Writing for the Slate, Jon Nathanson suggests that the technology that will power Apple’s rumored iWatch device is already here. Nathanson believes that many analysts have written off Apple’s iBeacon technology, which enables iDevices to transmit data seamlessly to each other across Bluetooth 4.0 signals as a retail play, in the form targeted ads, but nothing could be further from the truth.
[su_quote]But iBeacon is much more than that. It is the infrastructure on which the iWatch will run. For all intents and purposes, iBeacon is the iWatch. The advantage of a wearable device, after all, rests in its ability to interact with the Internet of Things. All that remains for Apple is to build its Internet around the world’s things. As of early 2014, iBeacon is picking up a lot of attention from developers and partners, but it hasn’t reached the critical mass necessary to make iWatch immediately and ubiquitously useful. In theory, every device running iOS 7 is a beacon. But more software needs to be written to take advantage of that fact. IDevices are now theoretically able to co-stream media, transmit information, update one another, and even physically link up to form new device configurations. Developers will have to unlock this potential, just as the market forces of the App Store will need to tap iBeacon’s potential.[/su_quote]
Is Jon Nathanson right? Has Apple given us a glimpse of how iWatch will work with their iBeacon technology?
