“Why an iWatch and not iGlasses?” Nick Bilton asks for The New York Times. “In my column on Monday I reported that Apple was experimenting with a computer that could wrap around a person’s wrist. Some readers asked why the company, which is clearly experimenting with wearable computing, wouldn’t just make a pair of augmented-reality glasses instead?”
“The best way to answer that question is to look at the company’s Trackpad,” Bilton explains. “At first the mouse pad was given multitouch, then the large button was made slimmer, then the button went away, but the entire mouse pad became clickable. Today, it’s just a flat multitouch square.”
Bilton offers, “Apple will do the same thing with its foray into wearable computing. The wrist is not a scary place for consumers to add their first computer… Although five or 10 years from now we could well be walking around with Apple glasses on our faces, the company’s first push into this world of wearables will be through the wrist.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
WSJ: Apple testing ‘iWatch’ device – February 11, 2013
iWatch: Apple developing curved-glass smart watch, sources say – February 11, 2013
Tog: The iWatch will fill a gaping hole in the Apple ecosystem – February 7, 2013
Why Apple should hang-up on the iPhone, iWear is next – January 6, 2013
Analyst sees wearable computers from Apple as future replacement for iPhone – January 2, 2013
Apple and Intel secretly building Bluetooth smartwatch that connects to your iOS devices, say sources – December 27, 2012
Apple patent application details display-integrated cellular antennas – May 6, 2012
Apple patent app details next-gen microstrip cellular antenna for future MacBooks, iWatch and beyond – October 25, 2011
Has anyone thought out what it would be like to buy iGlasses?
You go to the Apple Store, into a dark room in the back to get a vision test from an optician, an iDoctor. Then you spend an hour you picking out your frames from a couple hundred possibilities. The Apple iGenius fetches your single-vision lenses (different for each eye) from their huge inventory of standard lenses in the back, tells you to come back in an hour while the iLensCutter cuts the lenses to fit the frames. That’s the best case. What if you’ve been having trouble reading or using your computer? The iDoctor determines from tests that you need bifocals or trifocals. If you think they’d make you look like a geezer, you’d opt for progressives. Either way, they have to send out for bifocals, trifocals, or progressives. They have to be custom made. If you opted for progressives, that adds about $700 to the cost and you have to wait a week or two. If you have never worn progressives before, make you feel dizzy for about two or three weeks, and some people cannot get used to them at all. You take them back to the Apple Store. They throw away the progressive lenses and you have to wait another week or so for regular trifocals–bifocals don’t give you the middle range you need for computers. iGlasses won’t be returnable, they will be very expensive, and you might not find frames that fit the shape of your face and the color of your hair and complexion.
Does anyone think that scenario is profitable for Apple? Wearing glasses over glasses is no solution, and I can’t imagine iClipOns.
Bilton didn’t really need an entire article just to say that augmented glasses are a stupid idea. I guess he has to be careful not to offend google…
iWatch, just another stolen concept brought to you by Apple.