“Last September, at one of those periodic events where Apple offers up a new product with much fanfare, Steve Jobs invited the audience to join him in admiring the latest iteration of the iPod Nano. With the touch-screen interface associated with the iPhone and the iPad, the music player had shrunk to a square, weighing less than an ounce and almost comically wee,” Rob Walker reports for The New York Times. “Some observers took it for a joke when Jobs said an Apple board member intended to sport the thing as a watch. Others didn’t laugh; they sprang into action.”
“The Nano-watch fad merges two well-established developments of the gizmo era. The first is that Apple’s various handheld devices have spawned ecosystems of spinoff and add-on products and accessories, from function-adding attachments to style-focused cases and covers,” Walker reports. “The second is that no matter how many devices we carry around that happen to have clocks built into them, the idea of the wristwatch soldiers on.”
Walker reports, “The case is best made by Minimal, a design firm based in Chicago… [which] offers two wrist-wearable bands. With the TikTok (preselling for $35 in January), you snap your Nano into a reinforced plastic case attached to a ‘high-grade silicone rubber’ strap. (You can pop it out via an empty space on the back that happens to be the right size to reveal the Apple logo, and is referred to in the promo video as the ‘brand hole.’) The LunaTik has a two-piece, bolt-together compartment fashioned from ‘aerospace-grade aluminum’ and is meant for someone less concerned with removing the Nano for nonwatch uses; it’s preselling for $70.”
Read more in the full article here.
More info about Minimal’s TikTok and LunaTik here.
MacDailyNews Take: Almost makes us want to consider wearing a wristwatch.
Regardless of the fact that this company is out of Chicago, this fad just screams of an asian beginning.
That thing is giant.
Talk about Cooooool
I’ve got one! Though long sleeves make the bulky wristband a bit of a pain to wear, it’s pretty cool nonetheless!
Mine is on its way. Ordered it through Kickstarter.
“Almost makes us want to consider wearing a wristwatch”
I remember reading in Men’s Health ages ago that a woman looks for three things when she first meets a guy “Teeth, Shoes, Watch”– if any of these things is missing or in rough shape, she’s not interested. You should get a watch.
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This looks very cool.
WOW! The first Dork-O-Tronic watch!
I’ve wanted one just like that since I wore out my last pocket protector!
@mike… yes, a watch, but not THAT “watch”.
“I remember reading in Men’s Health ages ago that a woman looks for three things when she first meets a guy “Teeth, Shoes, Watch”– if any of these things is missing or in rough shape, she’s not interested. You should get a watch.”
@mike:
Yeah, I can definitely see that in 1992. But in 2011, I would change that to “Teeth, Shoes, iPhone”.
All you have to do to tell the time is press, swipe, swipe, swipe, and touch.
She’ll be so impressed.
It’s true.
No iPhone and I’m not interested.
Now it just needs face time and it would awesome
(*breathlessly*) Now, you too can have wristwatch technology from 1972, where the Pulsar LED required a push a button just to see the time. And if you DON’T set the settings to this one-step mode, you too can now have the world’s first five-step</u> wristwatch (one button push, three swipes, and a screen tap) just to see the damned time.
Can you imagine what one’s boss would think when he asks you what time it is? <i>One moment… One moment… (swiping away on your wrist)… One moment (“Have you seen my BlueRay collection of the entire original Star Trek?”)
Probably not water resistant. Remember the old watches that were water resistant to 3 meters?
@Greg L
It’s not about the functionality, it’s all about the cool. That’s why there are Cartier Tank watches and Rolex Oysters. A cheap Timex is just as useful, but a Timex says “uncool”.
Besides, you don’t find too many watches with transformable faces like the Nano.
yea, cool, but does it make the nano more snappy?
Well, I know why they look at the shoe size. The watch is an affluence indicator. So are the teeth, I suppose.
Women, horny, mercenary bitches.
Need A2DP bluetooth, faster wake-up, maybe some more customizable clocks and they’ll revitalize the whole non-iOS iPod market.
The $10.19 shipping premium on the $35 model makes buying one now a bit off putting. But I love the Tic-Toc. The premium model seems too bulky plus it covers up all the color of your Nano. Guess I’ll wait for it to show up on Amazon or in a store.
NOTE: for those of you who didn’t watch the video, you can start in the clock on wake in the Nano’s settings. So no swiping is necessary. I think there’s a digital clock option also. Inexplicably, Apple doesn’t explain the clock part of the Nano at all on their web site. You can’t tell there is a clock included, nor the countdown timer, nor the stopwatch on the Apple website.
Did I miss something? I thought the Nano was a music player. How do I listen to my music?
when i can control my iphone with it, and it is less bulky i might consider wearing a watch
I haven’t worn a watch in years since my watch was stolen off a table in a coffeeshop. This design made me buy both a LunaTik and TikTok and a 6th gen nano. The bands should be arriving Feb 5th. Kickstarter was funded on December 16th but I ordered before then.
The iPhone nano is revealed. Add a front facing camera and WiFi and you have the Dick Tracy Wrist Radio. Too cool.
So there are fools wandering bout with headphone wires sprouting from the left wrist? How do they manage that?
And the price of the things.
Poke me in my ‘brand hole’ baby!
Jeez, some people would buy anything.