IWatch

Apple Watch is a smartwatch created by Apple Inc. and announced by Tim Cook on September 9, 2014. The Apple Watch incorporates fitness tracking and health-oriented capabilities as well as integration with iOS and other Apple products and services. Apple announced the Apple Watch with three "collections" such as the Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch Edition. The watch will be distinguished by different combinations of cases and interchangeable bands. The watch relies on a connected iPhone to perform many of its functions and will be compatible with the iPhone 5 or later models running iOS 8.2 or later. The device will be available for pre-order on April 10 and is scheduled to begin shipping April 24, 2015.

Features
The Apple Watch will work with Apple Pay, a mobile payment service introduced at the same event as the watch. It is capable of receiving phone calls as well as iMessage and SMS texts via a paired iPhone and can track fitness metrics, run third-party apps and use an Apple feature called "Handoff" (see iOS 8). It can control Apple TV, as well as act as a walkie-talkie, a viewfinder for an iPhone camera, give the wearer directions via native Maps app, and can store loyalty cards and tickets in Passbook. Apple Watch will also include Siri, a personal assistant. Apple Watch uses "force touch" input, which allows the watch to know if the force being applied is hard or soft.

Design
Apple Watch has three collections, featuring two case sizes 38 mm and 42 mm spread across 38 individual models. The case of the watch includes a mechanism to enable the straps to be interchangeable. Its screen is a pressure-sensitive touchscreen that can distinguish between a tap and a press, and features a digital crown, which can be turned to scroll or zoom and pressed to return to the home screen. The watch also has a button for displaying a list of contacts. The watch is charged by means of inductive charging, using a cable similar to the MagSafe cable from Apple's MacBook family of laptops.

Apple designed a new typeface named San Francisco for the Apple Watch which Apple says is designed for legibility on the device's small display.

WatchKit is a software framework included with the iOS SDK that allows developers to create applications for the Apple Watch.

Hardware
The Apple Watch uses Apple's S1 processor, advertised as "an entire computer architecture on a single chip". It also uses a linear actuator called the "Taptic Engine" to provide haptic feedback when an alert or a notification is received. The watch is equipped with a built-in heart rate sensor, which uses both infrared and visible-light LEDs and photodiodes. It is water-resistant with IPX7 rating, so water submersion is not recommended. All versions of the Apple Watch have 8 GB of storage, which allows the user to store up to 2 GB of music and 75 MB of photos, however, this limitation only applies when the Apple Watch is untethered from the user's iPhone; when the Apple Watch is paired with an iPhone all music and photos on that iPhone are available from the Apple Watch. It uses a Flexible retina AMOLED screen. This is the first time an Apple product has used AMOLED technology in one of it's devices.

The watch is compatible with the iPhone 5 and later running iOS 8.2 or later, connected via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth 4.0.

Pre-release reception
Following the announcement, initial impressions from technology and watch industry observers were varied; the watch was praised by some for its "design, potential capabilities and eventual usefulness", while others offered criticism of these same aspects. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said he "can't wait" to try it, and Steve Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson described it as "extremely cool" and an example of future technology that is "much more embedded into our lives". However, Evan Dashevsky of PC Magazine said it offered nothing new in terms of functionality compared to the Moto 360, except the customizable vibration notifications. Benjamin Clymer, a writer focused on the watch industry, generally praised the watch, stating that it "simply blows away anything—digital or analog—in the watch space at $350"; that said, he also suggested the watch would not have the same emotional connection for wearers as traditional watches.

In November 2014, Apple Watch was listed by Time as one of the 25 Best Inventions of 2014.

One of the apps pre-announced as part of the launch, Belle Gibson's Whole Pantry, was withdrawn prior to launch following accusations against its creator of fraud and faking cancer diagnosis.

Forecasts
Financial analysts offered early sales estimates from a few million to as many as 40 million in the first year. Time's Tim Bajarin summarized the breadth of reactions, writing that "there is not enough information yet to determine how this product will fare when it finally reaches the market next year".