It's not often that new eras in technology have definite dates of birth, but there is every chance when the history of wearable computing is written, its date of birth will be recorded as September 9th, 2014, the day when Tim Cook finally unveiled the long-awaited Apple Watch.
The atmosphere in the Flint Centre auditorium in Cupertino when Cook announced his "one more thing" was electrifying. From the same stage where Steve Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh 30 years ago and changed the course of computing history, it seemed like we were witnessing the dawn of a new era in computing. Cook said as much himself, beginning the event by telling us that, just as the launch of the Macintosh marked a turning point for Apple, "today, we have some amazing products to share with you, and we think at the end of the day, you will think that this will be a key day for Apple".
The gasps and exclamations that greeted the video revealing the smooth curves of the Apple Watch suggested most of the attendees were in agreement. In the showroom afterwards, I spoke briefly to British actor, wit and technology enthusiast Stephen Fry, who was in ebullient form. "It was the most exciting Apple event since the launch of the iPad in 2010," he said. "This watch is just extraordinary. I've seen many smartwatches that have come out, but nothing like this, this is absolutely groundbreaking . . . It's a whole new chapter, as Tim Cook said."
Cook was clear that the Apple Watch does indeed break new ground, particularly in the implementation of the so-called “Digital Crown”, the dial at the side of the watch that “provides an innovative way to scroll, zoom and navigate”.
It is the Apple Watch equivalent of the iPod scroll wheel – so simple and intuitive that as soon as you see it, you wonder how it hasn’t been done before. “With every revolutionary product that Apple has created, a breakthrough in user interface was required,” Cook said.
“What we didn’t do was take the iPhone and shrink the user interface and strap it on your wrist.”
It is a stunning device, in its various forms – it comes in polished or space-black stainless steel, in a sport edition, with a space-grey or silver anodised aluminium case, or as a high-end version with an 18-karat rose or yellow gold case.
I got to wear what was in effect a demo model for a few minutes after Tuesday’s keynote, and it’s certainly a lightweight, attractive gadget – though I wouldn’t have chosen the bright pink strap on the one I tried. The “taptic engine” that discretely vibrates to alert you to notifications is particularly well implemented, offering a subtle tap on the wrist.
Numerous Apple executives milled about in the showroom space, including former Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendt and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine. But far more retiring was Kevin Lynch, the former Adobe chief technology officer who joined Apple last year in a move that shocked Silicon Valley. Lynch had previously been a staunch critic of Apple's decision to keep Adobe Flash off the iPhone and iPad.
‘A whole new category’
This week, he took to the stage as an Apple vice-president to demo the software running the device. He was in no doubt about the new chapter this represented.
“It’s a whole new category that’s emerging right now,” he told me, “and we’re really excited to have a really thoughtful design that is personal to people. It’s intimate, it expresses their own personality and their fashion sense, and that really hasn’t been accomplished to date.
“And for me, working on the software, it’s a whole new medium. How do you come up with a UI that will work? It’s been really thrilling to work with the whole Apple design studio, it’s been an honour to work here on this.”
But the sense that this was the birth of something entirely new, Day Zero in computing’s next era of wearable devices, was more than a little inaccurate, just as the Macintosh that Jobs launched at Flint wasn’t actually the first computer to use a graphical user interface. The Apple Watch isn’t remotely the first smartwatch.
Other smartwatch makers
Smartwatches have been around in various forms for years, and not just Casio models with miniaturised calculators. Back in 1999,
Samsung
launched a watchphone called the SPH-WP10. Given the technology available at the time, it was a necessarily unwieldy gadget and cost an eye-watering $700, somewhat undermining the press release at the time, which bravely stated that “Samsung officials expect their new watchphone to be a big hit with the youth market”. It wasn’t a big hit with any market.
More than a decade ago, Bill Gates unveiled Microsoft's Smart Personal Object Technology, or Spot, an FM radio standard that was supposed to power smartwatches and other gadgets, but the technology and watches never took off.
Five years ago, Samsung tried again with the S9110, a touchscreen watchphone that looked a lot better, even if its practical performance wasn’t much of an improvement. The same year, LG released the absurdly expensive GD910, and even Hyundai, better known for its cars, released the MB 910 watchphone. And that’s before you consider Samsung’s latest Gear range of smartwatches powered by Android and Tizen, which have singularly failed to capture the public’s imagination. Even Epson, a brand associated with printers, is soon releasing a smartwatch device.
Despite the long list of smartwa- tch failures, there remains a sense that the wrist is a natural place for a computing device. When a small, square iPod nano was released a few years ago, third-party manufacturers designed a glut of straps to convert it into a rather clunky smartwatch with limited utility.
The evolution of the smartwatch has largely been one of frustration and underachievement, thus the desire to see Tuesday’s event as the day when the smartwatch was finally done “right”. As usual, goes the thinking, it has taken Apple to finally put all the pieces together in the right order, biding its time until the moment was right to strike. But Tuesday’s event left a lot of unanswered questions, most obviously about battery life, which was unspecified. It is hardly a cause for encouragement when Apple is so evasive about something so critical to the success of the device.
And, in any case, how mainstream can a $350 (about €270) smartwatch actually be?
For Dermot Daly, the Dublin-based developer behind app development firm Tapadoo, the Apple Watch signals the tentative start of a new field of opportunities. "We have a real-time bus info app, which will translate to the Watch," he said. "This concept of glances, where you just look at your watch for important information, would be perfect for us. What springs to mind is telling people what stop they're closest to right now, showing them when the next few buses will be coming in the morning and in the evening."
However, he has some concerns. “I’m not convinced it’s the next iPhone, I don’t think it will be that big. It will sell well, but I’m not sure it’s a product that everybody wants, whereas everyone needs a phone.”
That is a real quandary for Apple. The Apple Watch is capable of so much that has yet to be truly invented, from magical mobile payments to new forms of communication, that it might be a hard sell to users. Hence the focus on fitness and health monitoring, a use case that people can intuitively appreciate.
It will only be when developers such as Daly get access to the WatchKit APIs that the full potential of the Apple Watch will gradually become apparent. It might take a while for it to reach that stage, but when it does the Apple Watch and others like it will become an increasingly essential device – a veritable remote control for the gadgets in our lives.
When that day comes, Tim Cook’s suggestion that September 9th will be seen as a key date in the company’s history might seem rather prescient.
