“Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch launched a couple of weeks ago as a fat, ugly, and expensive smartphone accessory that our own Devindra Hardawar called ‘relentlessly inessential,'” John Koetsier reports for VentureBeat. “That’s not where Apple is going with iWatch.”
“Rather, Apple is looking to create a device that will allow you to control your music, your temperature, your security, your lighting, your energy use, your entertainment, and potentially much more, says Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brian White, who talked to Taiwanese and mainland China suppliers,” Koetsier reports. “‘As an Apple supplier, our contact offered insight into the ‘iWatch’ and described this potential new device as much more than an extension of your iPhone but as a multi-purpose gateway in allowing consumers to control their home (i.e., heating/cooling, lights, audio, video, etc.),’ White said today in a research note.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
That’d be hilarious if the Apple iWatch is not a smart watch at ALL! Slamdung chasing it’s tail again. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
BUT… If it were a home automation play, where Apple’s iWatch can control a/c, heat, lights, alarm system, lights, etc., it could probably turn on TV too. Something Samsung gear watch CAN’T do to a Samsung TV.
Samsung’s response… “DAMN IT!’
Hmm! Now imagine the ‘iWatch’ has noise canceling microphones AND Siri, with all the capability of Siri PLUS home automation… TV control features. That’s when I will want to make love with Siri.
‘Hot Dahling!’
Don’t get jealous Hannah! 😉
Derek…
(Drums nails on black walnut desk top, fingers safety of Ruger LCR .22)
Yep that was my thought as well what if the watch in iWatch is watch over and not wristwatch at all. Wow… that would really illuminate samsung as the inept bunch of copycat loosers that they are. Attempting to pre-chase and apple product that dosen’t exist.
If so Tim must be straining to keep a straight face every time someone mentions the samesung dumbwatch.
This is exactly what I’ve been writing since this whole watch thing started. This guys been reading MDN and needed to meet a deadline.
I, as well as others here have been saying the whole watch thing was a red herring from the start. Samdungs watch is and embarrassment and this analyist is slower then Samdung. Augghhh!!!!
I’d say this article is more accurate than most in their prediction.
A watch that allows you to see who’s calling your iPhone at a glance, see that a new email popped up, set temperature, monitor heart rate, etc, an LED light, interface to your home security as home theater, automatically unlock your car when you walk up (like some cars do now with “smart keys”), pay for a purchase via iBeacon or NFC, change songs on your iPhone, FULLY control your AppleTV (or even TiVo, etc), adjust your Nest thermostat’s settings, etc, etc, etc.
Basically just a small, simple interface that connects to ALL your wireless-enabled devices.
And maybe even check the time. 🙂
If all it did was unlock my front door and my car as I approached, and lock them as I leave it would be worth it. There’s already a company making electronic inserts for front doors on houses that read your “key” as you approach the door, and unlock it. Yes, et’s do away with the 30 keys I now carry.
When I was dept head I had, and lost, an argument with the key control people. They gave us 10 keys each, instead of the 3 I wanted. They insisted that that way if someone lost a key, it minimized the number of doors that needed rekeying. I couldn’t convince them that people didn’t lose “a” key, people lost the whole key ring. This device could be really great in key-control settings. If a device was lost, just silently push out updates to the others and the doors. Problem solved with minimal fuss!
RFID and cardswipe entries already do all this. If someone loses “a” key, they literally lose that one key. That one key can then be suspended or deleted from the permission list, just like canceling a credit card.
Meanwhile physical master keys can be “printed” just from serial numbers.
Problem I have with that assessment is that it would rely on hundreds or thousands of other companies to immediately jump on the band wagon for it to be anything but an extremely exclusive device… a sort of hobby much less immediately inviting than the Apple TV was, no matter what its full potential may be. So to me this sounds like an area it will be strong in with existing Apple products accepted but will surely have more widespread functionality than that, or perhaps specific functions that can be widely applied and useful with existing technology. Its a tough call that presently I don’t have the answer too but I cant see Apple introducing something that is another relatively low seller upon introduction, for that would seriously invite the wolves to congregate no matter how ludicrously.
Spyintheskyuk, you are thinking too narrowly.
For devices that don’t have wireless guts, you can have a device (lamp) as small as an iPhone charger plug, an iConnect, in the wall and then the device (lamp) plugs into the iConnect.
Apple will surely have already contacted key suppliers of home automation (excluding Samsung) and electronic devices to line up a slew of “developers” just like they did with Apps.
Are you suggesting Whirlpool, LG, Nest and other companies would not fight to be the first in their industry to sign on to Tim Cook’s next big Keynote?
If so, you are, hmmm, divorced from retail reality.
Here are three different smart keys/lock companies; UniKey, Lockitron, DoorBot. UniKey looks very nice.
“Rather, Apple is looking to create a device that will allow you to control your music, your temperature, your security, your lighting, your energy use, your entertainment, and potentially much more”
Psst… it’s called a F’n iPod. We’ve done this. You think their innovation is a wrist strap for iPod nano?
Michael, you are right … for 2009, but we are heading quickly for 2014, where processors & electronics are smaller and more capable, just like the iPod Shuffle did!
IWatch — the ultimate McGuffin.
Ha ha ha, snort, giggle. You have made my day.
If this turns out to be correct, then I could see buying the device. A “smart watch” never sounded interesting to me, but a remote that’s always with me is a different story.
