“While the idea of an iWatch is intriguing, especially for those of us in the tech world, this is a case where the idea of a device trumps the actuality of it,” Brian Meyer writes for Apple Gazette. “Sadly, we may never see an iWatch and here’s why.”
“Unlike Apple TV with it’s iTunes connection and iOS devices with the App Store, the iWatch would have very little add-on purchases that could be made after the device it bought,” Meyer writes. “This means that it’s not likely that Apple would put a large amount of development time into the device if there weren’t a long-term profitability solution.”
“To add in all the features that would make a smart watch worth the purchase, it generally has to be large enough to house the components as well as a battery that will give the iWatch enough life to last more than a day,” Meyer writes. “This size is a major turn off, and one of the reasons that smart watches haven’t caught on with the enormous iPhone market yet.”
“While we all like to get as much use out of our tech as possible, we still love to get something new and shiny,” Meyer writes. “It’s all we can do to wait for our cell phone contracts to be up so we can get the new and substantially more powerful iPhone, but do we really want to trade watches in this quickly too?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, “Apple’s iWatch will never happen” because it won’t offer add-on sales, will be too big, and the upgrade cycle will too long.
Or something.
iWatches and other wearables will have little impact on health care. Wearables will be worn by comparatively well off individuals who generally are not at risk. The problems with the healthcare system will not be solved with this neutral data.
Who said wearables would have an impact on our healthcare system? Unless Apple develops a device which cuts the new Obamacare paperwork requirements by 1/3 (back to pre-Obamacare levels), there won’t be anything that helps our healthcare system.
However, a wearable device which can monitor heart rates, blood sugars, and other factors could be immensely helpful to people who have health problems (well off or not). An iWatch could make monitoring and communicating with your doctor far easier and faster, and could provide a Life Alert-style function and even call 911 should a serious health conduction like heart attack, stroke, etc. be detected.
Wearables and iPhone accessories are revolutionizing health care. Stanford University researchers just developed a retinal camera attachment for the iPhone which allows eye doctors to take photos of your retina without dilating drops and you get a wider field of view than using a BIO and lens to manually examine the retina. The estimated cost is $90, whereas a retina camera itself can cost $10,000 and up.
This is what iPhone accessories like the iWatch will be can do for health care.
Why do you think only “well off” people check their blood pressure, blood sugar, etc.?
Why will only “well off people “who are “not at risk” care about their health?
I am 80 years old. I am not “well off” and I FUCKING CARE!
What a narrow view.
Since Apple has promised “new category” (it can not be just bigger iPhones), the options are only watches and TVs. The latter is doubtful, to the watches are coming.
Assumptions. Apple didn’t talk about an iPhone before announcing it, and suddenly a new category was created. Who says Apple can’t do the same thing?
But Tim Cook did say new product category. Are we to assume, that he lied? That would make no sense.
Right. He also alluded to exciting new product releases “throughout 2014”. Did he lie?
iphone 6 ; exciting, new, and its a product…
No, right now it is a RUMOR. Try to learn the difference.
The “no add-on sales” is bunk; plenty of app developers would be drooling at the chance to have their health, fitness, or other app on the iPhone.
Apple sells items like AppleTV, iPads, iPods, and iPhones because it makes money selling the hardware. I’m sure an iWatch would have a healthy profit margin, unlike anything from Amazon or Samsung.
The battery life is a big issue, but I also do not believe Apple would release an iWatch product without having solved all-day power. This also may be the reason why we haven’t seen an iWatch yet. But that is a temporary problem, not a forever problem.
It’ll happen. Soon.
Look who’s back, if it ain’t GM the guy who laghed us all away at holding and said Apple would never be back here and all buy an hold fanboys would eat shit…. What’s your agenda this time you selfish little lknow it all?
I’m sensing some anger. Did this guy run over your cat or something?
He was actually extremely condescending during the latter half of 2012 and since, right up to about April of this year. Harping on the idea that “real”, “professional” investors would have sold in September at $700, like he supposedly did. Rubbing retail investors’ noses in potential 6 figure losses and ridiculing their intelligence does not endear one to those people.
