Apple Watch

The Apple Watch will be available in a wide variety of configurations, but there is one more way to personalize your Apple Watch that Apple didn't even mention. If you purchase the Sport version, and pick up a second Sport band in a different color, you could mix and match and have a band that is part green and part blue for example. You could use any combination of black, white, pink, blue, and green, perhaps to reflect your favorite sports team or college colors. (I can't do that for my college, since Carnegie Mellon's official "colors" were plaid!) I put together an animated GIF showing the possible color combinations.

We've "sprung forward." Now we know what the specs are for the Apple Watch, and most importantly, what it will cost, in each configuration. We know that the somewhat smaller watches with a 38 mm case (height) will cost $50 less than the 42 mm ones. We also know there is no functional difference between the smaller one and the larger one. For my money, I will probably get the smaller one. It should be somewhat less bulky and perhaps more importantly, $349 is closer to an impulse buy (at least as Apple products go) versus $399. As an app developer with several watch apps on the horizon, I know I need to own an Apple Watch. But that doesn't mean I need a fancy one.

Would you take fashion advice from Apple's Tim Cook, Eddie Cue, Jimmy Iovine, Phil Schiller or even Dr. Dre or Jony Ive? If so, you would probably wear an untucked dress shirt with a button undone or a slim fitting dark t-shirt all the time (except when getting knighted by the Queen.) Thankfully, their fashion sense didn't dictate our options for the Apple Watch.

Thanks to the Apple Watch, we can now get apps everywhere—from our MacBooks on our lap and the iPad on the desk, to our iPhones in our hands and our Apple Watches on our wrist.

Excitement is building as next Monday's announcement draws near. Everyone is expecting the event to focus on details of the forthcoming Apple Watch. We already know a fair amount, thanks to the announcement last fall. And more details emerged when Apple released the WatchKit tools for developers. Plus, there have been a number of rumors.

This article appeared in the March/April 2015 issue of iPhone Life magazine. To subscribe to the magazine, visit iPhoneLife.com/subscribe.

There's a couple of things that could happen with the Apple Watch that could get me on board as an early adopter. One, it could function as a standalone device, and that we now know, won't happen, at least not with its first couple of iterations. For now the Apple Watch is only an extension of the iPhone. Two, it could support games and video streaming. For me the ability to use an Apple Watch for entertainment and media consumption is as important as its productivity potential. Yes, I said gaming and video, and while some might scoff at the notion of using such a small screen for such things, I was one of those people who had an iPod Classic loaded with movies and the few paltry games that were available for that old model, so I don't have a problem consuming entertainment on a small screen. And while my first criteria for an independently functioning Apple Watch might still be a few years away, an Apple Watch capable of delivering gaming experiences and video streaming may be something developers jump on sooner rather than later.

With the March 9 announcement date revealed, with the cheeky "Spring Forward" message indicative of turning clocks ahead, we can now look forward to what comes after the Apple Watch. Yes, there will be updates to the MacBook Air, with a 12-inch screen expected, and maybe a 12-inch iPad Pro as well. Others have written about the 200 engineers working on an Apple Car, although I think the likelihood of Apple shipping cars is still small.

There's not much to go on, and not many blogs have picked this up. Yet I pass it along, given that I'd love to think that Apple may be offering a special event soon. According to Tgaap, Apple may be holding a special event on February 24. They aren't clear on the date, though, nor on what will be announced. But their "research" suggests that Tim Cook will revisit the Apple Watch and may introduce yet new features. Plus, at that time he would announce the availability dates and pricing for all the various models. According to Tgaap, Apple itself hasn't yet settled on a specific date when the Apple Watch will be available. Which makes sense, given that it often depends on how smoothly mass production goes. And production has only recently begun. The post also says something unknown will be announced, possibly Apple Watch-related. In addition, Tgaap says Apple will announce a new entry-level MacBook Pro with retina display.