“Apple Watch is not a watch,” John Paczkowski writes for BuzzFeed. “It may well be, as Apple CEO Tim Cook says, ‘the most advanced timepiece ever created.’ But ‘watch’ is a misnomer, a branding sleight of hand.”
“The Apple Watch is not a watch in the same way that the iPhone was not a phone — or at least not what we knew to be a phone at the time,” Paczkowski writes. “‘Watch’ is not the device’s primary functionality, just as ‘phone’ was not the iPhone’s primary functionality. iPhone was an honest-to-god computer in your pocket — and Apple Watch is an honest-to-god iPhone on your wrist.”
MacDailyNews Take: Whoa, flashback! From the day that Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone (and several years before the iPad, no less):
The only thing really wrong with Apple’s iPhone is its name
Apple’s “iPhone” isn’t really a phone at all. It’s really a small touchscreen Mac OS X computer, a Mac nano tablet, if you will. Here’s how misnamed the iPhone is: Some people are complaining that Jobs didn’t spend enough time on the Mac in his keynote! Folks, iPhone is not only a Mac, it’s the most radical new Mac in years! What’s to stop Apple from making a 12-inch model (and larger, and smaller) one of these days (use the headset for the phone, please) and calling it a Mac tablet? … But, the main thing about the “iPhone” is that it’s really a pocket Mac. — SteveJack, MacDailyNews, January 9, 2007
“But there’s a big caveat: It’s an iPhone on your wrist that requires yet another iPhone in your pocket,” Paczkowski continues. “The device is your phone. It’s your boarding pass. It’s your credit card. It’s your keys. It’s your garage door opener. By tracking health and fitness data, ‘it’s a coach on your wrist.’ With Siri integration, it’s an easy way to get answers to simple questions or to set reminders. (Frankly, it may be the single most compelling use-case for Siri we’ve yet seen.) It’s an automation solution for the so-called internet of things. And it’s an authentication solution for mobile payments and identity. But to be all these things, to serve all these purposes, Apple Watch needs an iPhone… In other words, if it succeeds at market, the Apple Watch will become a new engine for iPhone growth.”
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly. Paczkowski gets it.
Paczkowski writes, “If the Apple Watch does all that it promises to — if it’s unobtrusive and it simplifies access to key categories of information and identity — it may well become as indispensable as the smartphone is today, setting Apple up to define another massive shift in computing — for those aware of it, and for consumers with no idea it’s headed their way.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yup.
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. – MacDailyNews Take, January 30, 2015