Wearable Computing, why I don't think Apple is making an iWatch

Here's some barely edited, off the cuff IT speculation for you:


So wearable computing has been getting some press recently and of course people are coming out of the woodwork to say that in a year or two Apple will release their wearable device and the market will take off.  While this is probably valid and it fits Apple's M.O. to wait for smaller companies to setup a space and make some gaffes, most of the speculation has been that Apple will enter the smartwatch space based on patent applications and  acqui-hires by the rounded-corners giant.  Recently some people have been reporting that Apple's interest may have waned due to consumers not buying into smart watches at all.  The space remains pretty stagnant and it's likely that the gaffe right now is to even get into it.

However I can't imagine why a company like Apple would go into smart watches to begin with, even if the market for them was thriving.

Put simply, the other half of Apple's mostly winning strategy the past decade and a half or so is to distill the experience of whatever product down to a few of the most useful and simple features, and them package that up in a way that's tightly integrated with the rest of Apple's offerings.  The key common ground with all their devices has been the iTunes platform, where they've spent massive amounts of money on development and licenses for music, movies, newspapers, books, games, etc.  The iPod started as a music player, and iTunes sold music.  Then they added pictures, and then stepped to video.  And then iTunes sold movies and TV shows.  With the iPhone the iTunes application became a sync hub for that media plus an address book backup and a mobile app store.  I think iTunes got into books a bit before the iPad came out, but it's pretty clear that a major use case for the iPad was as an eBook reader.  This has all made sense, but the idea of them making a watch does not.  Listening to music on your watch is no good.  You'd be running a headphone cable to your wrist, and you use your hands and arms a lot during the day.  It's clumsy.  The screen is too small for movie watching to say anything of reading a book.  You probably couldn't play games on it either.  So why would they abandon everything they've done and make a watch that doesn't play to their strength of an integrated ecosystem?

My theory is that if Apple does enter wearable computing it will be with a Glass-like device.  It makes more sense.  It's something that they can make look good, as a major criticism of Glass has been that you look like a doofus while wearing it.  They could let it bluetooth pair with your iPhone to access its media.  It's a superb platform for listing to music and I bet it'd be a pretty good reader too.  They could integrate it with Apple maps to provide a HUD.  Probably a dozen other things I can't think of.  It'll be the iEyes or i^2 or something.  This is of course providing they're even thinking about it, but they may just see wearables as a fad for now.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

--PXA