Apple Watch features, materials leak ahead of announcement

[Destroid™]

In a move that would leave the ghost of Steve Jobs grinding his teeth, the set of features and capabilities the Apple Watch will supposedly unveil on Monday has leaked, including information on the device’s materials and construction. Not all of these qualifies as a leak, certainly, but for Jobs, who prided himself on locking away even the existence of a product prior to launch, this kind of run-up would be anathema.

First up, there’s the Financial Times, which ran a long interview with Jony Ive. In it, Ive reportedly tells the FT that “the molecules in Apple gold are closer together, making it twice as hard as standard gold. And, in case you were wondering, Apple’s cold-forged steel is 40 percent more durable than regular steel”

This is… well, this is dubious, to say the least. The cold-rolled steel claim is believable; cold-rolling steel is used to produce a smooth surface, uniform thickness, and to reduce deformation under strain. But the claim that Apple’s gold has “closer molecules?” Ars Technica offers an explanation by way of a patent, filed by Apple last year, for a gold/ceramic hybrid characterized as 18k gold, but with two to four times the hardness of conventional 18k gold.

Meanwhile, 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman has data on what he claims is the definitive list of Apple Watch features, including a power reserve mode to improve battery life, as current battery life is said to be just five hours of application use. This mode will dim the display, shut down iPhone communication to “On Demand,” and put the display to sleep after two seconds of inactivity. It may also limit functionality to simply displaying the clock face (this isn’t known). The watch face reportedly turns amber when the battery has just 20% of charge left and red when it hits the 10% mark.

The Apple Watch will also include a Heart Rate Glance. If you aren’t familiar with the term, a “Glance” is Apple parlance for “a browsable collection of timely and contextually relevant moments from a wearer’s favorite apps.” Tap a button, and the heart rate monitor will start tracking in real time. The report also states the Apple Watch can store up to 8GB of music and play it back, even when not linked to an iPhone. Streaming will also be supported to external speakers or headphones via Bluetooth. Individual Apple Watch applications, however, will still be controlled by a Companion application on the iPhone. Performance is reportedly excellent, as the device has been previously rumored to run a chip comparable to the Apple A5.

I have no doubt that the Apple Watch will generate enormous buzz and good up-front sales. There are hundreds of thousands of people who trust Apple to build great products and will order Apple Watches simply because they believe Apple will get it right. There’s reason to think so — historically, Apple rarely moves first, but has often been the company that nailed various aspects of device use in a way that consumers have loved.

What’s less clear is whether Apple has a solution for wearables that’s going to really move the market. Devices like the Fitbit have captured a certain market, as have products like thePebble Smartwatch. In order to satisfy investors, however, Apple is going to have to demonstrate that it can do for the smartwatch what it did for the smartphone and tablet.

I think that’s going to be difficult, for reasons that have nothing to do with Apple’s ingenuity or marketing capability, and much more to do with the underlying state of technology. Voice recognition and UI design are going to have to grow up a great deal to serve effectively in this brave new world, to say nothing of ongoing concerns around battery life and capability. Smart phones existed for years before the iPhone, but it was the iPhone that demonstrated that they weren’t just PDAs with telephony — they could exist and perform new kinds of tasks and offer new sorts of experiences.

[Snederevac1]

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