“Like millions of people, Tim Cook stopped wearing a watch a while back. The Apple boss no longer needed one: his iPhone told the time just fine. There was just one problem, as he readily acknowledges in his interview with The Telegraph: glancing at one’s wrist can be a very useful way to find out information. It is less rude and less intrusive,” Allister Heath reports for The Telegraph. “So Apple now wants to pull off something that no company has ever managed before: it wants to reverse a cultural trend that it had created itself. It wants us to start wearing a watch again.”
“The big event on 9 March will showcase the Apple Watch; and it will be launched to consumers in April. Cook, needless to say, is already wearing his new Apple Watch. He couldn’t even contemplate living without it anymore, he says. ‘I’m now so used to getting all my notifications and all my messages,’ he says. ‘It’s so incredible just to do this,'” Heath reports. “Cook expects an explosion of new apps for the Apple Watch. One of the Apple Watch’s great missions will be to harness new technology to help improve users’ health. The Apple Watch will of course be able to monitor heart rates, Cook says; but it will be far more sophisticated than that. It is bad for people’s health to sit too much; so the watch will gently tap people’s wrist every hour to remind them to stand up and go for a walk if they haven’t had enough exercise. Even more intriguingly, the Watch will operate a special rewards system: users will get credits if they exercise enough. They will also be encouraged to increase their metabolic targets if they meet their exercise targets consistently.”
“There will be lots of other potentially revolutionary uses. The watch is designed to be able to replace car keys and the clumsy, large fobs that are now used by many vehicles, Cook told The Telegraph. This could be a major development and will reinforce the view that Apple is circling the automotive market,” Heath reports. “Another major application will be for paying: the Watch will be able to serve as a very usable credit card, courtesy of Apple Pay.”
“Staff rarely choose to leave Apple of their own volition: in many cases, they work there for years. The company enjoys extremely high levels of employee retention and loyalty – and from the scene in the Covent Garden store on Friday morning, where shop floor staff treated their CEO like a visiting guru, it’s not difficult to see why,” Heath reports. “Cook and The Telegraph entered a rear entrance; nobody at the store bar the manager knew of the visit. I have witnessed many shop, office and factory visits before, with bosses being received in a variety of ways. In some cases, they were welcome but often they were met with indifference or, of course, outright hostility. But the reaction at the Covent Garden store was off the charts: the staff gasped, and then burst into spontaneous, loud applause as soon as they spotted Cook, who walked in behind them.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote in January:
All phones are cumbersome to the same degree. They have to be pulled out, woken up, and poked at… Apple created… a world of iPhone/iPhone knockoff addicts. Apple will change the world again with Apple Watch, replacing iPhone zombies and iPhones on and under dining tables and everywhere else (you know, the stuff the older set complain about: “People nowadays, always looking at their gizmos, nobody can even have a conversation”) with quick glances of the wrist – like in the days of yore….
With iPhone, Apple changed the fabric of our everyday lives: All around the world today, you see people constantly pulling phones from pockets and staring at them. With Apple Watch, Apple will change behavior worldwide once again. A quick glance at your Watch and you’re off. No more smartphone zombies. Watch and see.
If I understand correctly, the wearer enters a passcode every time they put the watch on to prove they are an authorized user.
It would be cool if the watch could listen to my unique heart characteristics for identification.
If it will replace my key fob, I’m in. Audi charges $800 for a replacement fob. Don’t plan to lose mine, but fob is a bit clunky to wear/carry.
Automotive regulations in Germany are a bit more strict than most other regions. Your Audi key fob has significant security features that inferior brands to not. By law it also has a mechanical backup that can also be used to operate the vehicle following loss of key fob battery or signal. Other companies have attempted to eliminate the mechanical key, but there are many instances where electronic gremlins have foiled the attempts of going “keyless” (which really means relying on mobile batteries to power your electronic keys as well as your vehicle battery to power the receiving & control systems).
I will always prefer to know that I have a mechanical backup. As inconceivable as it sounds, I actually have witnessed with my very own eyes people who have completely drained the batteries of their Apple gadgets. Wouldn’t that be silly, to be standing outside your car unable to recharge your Apple Watch because it won’t open your door….
I don’t know that a dead Apple Watch would be the end of the world, as long as your phone still had juice. And I’m sure there would still be a physical key you can keep somewhere in a drawer at home for those once-in-a-decade cases where the car battery dies.
Ironically I’d feel more lost with my iPhone battery dead than with my car battery dead.
I prefer to not deal with some stupid ass fob that can have a dead battery, require reprogramming, get damaged ,etc. etc. etc. etc. I’m perfectly happy to have a nice piece little piece of metal that never requires servicing or reprogramming and costs $5 to have duplicated at Home Depot.
Know just what you mean. I just replaced the button battery in each stupid ass fob of our 2007 ride for the first time last week. Cost me FOUR DAMN BUCKS EACH and took me TWO MINUTES. Course I never have to go shovin’ my damn fat gloves in my damn pockets for my keys to unlock the doors/trunk or start up on these -15 days we’ve been havin’. Fob does have a nice little fallback metal key hidden in the side, just in case, and if I really feel nostalgic, I can stick that there fob into a slot in the dash to get that old engine a hummin’. But what I can’t figure out is where they’re gonna hide that there fallback metal key inside my spiffy new Apple Watch when I ditch my stupid ass fob…..
Car keys are a great idea. Keys are easy lost around the house, but the helpful Honda people want to charge me buko bucks for extra encrypted key sets.
I always know where my iPhone is, I don’t need an extra one. It will likely be the same for an Apple Watch.
If you valet park, you will still need to carry a key fob.
This is a great moment for Tim Cook and Apple to shine. This is the first product that is his baby, not Steve Jobs. Insofar as I’m concerned he’s proved to me that he’s a great leader and Apple’s vision is alive and well. The quality and the integrity of this company is refreshing.
Not to mention how they are an equal opportunity provider of technology to everyone. By making the watch waterproof they will be enabling those that totally lack quality and integrity to use the watch while they water board. Yes the watch will soon become the watch of choice for toturists. I hope that the watch can also be used to bring these despicable slime beings (and I use the term lightly) to justice.
Keep shinning Apple.
This is why most people don’t like politics — leftists ceaselessly bringing it into every conversation, being both obnoxious and rude about it, in addition to being intolerant and always fact-challenged.
Waterboarding is not torture. No physical harm is done to the recipient. Also, psychological fake-out is not torture. Bush and Cheney will never be prosecuted for this, thank God, and nor should they be.
Save your outrage for people who behead folks, amputate arms, and remove little girls’ sexual parts. But you don’t, and you won’t, because that means acknowledging the reality of evil and that evil is not the guy who was the president 7 years ago.
Seriously, man. Give. It. Up. Move on already.
Leaving the restaurant at 9 pm to head home. Go to start car. Battery dead!
It’s OK, bus uses Apple Pay!