viz.

(Image credit: Macrumors.com)

A few weeks ago I wrote about the breaking news that there might be an Apple iWatch on the horizon. For those of you who missed the post, I surmised that the device would be a useless accessory. We got the iPad for those moments between our iPhones and our iMacs (as Steve Jobs famously put it during the latter product’s initial announcement). Presumably we got the iPad Mini for those moments between our iPad and our iPhone, whatever those moments might be. And now we’ll have an iWatch for the moments between our iPhones and our….wait, what?! The idea of the possibility of this much interactivity strikes me as bizarre. The internet’s great and it makes my life easier, etc., but I’m the kind of guy who uses his iPhone as an alarm clock but waits to read emails from students until after a cup of coffee. Know what I mean? The idea of spending the first ten minutes of my waking day getting caught up on what happened in my work life while I was sleeping strikes me as a terrible way to live. And wouldn’t you get an iWatch to do just this? Wouldn’t you get an iWatch to get caught up on work when you should really be doing something else? All these new Apple products are starting to remind me of a lesson I learned in middle school: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can cram an iOS onto your wrist doesn’t mean you should.

(Image credit: Zdnet.com)

Anyways, the reason I’m bringing all this up again is that earlier this week Bloomberg News published a story in which they reported that Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer, previously ordered a box of Nike watches that were produce in the mid-2000’s. The article is unclear about when Ive ordered these watches, but they factoid should allow us a bit of insight into what Apple might have in store for consumers. As you can see in the image at the top of this post, the Nike watch features a relatively solid strap, and they more or less stiffly clip onto the user’s wrist. Ive’s order of Nike watches, coupled with previous reports that Apple was investigating possibilities with curved glass (see their patent for the glass above), suggests that they have some futuristic device in the hopper. And this is crazy in the context of a watch, I think – most people under the age of 25 don’t wear watches. The reason they don’t wear watches is that they often have a phone in their pocket with which they can check the time. People who grew up without the ubiquity of cell phones often always wear watches. The next time you’re at a mixed-generation gathering, take a poll of who’s wearing watches – I promise it’ll be a generational thing.

So, I suppose any decision to wear an iWatch would probably be an aesthetic thing, mainly. While the device will surely feature some nice programs and whatnot, one’s ability to say…type on such a product will inherently be limited by the size of the thing. Sorry to bombard you with more thoughts on the forthcoming Apple iWatch, but Ive’s order of Nike watches seemed to warrant the issue.