Others are starting to figure it out + iWatch teasage
First, iWatch rumors:
This image is older but the form factor concept is thought-provoking: pretty much the Nike Fuelband plus a vertical slice of an iPhone display, curved. This seems clunkier than I think Jony would want, and I really don't think a slightly slimmed-down version would work for fashion-conscious women. Plus I don't think it would include a phone app, at least not for awhile :-)
Forbes | Apple 180: The iWatch Is At The Center Of A Whirlwind 6 Months For Cook And Company
And it is sooooo not going to be this size:
The Latest iWatch Rumor Says It Will Be Big, Really Big
Note that Apple was granted a patent for a " Seamlessly embedded heart rate monitor" "on an electronic device" a few months ago. But add a blood pressure monitor to a good (SMALLER!) form factor, and we have a compelling device here. It should include an option to display a mode difficult to distinguish from one or more tasteful analog watches, IMO.
On to the subject of this post, "Others are starting to figure it out", which I think is where the real action is.
On HomeKit, MacWorld concludes, just like I did with the "headless home server" I urged Apple to build 10+ years ago, that Apple's future hardware hub already exists, and it is named AppleTV: Apple's HomeKit hub may already be in your house. Gizmodo has a similar take: Apple TV Could Finally Unlock Its Full Potential This Year.
On to HealthKit. From Forbes and a guy NOT named Philip Elmer-DeWitt comes this background: The Revolution Hidden In The Apple Health Kit. It has been 20+ years since I've worked in the health care industry (as opposed to the fitness industry, which I left 11 years ago), so this fellow (Haydn Shaughnessy) fleshes the issues out better than I could, but he was back on the track today, perhaps also answering pyslent's question on this board about how one could "see Apple monetizing the connective tissue between" the sort of devices I see as inevitable in Apple's coming Internet Of Things in his article Apple Health Kit As A Major Platform Innovation. Which echoes the whole theme I set up this board for, which I see as "build it and they will come", as long as "it" is excellent, which Apple has a pretty good track record for. Others will be better than I at seeing the financial implications of building ecosystem awesomeness, no doubt ... I'm just a software guy.
Finally, iCloud. Quoting an article today on Cult Of Mac, Apple just obsoleted the Mac and nobody noticed:
Back at WWDC 2011, Steve Jobs said this: "We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device. We’re going to move your hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud."
Sure, this article is mostly rehash, but this brings me back 15 years when I first heard a friend talk about how he and Steve disagreed about a thing, and Steve turned out to be wrong. But by then my friend was gone.
Thing is, Steve wasn't wrong, and my friend knew it. He was just … early. |
