Is This The iPhone Replacement?

Another good iWatch story, talking rumors and potential developments. Here’s my previous thoughts on it from last year.

I think the golden era for the smart phone is dwindling. They will probably never go away but (given skype, facetime, google hangouts, webex, join.me, etc.) phones have already stopped being the only/best way to voice communicate with people.

If Apple gets even 50% of the existing iPhone functionality into a watch I’ll be a customer. I want my pocket back. All of these new features that an iWatch might do are just extra. I’d love to have a heart monitor, workout computer, and bike computer on my wrist at all times. I’d love a small shock or silent vibration to notify my inner wrist. I’d love to be able to do basic button controls on the face and use voice to handle large text entry. Hopefully they also make some slick, nearly hidden bluetooth headset.

I actually could see apple going more sci-fi and not calling it a watch at all. They could be working to “reinvent” the watch, much like they reinvented the PC, the walkman, the smartphone, and the tablet computer. It is becoming much more of a Star-Trek like communicator and tri-corder than a phone or watch.

The Star Trek “Communicator Badge” responded to voice control and acted as a general health and location monitor. The iWatch would do all of that and more. Come to think of it, the current iPhone is becoming more and more like the Star Trek “tri-corder” from the 80’s, which gave it’s user a strong sensor and visual array to supply data readouts needed for space crew people – structural, gravitational, air-quality, language translation, and ambient readings.

Since we aren’t on a spaceship meeting alien races we don’t require some of those, but many of them are available from the internet with a properly configured smartphone. Trek had great technology, but they didn’t have GoogleMaps, WeatherUnderground, Wikipedia, Foursquare, Twitter, Youtube, Skype, and Flash bootleg sites. Their versions appeared to be closed and military-based (supplied by the institution and programmed by the institution). So much of our data is open-source or crowd-sourced, and ad-supported. But it’s there and in 2014 we are finally getting close to sci-fi of the 1980’s.