Bruce Tognazzini, Apple employee #66, but I’m sure #1 in someone’s heart, shared his thoughts yesterday on a potential smart watch from the Cupertino firm. Tognazzini, who was founder of Apple’s Human Interface Group, thinks a smart watch from Apple could “have a profound impact on our lives and Apple’s fortunes.”
One of the many interesting ideas Tognazzini has about how Apple might take advantage of a wearable device is the ability to build better maps: “Using pressure data from millions of watches, Apple could build a precision altitude map of the world. This map would indicate true altitudes everywhere that iWatch wearers travel. The granularity would be several orders of magnitude greater than ever before attempted for a wide-area map at a cost several orders of magnitude less than Flyover.”
Tognazzini shared what he thinks would be the main features of an “iWatch” from Apple. He outlined the usual stuff like fitness and remote control apps, but two that stood out just make me want to beg for an iWatch; Passcodes and enhanced Find My iPhone.
Passcodes: “The watch can and should, for most of us, eliminate passcodes altogether on iPhones, and Macs and, if Apple’s smart, PCs: As long as my watch is in range, let me in! That, to me, would be the single-most compelling feature a smartwatch could offer: If the watch did nothing but release me from having to enter my passcode/password 10 to 20 times a day, I would buy it…”
Local Find: “As long as your device is close by, just scrawl a question mark on the top of your iWatch or perhaps ask Siri, “Where’s my phone?” and your phone will light up and start chiming….” Automatic Find: “With the iWatch on your wrist, as soon as you move out of range, it will tell you that you’ve forgotten your phone, then help you locate it, as needed.”
Tognazzini also shares why he thinks Apple could succeed when others haven’t been able to, other abilities the watch could have, and how Siri could be involved in all of this.
The whole article is highly recommended reading, and it’s a marvelous look at what an iWatch from Apple could truly be.
You can read the entire article here.
