Apple is clearly hoping to redefine the luxury watch category in much the same way that the iPhone redefined the smartphone market. Today the company provided more details on its long-awaited Apple Watch, as well as iOS 8.2, a new notebook computer and a series of medical research projects.
Apple Watch
Three models will be available beginning April 24, online and in Apple retail stores, with pre-orders starting April 10. The Apple Watch Sport has colorful bands reminiscent of the iPhone 5C. It will retail for $349 sporting a 38-millimeter screen, and $400 for the 42-millimeter version.
The midlevel Apple Watch is made of custom stainless steel in space gray or silver, and will sell for $549 to $1,100 depending on the size and the materials chosen. Finally, the Apple Watch Edition is an 18-carat gold version that starts at $10,000 and is only available from select retailers.
“The Apple Watch is the most personal device we have ever created,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “It’s not just with you, it’s on you.”
With that in mind, Apple is offering a variety of watch faces, both analog and digital. Themes range from elegant and understated to light-hearted and retro. (The company showed a Mickey Mouse watch face several times at today’s press conference.)
The Apple watches can send and receive calls, texts and e-mails when paired with an iPhone. Text messages can be sent as audio files. Tapping the side button brings up a “friends list,” and a user can draw a “finger paint” picture for a friend that will appear on the friend’s watch face.
The watches boast an 18-hour battery life, and are charged via a magnetic charger that clicks onto the back. The watches are said to be accurate within 50 milliseconds of the universal time standard.
By swiping up from the bottom of the watch face a user can see weather forecasts, calendar, music control and heart rate. The watch tracks movement and sends a message if the user has been sitting too long. (Apple did not say how long is too long.)
The combination of Siri, Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant, with advanced sensors means that users can ask their watch for a reminder to be delivered when they arrive at a given destination, and in theory Siri will comply.
Apple Pay is also a big part of the Apple Watch. Credit cards can be loaded into the watch, and putting the watch near an enabled merchant terminal triggers a payment once the user has specified the amount.
Apple Watch apps designed for travelers were showcased at the company’s launch event, as executives demonstrated how the watch can be used to move through airport security without a paper boarding pass and unlock a hotel room without a key.
Apple said that its latest iOS 8.2 is now available for download and that this will be the gateway to Apple Watch apps. iPhone users will see the Apple Watch app in iOS 8.2.
New MacBook
“We challenged ourselves to take everything we had learned in designing iPhones and iPads and do something incredibly ambitious,” said Cook, in describing the company’s latest laptop computer. “We challenged ourselves to reinvent the notebook and we did it.”
Apple said the new MacBook weighs 2 pounds and is 13.1-millimeters thick. The keyboard goes all the way to the edge of the base and has larger keys than previous MacBooks. One key feature is a “force touch trackpad” which is managed by software. Apple said that pressing the trackpad deeply is now called a “force click” and that it will trigger predetermined responses. For example, if a user force clicks a location a map will pop up, and force clicking an attachment in an e-mail will preview the attachment without even opening the application.
The new notebook has a 3.3 million pixel display and is offered in silver, space gray and gold. It is powered by a 2.9 GHz Intel processor built on a 14-nanometer process. It supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Apple says the new notebook has 35% more battery life than previous MacBooks due to contoured battery cells, promising 9 hours of wireless Web surfing or 10 hours of iTunes playback.
Medical research
“Perhaps the most profound change and positive impact that iPhone will make is on our health,” Cook said, noting that there are now more than 900 iOS apps for health and fitness. Apple said it has partnered with leading research hospitals worldwide to develop medical research apps that it hopes will be a prototype for more.
Apple said that medical research is limited by the difficulty that doctors have in finding suitable subjects. Meanwhile, many people who struggle with medical symptoms are willing to share data if it is secure and easy to do so, and Apple’s new Research Kit apps are meant to facilitate that.
“Research Kit is a software framework made specifically for medical researchers. It turns iPhone and HealthKit into powerful diagnostic tools,” said Cook. The apps leverage sensors that are already built into the iPhone to collect data. Apple stressed that it will never see the data that people send to doctors.
“We want anyone anywhere to be able to contribute, so we are actually going to make this open source,” said Jeff Williams, SVP of operations at Apple. “There’s a brilliant and motivated research community out there and we can’t wait to see what they do with it.”
So far, Apple has partnered with selected hospitals to create apps that will allow data sharing by breast cancer survivors as well as by individuals with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease and asthma.
iPhone, Apple Pay, CarPlay
Apple also offered a quick update on iPhone sales, saying that the company recently surpassed 700 million iPhone sales and that the iPhone is the top-selling smartphone in the world, with sales growing twice as quickly as the overall smartphone industry last quarter.
Apple Pay is clearly a key iPhone feature from Apple’s perspective. Cook said that within three months Apple has tripled the number of retail locations that accept Apple Pay, with 700,000 retail sites now on board. In addition, Apple said it now has 2,500 partner banks.
The company needs all the momentum it can get here. Last week Samsung said that its new Galaxy S6 smartphone can be used to accomplish contactless payment using standard magnetic stripe credit card readers, giving Samsung a huge addressable market for mobile payments.
Apple also said today that every major car brand has committed to delivering CarPlay and that Coca-Cola plans to have 100,000 Apple Pay-enabled vending machines by the end of the year.
HBO Now
Apple also announced an expected partnership with HBO, called HBONow, in which Apple TV owners will get access to all past and present HBO content. The service will cost $15 per month. Apple said it has already sold 25 million Apple TV units and that now the company is cutting the price to $69. Apple and HBO will be launching HBONow in April, ahead of the premiere of “Game of Thrones” on HBO.
