Apple Watch ‘appeared’ in retail today, and although there was no excited crowd this morning in Apple’s Flagship London store on Regent’s Street, the popular press have been reporting speculation that the watch will sell out, before it goes on sale, on April 24. Today, from 8:01am Apple Watch was available to order online from Apple, but if you’d like to try before you buy, Apple Retail in the UK has them in-store today in their retail stores. In a move similar to the iPhone launch, it appears that your local Apple reseller, even Apple Premium Resellers, will not have AppleWatch in store for teh foreseeable future, so your option for buying is a pretty narrow one; order online and when it enters mainstream retail, it will be via Apple’s online or retail channels only.
I wrote about the patent for this watch, the ‘iTime patent’ last year and whilst pricing worked out as anticipated it seems Apple have very firmly launched a First-Generation product, in the style of the initial iPhone launch. In the redcert Podcast, Dermot Daly the founder of Tapadoo discussed his impression as a developers of the development tools that for WatchKit, and although some speculation since, I think the lack of interfaces or features around the straps for instance illustrate that the watch is likely to be a slow-burner; Straps are The New Apps I thought, but not yet it seems.
The list of apps being prepared for AppleWatch is growing, but the screen size of AppleWatch means there are certain sectors that will benefit most from moving their content to the small screen and as the Apple Watch became available for order today, Hotels.com announced an update to its Apple app, that will facilitate users with Apple Watches to receive notifications direct to their wrist through a vibrating alert, commencing on April 24.
Hotel Guests booking via Hotels.com will be notified about their upcoming reservation and have access to their booking details accompanied by an image of the hotel and address and in addition the app screens will include directions to the hotel and will issue reminders to the guest about check-in and check-out detail.
One of the most useful features though, may well be a feature that enables the 40 million or so downloaders of the Hotels.com app users to identify last-minute hotel deals in their current location, allowing selection of hotel by their preferred rate, including access to 20,000 mobile exclusive deals.
