatches on the market already – like the Italian made I’m Watch rely more on pulling mini updates from a synched phone.
If any details on this aspect do exist, then they are under incredibly strict lock down even by Apple standards – so speculation on that front can only usefully go so far.
Image courtesy of T3.com.
