A Close Watch ⇥ ft.com

Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times:

Apple has invited small groups of developers to its Silicon Valley offices to help them prepare their apps for its Watch, as it gears up for the launch at the end of this month.

Observed by security guards and instructed to cover up the cameras on their iPhones, a few dozen handpicked designers and engineers have each spent a day at Apple’s labs in Sunnyvale, California to test their apps on the device.

The Tech Block’s Abdel Ibrahim:

I see the future of Apple Watch as a product that demonstrates a masterful, seamless aptitude for authenticating our existence to corresponding terminals and locks. Sure, you may need an “app” with your login info to have some of that happen, but actually needing to expend any energy or attention interacting with it seems backwards. If the idea is to remove friction, then part of that mandates at least some removal of the need to touch the display. In fact, the way Apple Pay works on iPhone now is exactly how I’d want all my authentication to work: On iPhone 6, you don’t need to wake up your phone or open any apps. You just raise your phone to the terminal and your card shows up. Then you touch your finger to TouchID, it reads your print, and you’re done. That’s the equivalent of one tap. Much more than that, and you’re looking at more hassle than convenience.

The iPhone ushered in the age of apps; the Apple Watch looks set to usher in the age of completely seamless interaction.