If the author is so well informed on cutting edge technology to knkw what can or can not be done.. Why is he wasting his time writing worhnless articles?
He should be up there with gurus designing gadgest and changing the world.
These type of people make me sick with their attitudes of what can and cannot be accomplished by Apple. Apple is the one company that has the means to do so much for mankind if it sets a goal. It was said the entire Apollo project to put a man on the moon only came to $25 billion. Apple still has about $150 billion in cash, so it’s not as though Apple can’t afford to possibly do something astounding.
Bizlaw, I second your comments, especially the ones about the additional paperwork hassles with the ACA.
Wearables will happen but not as currently construed. Fitbits and their ilk are a fad that will fade out in a few years. Quantifying steps and sleep are fun stats to know but they don’t contribute to actionable data that keeps you healthy.
However, wearables that monitor health – blood pressure, glucose levels, etc – and can notify health professionals or EMTs in emergencies are a potentially huge market. For example, China’s population is aging. Who’s going to provide care to elderly? At a minimum, you need 3 people for round-the-clock care. If, with wearable technology, you can increase the ratio to 10 people/1 care provider, the worldwide market is huge. This is the game that Apple is playing with HealthKit.
The problem with a lot of this stuff is accuracy, or rather the lack of. There are so many wrist-worn digital devices out there that supposedly measure temperature, heartbeat, altitude, blood alcohol content, pressure, etc, and with their nice digital readouts look accurate. But the reality is they rarely are and thus are simply not worth the money. The implications of getting health related measurement wrong doesn’t bear thinking about. There’s a reason precise medical instruments generally cost a lot and are not worn on the wrist. Accuracy.
This is not as much a problem as it may seems. The $10,000 monitoring device is admittedly more precise than a wearable device like an iWatch could be, but in most real life cases, the difference in precision will not be significant. The parameters that are monitored vary greatly over a day, a week, a month, etc. These variation are unavoidable and are caused by a combination of a host of factors. Health specialists and individuals learn to cope with this to a practical extent, and so will the wearers of the forthcoming wearable devices.
The fact that a device is not highly precise is generally not a deal breaker. What is important is the ability to detect sudden and large variations of a parameter as well as creeping changes over long time. The ability of a wearable device to monitor a small set of personalized significant parameters at all time is also a key feature of a wearable device. The embedded processor and software can analyse the relevancy of signals and suggest appropriate action. For instance, the device’s would know whether you are running or exercising and could alert you if you reach your personalized preset maximum level of hearth beat. The device could notify you 24/7 if your blood sugar gets too high or too low, etc. In such applications (and there are many others) high precision is not absolutely needed. If you are 75 years old, it is unimportant if your heart beats at 175, 180 or 185 beats a minute, it’s much too high and the instrument would have alerted you long before you reach that level. Each person will have to set his own parameters as determined with his physician.
What is important is that the device works reliably always, that it covers a significant number of parameters, that it is properly programmed by or for each user, and that it can alert people of your choice if you do not respond to its warnings.
Such devices will preserve and improve the health of millions of people and save countless lives.
…the iWatch would have very little add-on purchases that could be made after the device it [sic] bought
RUBBISH! A (theoretical) iWatch would sync to:
A) iCloud – potentially via WI-Fi or tethered to any Bluetooth or Wi-Fi computer.
B) Any Bluetooth or Wi-Fi computer.
C) Any Bluetooth iOS device.
D) Any USB device.
I have no idea what tech Apple wants to cram into any such little devices, but the options for syncing are plentiful. This really is a disappointing point in the article. Bad Meyers!
And if the point has anything to do with Flash memory space on the device: Again RUBBISH! Flash is teeny in physical size and remarkable in memory size already!
As for the point about wanting to trade in watches like cell phones: I agree! Well, that is if we think of these as being traditional watches. But they’re NOT! A theoretical iWatch would bust open the old watch memes and redefine them. That’s unquestionable. Let’s watch and see…
Amazing, youre the guy who was DEAD SET on the fact that there was never ever ever going to be an iPad mini. Yet youre so open to this iWatch idea which is so much more radical than a scaled down iPad. By gosh, people can change after all (that being said, I do believe there will be an iWatch)
Dear Macadelic (anonymous coward):
Isn’t the topic of the iPad Mini about 2.5 years in the past? And you care that I was wrong. It certainly wasn’t wrong for me. But I was wrong for you. Therefore…
I MUST BE PUNISHED!
