A few months ago, a rash of headlines suggested you’d be wearing an iWatch on your wrist by the end of the year. They were almost certainly wrong — and now a Financial Times report suggests we could be in for an even longer wait.
The FT report explains that, according to sources, Apple has been aggressively hiring staff to work on the much-rumoured smartwatch, to add to the “several dozen” already actively working on the project. The newspaper even goes on to warm that Cook and co could yet still scrap the project.
Duh. Of course they could: Apple famously ditches ideas that don’t work. Besides, any technology company worth its salt pours time, money and effort into research and ideas; just because they hit the rumour mill doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily ever be able to buy ’em.
Interestingly, the newspaper does say that, if the project goes ahead, sources tell it that a watch definitely wouldn’t be ready for retail until the second half of 2014 — which, rightly, tramples all over those rumours from earlier this year. If that’s correct, it will be interesting to see if any other manufacturers — Google, Samsung, Pebble, whoever — can take advantage of the lag over the next 12 months. [FT via MacRumors]