Anybody got the time?
Apple’s new Apple Watch should be able to tell you sometime in April. The Wall Street Journal Digits blog is reporting that Apple has asked its Asian suppliers to make five to six million units of the initial three Apple Watch models.
Last night, the Journal also revealed that a number of the planned health features that Apple intended to include in this first-gen wearable were cut from the final product.
9 to 5 Mac posted that some of the features, like tracking stress or blood pressure, were too complex to institute, or ran the risk of triggering government regulations that Apple preferred to avoid.
In the initial production run, it’s estimated that half of the first-quarter output would be for the entry-level Apple Watch Sports and one-third for the mid-tier model (the one with stainless-steel casing and sapphire crystal watch face).
That would leave roughly 17 percent available for the high-dollar gold Apple Watch Edition, which the Journal speculates would cost around $4,000 or more. If I did my math correctly, the gold versions alone could generate some $4 billion in revenue.
But that’s all speculation.
What I’m really interested in seeing play out is whether the use case is there or not, or if the allure of a new Apple product is so great that people will forgo the rationality of a compelling use case (beyond telling the time, of course) and count the seconds until they can get in line at the Apple store.
Me, I think the idea is one whose time has come.
We didn’t know we needed an iPod until Steve Jobs delivered it to us, changing the music industry forever. Ditto for the iPad.
My primary reservation since I first heard about the Apple Watch was this notion of the device needing to be "tethered" to an Apple iPhone 6/6 Plus. Remember the BlackBerry PlayBook? Yeah, me neither.
Sir Jonathan Ives, Apple’s senior VP of design, in a recent New Yorker profile article explained why he thought the face for such devices "was the wrong place" (Google Glass) and why the wrist (Apple Watch) was the right one:
"This isn’t obnoxious. This isn’t building a barrier between you and me. If I get a notification here, it will tap my wrist [with silent vibrations]…I can casually look and see what’s going on."
Will it be good, good, good…good vibrations for the Apple Watch?
Only time will tell.
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