Do you understand the concept of STALKING? Do you know why people do it? Are you a stalker or…
Are you my mummy?
OH NOW I GET IT!
You think I’m better than you for some reason and you’re out to prove to the world that it isn’t true.
OK. But you’re an anonymous coward! If you’re bent on competition, isn’t better to participate in game playing without a bag over your head?
SCORE! One point to the stalker with the bag over his head!
There have to be better goals in your life than this rubbish.
Its so easy to upset you:)
That’s your point!
And why is that your point?
MDN – iCal his ass!
It will not be an iWatch unless it is tied to the Apple TV (watch a “screen.”)
I believe Apple will continue the iP naming series by calling it the iPulse and marketing it as the center (pulse) of your “connectedness”. The pulse name will fit in with all the obvious health applications but also can be thought of being core to “the pulse (beat or Beats) of your daily life.” Many very moving commercials showing that theme will immediately follow its announcement.
I, too, don’t believe an iWatch will ever be made.
And when they do brave one then you won’t mind 100 lashes for your insolence?
And you are?
Sounds like Samsung. What is this person talking about? Apple has not announced any product called iWatch.
Wouldn’t a $200 (or whatever) iWatch be in of itself an add-on?
It’s sort of like saying that Apple will never sell music, apps, movies, cases, cables, TV shows, keyboards, trackpads, or any of the add-ons that it sells because those add-ons don’t have add-ons.
I’m all for yo-dawging wherever possible, but I think a $150-$200 add-on is good enough.
Written by a “technology nut” with no credentials. Why post this nonsense?
Three reasons the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist:
Unlike blue whales with their krill and elephants with all that vegetation, the LNM would have very little to add to its diet. This means that it’s likely to be too hungry to proliferate long-term.
To have that long neck and tail shown in the photos, it would be too enormous to last more than a day in a lake that size.
While all creatures’ babies are cute and cuddly, Loch Ness Monsters would reproduce too frequently, and do we really wants our lakes and rivers overrun with giant, slimy creatures?
“To add in all the features that would make a smart watch worth the purchase, it generally has to be large enough to house the components…”
Which is why Google Glass weighs 2 pounds and requires a backpack to… oh, no, wait, that’s stupid.
Apparently whoever write that article has never heard of could computing.
Again, MDN, just dismissing a message because it doesn’t fanboi narrative….
The author, of course, is right … Apple would never conceive and market a product that provides zero ancillary sales … like a standalone settop mini TV box that generates a cool billion dollars a year (whistles) all on it’s own.
The point is that Apple knows this, better than the article’s author, and if the product itself *is* the ancillary product to an existing product line! then that reasoning is moot.
Not only that, this “iWatch” will be an evolution of the iPod nano (most likely initially launched and named as such as well), since it would need to contain all the components of the current iPod nano, and would rely on all the prior test engineering from the nano series (curved front glass, BT 4.0, speaker, watch features) and most likely will continue to not accept new apps.
…. albeit the AppleTV will grow that capability.
I don’t agree with any of you. Look at the executives they recently hire from some of the best upscale design and retail and jewelry companies. These people must have been shown the coming production. Apple is not a one trick pony
Fashion and the I watch are in the mix. Why else would these successful executives join Apple if not for the introduction of something earth shattering and creative
Another worthless anal…yst. There is no reason you cannot update software. All iPods allowed you to upgrade the OS.
Apps would not be hard. But with Bluetooth you put the app on the computer.
Pebble seems to be doing all right. And they have created an app/watch face environment I’m sure paying close attention to Apples model. I expect an iWatch and Pebble is the reason why. It can work, refer back to the Kickstarter campaign and the money raised there. There is a large audience out there looking for wearable tech. IMHO
Yup… None… Ever.
they sure proved ur asses wrong 🤣🤣