The "iWatch"

These guys must be very pleased with themselves. It seems that an Italian design firm, ADR Studio, has already come up with not only a design, but also packaging, and even a mock advertisement and an unboxing video for a device they call the iWatch.

As you can judge from these photos (more here), everything was done very tastefully and very Apple-like that frankly all Steve Jobs ought to do is give these guys a call and give the green-light for the iWatch's mass-production.



ADR Studio lists down the iWatch's "features":

- Aluminium body
- WiFi and Bluetooth
- Integrated RSS Reader
- 16GB;
- Weather forecast system;
- Possibility to connect to the Bluetooth or WiFi to iPhone / iPad
- LCD projector to show everywhere pictures by your iPhone / iPad
- Available in various colors

As this was designed prior to the introduction of iPhone 4, there's no FaceTime yet in the features. That wouldn't be difficult, would it? I'm not a watch person, but if I see these babies in my favorite Apple reseller's shelves, I might buy two.

Could it be??

Tw.apple.pro has the cult of Apple buzzing when it posted last week photos of a 3cm x 3cm touch screen bearing an Apple copyright stamp. It would be easy to dismiss such postings as a hoax if not for the fact that the same site had posted photos of spare parts before that turned out to be components for actual Apple products. The photos are intriguing because nobody knows exactly what product in Apple's current line-up could make use of said spare part. A new iPod? A new peripheral for the iPad when using a physical keyboard?

However, what really sparked my interest was this rendering by Apple.pro in the same post, causing me to gasp a little:


Gasp. Could it be??

In last month's keynote by Steve Jobs to introduce the iPhone 4, I admit my eyes moistened (a bit) when he picked up that phone and called Jonathan Ive using FaceTime. "It's real now," he said. Of course, what he's talking about was the ability to make video calls using hand-held devices, the stuff of our childhood sci-fi and comic book fantasies.

Let me backtrack a bit. When we say hand-held devices, we actually mean this:


It certainly wouldn't be the first phone wristwatch. LG released a similar device last year. However, we're talking video here. And if Apple could make possible FaceTime calls over 3G, then Steve Jobs' promise of shipping "tens of millions of FaceTime devices this year" would be a possibility. Anticipating!

Apple's new iPhone 4 FaceTime ads