There is no shortage of articles about the Apple Watch. Throughout all of Winter and Spring has it either been hailed as breakthrough, labeled not for everyone or been called a flop. Then came Summer and it seemed like everything had been said, so the public discussion moved to sales figures rather than sticking with the question: What does the device mean for daily life?
The culprit may be the focus on its shape of a wrist-mounted time keeper – There really are only so many ways we can ask the question whether we need a computer on the wrist and whether it’s helpful or annoying to be tapped for every notification.
This, however, may be a short-sighted view of what the device represents.
We should not be distracted by it’s form-factor. Sure, it carries the word watch in its name and even Apple refers to it as a timepiece on their product page. But they also call it their ‘most personal device’ and that is what we should look at closer.
A personal device
Tim Cook explained that Apple Watch allowed his childhood dream to finally come true: communicating like Dick Tracy.
"I have been wanting to do this
since I was 5 years old."
Tim Cook
Dick Tracy’s watch, however, never became famous for being a mere timepiece. It was a 2-way radio, allowing him hands-free communication while chasing gangsters. And he wasn’t the only one with a gadget like this. Roughly two decades later, Gene Roddenberry picked up on this idea and equipped his Star Trek crews with communicators. Not in watch form, but flip-phone style and later as a wearable badge would they facilitate 2-way communications and in addition take voice commands for the ship’s board computer.
Sound familiar? Indeed. In essence, this is Siri, Apple’s version of voice recognition software. And Siri is what will make Apple Watch be the lead figure in one of the biggest pivot points since the invention of computers: the beginning departure from tactile-based interaction. Let’s take a look why that is.
Siri's evolution
Siri has been around ever since iPhone 4S was introduced way back on October 14, 2011. But throughout most of its existence the technology felt a bit off. It was prone to comprehension errors and somewhat sluggish in reaction. For most people the technology was little more than a way to occasionally receive funny answers to random questions.
But the technology has silently evolved, and not just on Apple’s Campus. There’s Google Now, Microsoft's Cortana, and now Facebook’s M – we have long entered an era where natural language commands can be processed in an instant and with remarkable accuracy.
Alas, this development went largely unnoticed, because so far it had one major flaw: If you have to pick up your phone and hold it up to your mouth to give it commands, there is little upside in terms of convenience or time, especially in days of TouchID. With your phone in your hand you may as well put down your thumb and type.
Now, however, Siri has left its distant phone cage and moved into a wearable device on the wrist. This is a different ballgame altogether for voice recognition.
Siri has left its distant cage.
A few weeks ago I drove to pick up my wife from work. Without taking my hands off the steering wheel I said “Hey Siri, let my wife know I’ll be there in 5 minutes.” Siri then instantly identified the message part in what I said, figured out which contact corresponded to 'my wife' and sent out a text, reading only “I’ll be there in 5 minutes.” It was a delightful, intuitive and very personal experience with a whiff of science fiction.
This is what makes the concept behind Apple Watch a winner in the long run. Not the form of a watch, not the delivery of notifications to your wrist, but the possibility to interact in a way that feels human and personal, turning our devices into life companions.
Interact in a way that feels human and personal
The movie HER still stands as a great example of what tactile-less computer interfacing could become one day and Wired Magazine wrote a great piece on this. The small Apple Watch is nothing less than the first step towards this much bigger future.
What lies ahead
Apple may have chosen the form factor because we know what a watch is, so it’s a familiar and friendly prologue to this new era. Nobody is ready to wear a communicator badge just yet. But voice is the interface of the near future and a device that allows this kind of interaction can come in any shape. It doesn’t need to be on the wrist, have a screen or even only be visible in plain sight. All it needs is a microphone close to our mouth and a way to feedback information, be it vocal, visual or taptical, if that’s a word.
That brings us back to Tim Cooks introduction speech in which he claimed that ‘nobody wears a watch anymore'. At some point that will also hold true for the Apple Watch. That’s the day when Apple is going to introduce the 'Siri Clip-on'.
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