Apple Watch and Physical Touch

I was at a family event today and talking to relatives about the Apple Watch. Everyone is expecting the notifications to be useful but the more I think about it, I’m really interested in where this is all going with the Taptic touch features. The ability to draw a picture on my watch and have it appear on my wife’s watch seems nifty but I’d argue the tap could be more useful.

With two Apple Watches I can tap on my watch which would result in my wife’s watch tapping her wrist. Just think about that for a moment. We’re using technology to remotely physically touch one another. I think this opens up a lot of interesting possibilities.

  • One tap as I’m pulling in the driveway and we need to leave for our next appointment.
  • Two taps when I’m leaving the park and walking home.
  • Three taps while at a party = I want to go home.

John Gruber recently talked about this on The Talk Show when explaining how he’d like to use watch taps to communicate with his son when picking him up from the movies. Thinking about this, I’m not aware of any prior technology that gave these options and I have to think that when this thing gets out to the public, we’ll find all sorts of interesting ways to use it. The next few months are going to be fun.