Wearing Thin
Apples wearables are more likely to be a combination of sensors in a singular sleek faceless band rather than another new device with a screen.
Who wants to design an app for a circular screen? I don’t. That’s not to say you can’t but it’s definitely not straight forward, it’s very limiting, more so than a tiny square or a thin strip and those aren’t exactly a great place to start either. I should know I used to design banner ads for a living and getting the right information to display at the right time was paramount. It was easy enough on a 300x250 pixel ad (think iPod Nano 6th gen) but when it came to translating that to a 120x60 banner some serious compromises had to be made.
OK then you just limit what you display on the device, so that then rules out real functionality like an app on iPhone. Scrolling through a contacts list, album art, reading an iBook? Forget it. I have a 6th Gen iPod Nano, and there’s a good reason it is not running a full iOS. It’s a compromised area not only in terms of display but also in what you can touch. This needs to be more of a HUD on your wrist. And that’s kind of where Samsung is at with their Gear range. But this is Apple.
How can we maximise battery life?
Where’s the best place to store the data picked up by the sensors?
What’s the best way to display that information?
How can we reduce the interactions required to operate the device?
How do we make it look unapologetically Apple?
So battery tech on these things will need to be groundbreaking if there’s a display. The battery needs to power a retina screen, I can’t see them releasing anything new device with a display that’s less than Retina. That’ll also need to run for at least a day without charge or do you want to have battle over what iDevice gets the one cable you have with you during the day? To be wearable you want to rarely take this off, maybe at night if doesn’t offer you any sleep tracking, if you go swimming or have a bath. They can probably make it waterproof though. It’ll want to last days off a single charge to be really wearable. I think not wanting to have to charge it everyday is a strong reason not to have a display.
All this sensory information being picked up by the device, does it just stay on the device or does it sync wirelessly? Sure and Bluetooth LTE is the likely candidate to get it to another iDevice (or even the Apple TV). OK but can you sync when you plug it in to your Mac? Where does it go then? To *shudder* iTunes, an equivalent Healthbook for Mac? Having all your info and graphs viewable on a screen larger than your thumb would make more sense. Another reason not to have a display.
Pinch and swipe both require some traction and friction to get right, and as comedy as it sounded when John Siracusa said in a recent podcast imagine trying to swipe up on device on your wrist. It could just see it spinning around your wrist of it was even remotely loose. So tapping, you could do tapping but that’s limiting. Is it more likely that you can press a button on the device to check battery life, display some minimal feedback or power on/off. Now it could have a mic on it. That would allow you to talk to it, maybe interact with Siri, but you’d want to do that via the nearest paired device. You would not want a wifi or cellular chip in there as they are another battery drain. Could you talk calls on it? Well you would be already paired to a phone which has headphones and it’s own mic… so… no?
Now this is all a rough and ready assessment with some assumptions half baked in but here’s my thoughts on what will be announced. A band of sensors very much like the Jawbone or Fitbit in one unified unapologetically wearable bit of plastic. It’ll be somehow smarter than those devices but that’ll likely be because of the the hardware and software integration that only Apple can achieve. And the sensors may very well be capable of tracking more than “health” data.
There will be an app probably called Healthbook, possibly on the Mac too, that will aggregate the data from these sensors and allow you to examine this data at your leisure. There may be other apps that track data too or can be augmented by the data on or movement of your wearable.
The iPhone will become more wearable too, in that more can be displayed without having to unlock the device. I think there’s room for that sensor data to be displayed on the lock screen so when you check your iPhone (which is like every 5 minutes) you can see how little you’ve walked since the last time you checked.
But I also think that with iOS 8 they will open up the lockscreen to 3rd party apps that also use sensory data but that will be limited to the sensors on the iPhone. Imagine how much more useful a fitness app like Strava would be if you could see how fast you were going or have left to cycle without having to unlock the device? Google Maps, Hailo/Uber or Swarm on the lockscreen that’d be cool too. Something I can just quickly glance at my iPhone for without tapping 4 times in the correct sequence or lining up my thumb for or five times, and than having to tap a 4 digit sequence.
Siri, Nike+iPod, Maps and almost all music apps benefit from this being accessible from or have a mode of operation on the lockscreen already and some of those are 3rd party, so why not invite everyone? I do think they’ll only extend invites to those using sensor data though. Last thing you want is Flappy Birds on the lockscreen.
Siri is interesting, it’s accessible from the lockscreen and if we backtrack to talking to Siri via the iBand having access to all of the apps on your device via Siri would make it considerably more useful. So I suspect there may be some expansion of what apps Siri can integrate with which in itself could open the door to inter app communication and a more “productive” iOS experience. iPad Pro anyone?
But we’ll see. I could be wrong. I don’t often make predictions about Apple, but I’m betting that Nike Fuel Band Tim has been wearing on his wrist was gutted out years ago and has had the new Apple wearable tech in it all this time. No wonder he’s smiling.
