I mean the thing on your wrist. There's been a lot of talk, even some details such as curved glass.

Do you think it will happen this year?

Killer application?

Would you buy one?

When was the last time you wore a watch? Apparently 90% of young people don't wear them regularly, where as I was unusual when I stopped putting one on.

Some bloke's blog post with ideas: http://kfury.com/what-an-apple-watch-is-good-for

As I read that, I found myself wanting one. In reality, I doubt I'll ever buy one - certainly not soon.

I wear a watch, easier to flick the wrist than unlock a phone, plus IMO it looks cool

I really doubt this one I have to say; I mean charging your watch?

Maybe it will come with a neat night-stand or something. Plus as the article says, it should use very little juice.

One problem I thought of though - it will be like 1980 all over again if you have to press a button to light up the LED display!

Even with modern OLED, it would be a struggle to power the display constantly. Even just those pixels needed for the time. Reflective LCD found in a normal digital watch is totally different because it draws practically no power - you can activate the segments just using stray radio waves picked up by your finger!

If you're clever, the screen doesn't need to be on all the time. Looking at your watch (assuming you wear it in the conventional fashion) is a fairly distinct motion. iIf you put some accelerometers in there you can detect that motion and as long as your screen comes on quickly, power it up as required.

Although personally i don't think we'll actually see an Apple watch any time soon, even if they are making one. Cook seems like a person less prone to 'flights of fancy' products than Jobs was. They may be doing R&D on it - when you've got Apple's bank balance you can do whatever research and prototyping you feel like - but that doesn't mean there'll be a product on the shelves soon.

Dunno.Telling the time (perhaps with date and day too)?Nope.Right now.
I wear a watch every day. I have two watches, one for everyday normal use use and one for special occasions.

Mark

Recharging nightly? No thanks.

My watch is a self charger (Kinetic) and the battery needs changing every decade or so. And if I drop it and the glass breaks, the local jeweler will replace the glass for around 20€. I don't think that the battery on the iWatch will last 10 years (I doubt the iWatch will still be working after 10 years, let alone 20 or 30) and I expect that I'd need to buy a new iWatch, if the glass got cracked.

I'd rather wait until...

1. There is actual proper news of an actual product.
2. Apple announce the specs of said product.

Before deciding to buy it or not.

Exactly the rumours are fun, but meaningless. So many rumours seem to be a wish list of what some people want. Not what is in the pipeline. Once it has been announced I will decide if it fits into my life and practicality for me.

Yes, precisely.

It seems odd that people berate Apple for such ridiculous specs of a device that Apple, so far, have made no reference to whatsoever.

When the last iPhone was announced there comments about the lack of NFC and when I watched the keynote the reason it was not included became clearer. There is not the infrastructure to make the most of it. The design of Passbook made much more sense. Also the criticism of the screens of some devices, yet once it gets around 300dpi the human eye cannot distinguish those with an even higher resolutions. So how long before we hear of some android phone with 4 k resolution on a 6" screen?

The rumours are not generally fun. They seem to be perpetuated by analysts who have no real clue about what it going on in Cupertino, but who have a shopping list of Inge they think App,e should be doing. These rumours and speculations do nothing but fan flames of expectation, and guess what? When Apple announce a product that isn't anything like those expectations, their share value drops, and analysts don't say "hey, we were wrong", they blame Apple for not doing what they said they should.

We've see this trait before - the iPhone. Every build up to a WWDC or a MacWorld Expo, the rumour mill went into "Apple planning an iPhone" overdrive. iPhone failed to materialise. Apple's share value dropped.

This is happening with the fictitious Apple TV (which has yet to materialise), iPhone mini. I even read somewhere recently that Apple should really be working on a car. There's a pattern here, and that pattern has been more predictable than Apple's future releases.

Apple watch? I call BS until Tim Cook is talking it up at a product announcement.

Obviously speculation is just that and nothing more. I doubt this thread will have any impact on share prices. I was just curious to see if anyone saw any value in the idea.

My primary problem is that I don't like wearing things on my wrist. It's uncomfortable, and they're highly prone to damage. I also think they're all very ugly. However, watches were quite popular in the past so obviously people can live with that.


Yes but that's you, and you're not normal. If most of the potential market don't really know what a watch is, then expectations will be different. A week doesn't seem unrealistic, and would be perfectly practical for people who can't imagine living without their phone - which requires charging even more often.

I'm all up for speculation and actually enjoy it

But saying "I won't buy it because having to recharge the iWatch every night is ridiculous" seems a bit bizarre as there is no actual proof that the "iWatch" exists yet. And people are already saying it's stupid to have to recharge it nightly, etc...

Steady on .

I've got a Pebbl watch on order. That already seems to be pretty much exactly what the speculation on the 'Apple watch' claims, in fact I'm pretty certain the existence and popularity of the pebbl is the basis for the rumours, not at all anything Apple may actually be doing or planning. 'Thing X is popular, therefore Apple will obviously bring out their version of Thing X'. I can name more cases where that turned out not to be true than when it was - netbooks being the most obvious example. When netbooks were popular, it was obvious to pretty much all analysts Apple were going to have to bring out a netbook eventually. What actually happened was Apple produced two products that between them pretty much destroyed the netbook market. The 'Apple TV' is another example where analysts seems convinced Apple is about to produce a product which, once you examine the way Apple actually operates, makes next to no sense at all.

In any case, the pebbl is supposed to require charging for a few hours per week. If the hypothetical Apple watch was Bluetooth 4.0 only, it could probably last even longer. Providing the charge system is unobtrusive - maybe contact charging - it might not be too onerous.

I wonder how much energy comes from kinetic charging? Would that be enough to supply a "smart" watch?

If not, I see it as an excellent candidate for wireless charging. Especially if they use some of the latest tech demos I've seen. You could put a charging station on your desk and the watch would charge on your wrist while you're working.