By Christopher Mims
It's important to understand that like the iPhone before it, the
Apple Watch isn't at all what its name would imply. Let's call it
what it is: a wrist-top computer.
Just as smartphones have become supercomputers in our pockets,
the Apple Watch and its many competitors, including Android-powered
devices from Motorola and Samsung Electronics, are poised to become
something more. And it's their central place in a larger ecosystem
of apps and hardware, rather than any one thing that has been shown
off recently, that will make them indispensable.
"There's so much [the Apple Watch] can do that we haven't really
even talked about," Tim Cook told USA Today on the day of the
announcement.
When a company like Google or Apple deliberately creates a place
for other companies to sell their own, complementary wares, it's
called a platform. Apple, more than Google, has mastered this art,
having worked hard to give developers the tools to make apps for
its mobile devices, plus a controlled environment in which to
profit from them.
Fortunately, we don't have to wait for the Apple Watch and its
app store to become available to get a glimpse of where things
could be going. We have only to look at what pioneering companies
in "wearables" are already working on, and then think about how
their products will become a part of--or be absorbed by--the Apple
Watch and Android Wear ecosystems.
"The vision of Sensoria is that the garment is the next ultra
personal computer," says Sensoria CEO Davide Vigano. To illustrate
his point, he rolls up his pants leg to show me a working prototype
of the world's first smart sock.
I know, it sounds ridiculous. But as he explains with the help
of an iPhone app that visualizes wireless signals sent by
indiscernibly thin pressure sensors in the sock, it's good for
runners who want to reduce their chance of injury. It is also
potentially useful for monitoring the health of the elderly, since
changes in gait are surprisingly predictive of other health issues.
And yes, the smart sock is washable.
Sensoria also makes a smart bra and smart shirt, both of which
can measure heart rate. And here's where things get really
interesting: For all makers of wearables, which until recently have
been dominated by the glorified pedometers known as fitness bands,
fitness applications are just the beginning.
Using a few more of the same sensors it already carries,
Sensoria's shirt could measure not just the frequency but the
pattern of a wearer's heartbeat, Mr. Vigano tells me. Like the
fingerprint sensor on new smartphones, the unique shape of the
electrical signals generated by our hearts are a biometric. Add in
a payment terminal not dissimilar from the ones that will roll out
with Apple Pay, and the wearer of a Sensoria undergarment could
soon find herself verifying payment for her next coffee via
technology in her bra.
One company, Bionym, is already doing something like this. Their
Nymi wristband is an ultra-secure means of personal identification.
Put it on and touch it for four seconds, and it takes an EKG with a
fidelity comparable to what you would get in a hospital. It is then
matched with a previous distillation of your heartbeat pattern
stored in the cloud. Once you put on a Nymi, until you take it off
it uniquely identifies you. Current applications include unlocking
your laptop or smartphone, but Bionym CEO Karl Martin tells me his
company is also working on a version that can be used for
contactless payments, just like many smartphones (including the
iPhone 6) and the Apple Watch.
During Apple's presentation, Apple Vice President Kevin Lynch
announced that BMW has developed an app for the Apple Watch that
will allow users to lock and unlock their BMW i-series electric
vehicles. And Mr. Martin told me that new bluetooth-enabled locks
from companies like Lockitron and Kwikset mean that the moment you
walk up to a door while sporting a recognized wearable, it can
unlock without a touch.
Put all these possibilities together and what you get are a
suite of functions that could almost, but not quite, be
conveniently accomplished by a smartphone. Just as Uber could in
theory work on a PC but didn't really make sense until the dawn of
the smartphone, body-wide wireless networks and computers we never
take off will create applications that simply don't exist yet.
Wearables won't just appeal to fitness nuts and quantified-self
geeks. They will appeal to everyone, because they will be the
primary, perhaps even the sole way we identify ourselves to a world
full of smart objects.
Established makers of wearables have seen this trend and are
already getting in front of it. On the same day that Apple
announced its watch, Jawbone, maker of the UP wristband, announced
that they were opening up their quantified self-software so that
anyone could connect it with devices other than the UP--including
the Apple Watch.
Or in other words, amid the hype about the Apple Watch being a
fitness device, or a timepiece, or a status symbol, it's the
applications that Apple and others aren't even talking about, the
ones that are thought up by countless developers jumping on board
the platform, that will make us wonder how we ever got by without
them.
"We're at the genesis of the sensing industry," says Mr. Vigano.
When smartwatches are cheap enough to be ubiquitous, and if
Sensoria becomes, as Mr. Vigano claims, "the Gore-Tex of
wearables," and if the Jawbone UP and the Nymi wristband become
features of all smartwatches, what then? These devices will be the
way we connect ourselves--directly--to all the technology that
surrounds us. And opting out simply won't be an option.
Follow Christopher Mims on Twitter @Mims or write to him at
christopher.mims@wsj.com.
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