viz.

(Image credit: Business Insider)

Speculation has flared up this week about what Apple might think to include in an “iWatch”. This happened after Nick Bilton revealed in The New York Times blog Monday that the company has been experimenting with a curved form of Gorilla glass. Per usual, Apple has not commented on the product and we shouldn’t expect them to any time soon. But I thought it might be fun here to consider two things: first, a look at some of the many iterations of what an iWatch might look like, and secondly, a meditation on the potential uses of such a “smart watch”. Over the past few years I’ve been seeing ramblings of the coming of the smart watch, and I’m just not sure these things will be of use to twenty-first century humans. Younger people are increasingly less prone to wearing watches because, for the most part, they’ve already got a phone on their person. Are we to expect that we’ll want a smart watch in addition to a smart phone? Doesn’t such excess betray the supposed convenience of technology that made us fall in love with it in the first place?

Preparations being made for today's media event.

(Image credit: Luis Gutierrez)

Apple’s set to release some new products later today, and I thought it’d be fun to round up the most credible rumors and then we can all check back later and evaluate the quality of my intel. As a recent Secretary of State complained, “But they don’t tell us when; they don’t tell us where; they don’t tell us who; and they don’t tell us how.” I predict that later today Apple will give us a new iteration of the iPhone, stretched to new dimensions, and an additional iPad model, shrunk but with its big brother’s current dimensions. These things sound cool. Honestly, my only hope is that they don’t call the new iPhone the “iPhone 5,” as that would present a dilemma for those of us keeping track. Let’s pretend that the first iPhone was iPhone 1, then the iPhone 3G would confusingly have been the iPhone 2, which means the iPhone 3GS was the iPhone 3, and the iPhone 4 was (thankfully) the iPhone 4, all of which means that last year’s iPhone 4S was the iPhone 5. We already have an iPhone 5. Is it premature to worry that later today Apple might be giving us something that we already have?