-jcr
Using biometrics, the watch will only work on its owner. Theft potential eliminated.
I dont know about that, they will cut the arm off and then carefully form a mold around it, produce a non decaying copy for when the deep freeze is just to far away, add a heat source, cling film and a suedo pulse and will instantly be able to turn your tv on to watch the repeats of Breaking Bad.
I want one!!! Right NOW !!!
Isn’t this similar to what Bill Gates was talking about in The Road Ahead? It was a ID badge that the home automation system recognized the individual vs. a watch.
Interesting comment. I too seem to remember a interview someone did when Gates’ house was being built in Redmond where every house member carried a badge that each room could sense to adjust stuff to the primary wearer’s preferences. I wonder if they actually implemented that technology, or got tired of it over time and stopped using it?
They got bored with the constant blue mood lighting and the inevitable reboots as Bill’s robotic voice and 3D smily face told them all to take a coffee break… only to find the coffee machine had a virus too.
Absolutely love it!!! Exactly what we all need!
Simple solution for biometric recognition…thumb scanner, pretty obvious.
My hope is that I’ll be able to tell Siri on my iWatch to play a song on my iPhone, or my MacBook, or my Apple TV.
And please be truly waterproof
Do like the sound of that I have to say.
Interesting idea, but I’m skeptical that parts suppliers in Taiwan would be seeing the complete device at this early stage. Just my guess but I think that Apple is buying prototype parts around the world and assembling them and programming them inside Sir Ive’s windowless lab in Cupertino.
Sorry, it’s Sir Jony or Sir Jony Ive or Sir Jonathan Ive. Sir Ive is just plain wrong.
You get a tic ped ant! 🙂
We save that for when he is a Lord. ‘Lord Ive of Cupertino’, haha that has a ring to it.
Your iPhone app can control all these , why bother to buy this function ?
The level of Apple innovation is unpredictable .
Exactly. Why not do all this with your iphone?
For it to really be popular it would need to work alone such as the old iPod nano did. If it had 8gb internal storage for music and media as the iPod did but have the added functionality of working with an iphone it would sell like hot cakes
Take this “news” with a grain of salt.
A rather large chunk too.
Apple is very good at keeping secrets and virtually all recent product information leaks have come from manufacturers. We knew exactly what the iPhone 5S would look like, but the 64 bit internals came as a huge surprise and that was by far the important innovation.
Suppliers will not have been told anything substantial about what a new product will or won’t do, all they will have been told is that Apple wants them to build millions of devices to a particular specification.
Having said that, I have no doubt that there is a market for a home control device, but whether it’s a big enough market for Apple is another question altogether. The problem is that you will need to control devices made by other manufacturers and that means getting involved with protocols, standards and patents. It could be another bag of hurt.
It clearly makes no sense to have a dozen different remote controls around the house, a single device would be much more appealing if it could operate everything, but you can be quite sure that we would find ourselves in a situation where an alternative protocol would drive some devices and we’ll end up with standard wars all over again. It would be ridiculous if an Apple device unlocks my VW, but only a Microsoft device could unlock my wife’s Ford.
There has been plausible predictions of home automation facilities appearing as standard on Macs for the last twenty years, but it hasn’t appeared. Maybe the Nest devices are the start of something that Apple can usefully embrace and extend, but they are only a niche market ( and currently incompatible with many non-US heating systems ) and they only offer limited scope for home automation. Apple needs something much more universally appealing.
If I had read this first I wouldn’t have bothered posting my own take, yes the core of the problem that Apple could start to change but only from a small base and with many years ahead trying to implement.
> Apple needs something much more universally appealing. <
I disagree entirely. Why do they need a huge pre-made market? They have the biggest, best integrated ecosystem in the history of gadgetry: the Apple TV (15 million), various Phillips LED lights, the (expanding) Nest system, as well as being a potential companion to 100s of millions of iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs. Where Apple goes other follow. They only need to make it a delight to use (inc. light, stylish and comfy, easy to operate and functional). And they'll a motza!
I think the watch will be targeted for health and fitness. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
That and locating Joe Jitsu. 😉
Samsung next week comes out with a home automation system. It plugs into an outlet, then you can plug your light in, and it has a 21″ display to allow you to turn it on and off. The “watch” factor is that it will transmit to your android when the light is on.
Oh…wait… Thats not what iWatch is at all!!! Darn this is fun!!
As long as this device ‘looks like’ and ‘is’ a smart looking wrist watch in the first instance with a multiplicity of other useful capabilities built in as outlined in the article above then there will be a ready market for such a device.
Meh. Just like NFC/RFID, there’s little or no market for a device like this in the real world. There may be a few, really well-off people with fancy homes wired to allow this kind of automation, but I don’t know of a single person in my wider circle of aquaintancies who has any way of using something like this, and certainly modern homes built in the UK have no wiring to allow this sort of system.
The home-owner would have to invest a large sum to upgrade, and very few even have multi-room audio, using AirPort Extreme, let alone this level of sophistication.
Maybe in ten-fifteen year’s time…
Not true at all. There are a lot of great current/upcoming products that would work with an iWatch with little effort from Apple on the software side, and no additoinal infastructure: Phillips Hue
Nest (thermostat and smoke detector)
several automated door locks
Canary (home survailence/alarm)
wifi speakers
etc