iWatch Rumor Roundup: Everything We Think We Know

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Brian Barrett

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Brian Barrett

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If it feels like the promise of an Apple smartwatch has been looming forever, that's because it has. And its shadow helped birth the army of other smartwatches that we have today. But now, finally, the near mythical iWatch is rumored to arrive very soon. Here's what we think we know.

What's it called?

Colloquially, Apple's upcoming watch has been referred to as an iWatch, though there's not evidence that this might be its name outside of it following Apple naming conventions. Information about the size of its screen and the bevy of health features it will include suggest it might be actually be more of a "health bangle" anyway. Apple has acquired the trademark to "iWatch" in a number of countries, though that's pretty soft evidence.

Apple has filed patents for a wearable device with swappable screen modules that makes a reference to something called iTime, so that's a possibility as well, though Apple would probably be wiser than to blow the real name in a patent.

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For our purposes, we're going to keep calling it the iWatch and hope that Apple has something more clever up its, er, sleeve.

Design

One of the big (rumored) differentiators for the iWatch is design. That is to say, the iWatch is supposed to look good, unlike most of the other, grosser-looking options that are available right now. (Excluding the Pebble Steel and the Moto 360, of course.)

Evidence of this is backed up by a number of hires that Apple has made in the past few years. Hires like former CEO of Yves Saint Laurent Paul Deneve and Senior VP of Retail Angela Ahrendts, who helped revitalize Burberry as CEO without abandoning its heritage. We're talking legit fashion people, as opposed to tech people with an eye for pretty things.

What will all those expensive salaries come up with though? That's a much bigger question. We've seen concepts left and right, and although some of them look nice, none of them quite has that Apple flair. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a lot of information on what the iWatch will look like. No physical leaks of any sort. In a broader sense that iTime might offer some clues, as it shows a watch-type band with modules that can snap in and out. It's similar to the WIMM One from WIMM Labs, a recent Google acquisition.

These sketches are broad, though, as patent sketches are, and it's meant to cover functionality not design, so it's of little help. Not to mention that patents aren't necessarily indicative of actual products; companies patent things all the time with no intention of ever actually making them. A slightly more substantial and interesting pair of reports came from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, suggesting respectively that the iWatch could have a 2.5-inch screen, and that it might come in different sizes.

A 2.5-inch screen for a traditionally-shaped watch is nuts. The clunky Galaxy Gear clocked in at a mere 1.63-inches. So if the 2.5 inch screen rumor is true, it suggests something either more like a curved bracelet, or a giant hunk of Apple on your wrist. What does seem like a sure thing is that the iWatch will have an unscratchable sapphire glass watchface, due to recent evidence that Apple is producing "jewelry-grade" slices of the stuff. But other than that, the options are still pretty excitingly open.

Apple IOS 2.0

Apple iOS 2.0

The biggest news about iOS 2.0 was the App Store.  Released on July 11th, 2008, the App Store and iOS 2.0’s support for third-party apps gave users access to thousands of apps created by developers. Supported by iTunes and Apple’s carefully crafted ecosystem, the App Store pushed the iPhone years ahead of the competition by providing limitless possibilities on the iPhone. Pretty soon everyone was hearing the catch phrase, “There’s an App for that.”

 To make room for all the new app icons on the Springboard, Apple introduced homescreen pages. Other notable features that appeared in iOS 2.0 were the ability to open MS Office docs, a Contacts icon, ability to take screen captures, ability to save photos in Safari to the Photos app, parental controls, Genius playlist creation, and the addition of emoji. Push email was also brought to the iPhone via iOS 2.0.

Apple has released firmware OS software update version 2.0 for original first generation of iPhone (iPhone 3G has firmware v2.0 by default) and iPod Touch (unfortunately iPod Touch users will have to buy the iPhone OS 2.0 via iTunes). TheiPhone 2.0 software main feature is to enable the access to App Store with lots of native applications and games from the Apple cellphone or portable multimedia mobile device via Wi-Fi or cellular network.

The iPhone OS 2.0 also has tons of other improvements and enhancements. Some of the highlighted features are support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to provide over-the-air push email, contact and calendar syncing as well as remote wipe and Cisco IPsec VPN for encrypted access to corporate networks. Other features include real-time mapping, GPS tracking, geotagging, mass move mails, mass delete multiple email messages, search for contacts, access a new scientific calculator, turn on parental control restrictions for specified content, PowerPoint format viewing support, iWork format viewing support, direct screenshot capturing, MobileMe support, save images directly from a web page or email them to youriPhone and easily transfer them back to your photo library on your Mac or PC.

To apply and upgrade to iPhone OS 2.0 firmware, user are required to download and install iTunes 7.7or newer from Apple.com.

Then connect the iPhone or iPod Touch to the computer, and then in iTunes, and click on Check for Updates button. If updates available (in this case it sure does), then click the Update button to upgrade to firmware v2.0.

However, unlike previous upgrade where settings and media are maintained, do note that upgrade from version 1.x of iPhone software to version 2.0 or later, all data will be deleted and erased in order to install the new software, as pointed out in Apple article. However, iTunes will offer to create a one-time media backup of the device depending on what content is on the device and what content is stored in the iTunes Library the device are connected to. User should ensure that enough free space is available on Mac or PC to accommodate a backup that matches the capacity of the iPhone or iPod touch (4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB).