“According to a rumor, Apple is going to add new capabilities to its legacy first-gen watches through ‘smart bands,” Redmond Pie reports.
“Allegedly, these bands will be able to attach to your Apple Watch and add a plethora of new sensors, including those for blood oxygen monitoring, respiratory rate, blood pressure and body temperature,” Redmond Pie reports. “The rumor has been reported by the website Letem Světem Applem (Czech), which has cited unnamed sources behind the info.”
Redmond Pie reports, “However, it’s also one of those rumors that have the potential to be true very easily. If you recall, even before the Apple Watch was announced, there were rumors that the Cupertino-based company might provide interchangeable bands in future that will all add different features.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Why is that 6-pin port there? Just for service and diagnostics (like Apple TV’s Micro USB port) or for something(s) much, much more?
SEE ALSO:
Charging the Apple Watch using its 6-pin accessory port – May 28, 2015
Apple Watch houses mysterious six-contact data connection port – March 5, 2015
Why does Apple have to make the bands? Scenario: Apple licenses the use of the ports and works with leading medical and scientific research facilities to produce bands that can provide any number of advanced features, then let the med/sci community worry about getting the proper dederal approval, if needed.
I think you mean Deaderal.
Sorta like how MicroSoft left it to others to write .NET frameworks for non-Windows OSes? Apple is in the device business. The medical community is into medicine. Apple has the reputation (stained as it is after these latest buggy releases of Mac OS X) and the money to take the risk with stakeholders at its side. If it will be done, it will be done by Apple.
They’ve already launched the ‘Made for Apple Watch’ specs, so there’s no need for them to be the maker here, all they’d have to do is update the program with how to connect to the port properly and APIs etc…
(https://developer.apple.com/watch/bands/)
Apple will allow third parties to make bands, and probably even cases (I can’t see wanting a case for my Watch), but remember that Apple makes its money on hardware sales, and watch bands with sensors, etc. are definitely hardware sales in which nice profits are to be had.
“The rumor has been reported by the website Letem Světem Applem (Czech), which has cited unnamed sources behind the info.”
Journalism’s finest adhering to the strictest tenets of responsible reporting.
Yeah, the whole story is clickbait.
A smart band could even be a bunch of batteries allowing on board GPS and radios.
“legacy first-gen”? it’s been out less than four months, Seems an odd way to describe a brand new product,
How does a new band that adds functionality make the watch legacy (read obsolete) unless the band doesn’t work with gen 1? That wasn’t in the article though.
Hidden key for handcuffs.
So doubling down on a failed product? Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave.
Your trolling is of a pre-kindergarten level — about as much to do with reality as “Apple STILL failing to breed pink elephants”.
To graduate to kindergarten trolling, attempt to have SOME tiny grain of reality involved.
Now this is exciting if true!
The ports on the watch ( fact) .. Oxigen sensor chip inside that is locked( fact) support this rummor … .. I hope it comes for holiday season…
Why the band wasn’t incorporated originally to house batteries (or some power generating through motion), or antennas facilitating operation without an iPhone… this is the mystery to me.
Are you aware just how long people waited for the first Apple Watch? They could have spent another ten years giving it all the bells and whistle. Strike while iron is hot, maybe?
A glucose blood sugar band would sell hundreds of millions, whenever they get around to inventing it.
The strip eating machine manufacturers would be out of business and Medicare could possibly be around when I retire. I doubt the latter but excellent point.
I have no problem with the strip reading machines going out of business. They can make that $.03 strip that 15 year old kid came up with that can detect pancreatic cancer and others. Naturally there will be a 10,000 per scent markup.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/jack-andraka-the-teen-prodigy-of-pancreatic-cancer-135925809/?no-ist
Can’t wait to buy them!
I’m still waiting for Apple to use that patent reported here a while back that makes a Mac into a charging field for wirelessly charging mobile devices. I just bought the new MacBook to keep my collection complete. But I won’t be upgrading any Macs until I see where wireless charging for mobile devices is going.