I told you today that Apple's iWatch could reach the market by the end of this year, and I am now completing this information with some interesting details. It seems that Jony Ive would lead the team of 100 employees developing the watch, and the device would run iOS from iDevices. It seems that Apple would not want to modify the version of iOS from iPods, but chose to modify the iOS from iPhone to include it in iWatch, but there will be enough changes in the iOS of smartphones to allow interoperability with SmartWatchCPC.
...which we're told is being led by Ive himself with some 100 engineers under him. Interestingly, we're also told that Apple's chosen to rework the full iOS to run on the watch instead of building up the iPod nano's proprietary touch operating system — although the previous nano was already watch-sized and seemed like a great starting point for a watch, Apple's betting on iOS across product lines.
The development process is still far from being completed, one of Apple's main problems being the autonomy of the device. Apple would like it to work for 4-5 days before requiring charging, but for now the company's prototypes are not capable of supporting such autonomy. This small problem, together with a modification of the iOS for the iPhone are just some of the important problems of the iWatch, and for now Apple is trying to bring it to the market in 2013.
That's apparently leading to battery life issues in development, according to our sources: the goal is to last at least 4-5 days between charges, but the current watch prototypes are apparently only going for a couple days max. We're also told Apple has some work to do with iOS on the iPhone, which currently has several hooks for supporting a watch-like device but lacks the appropriate interface or settings to make it work properly. The Pebble watch, for example, can receive notifications from third-party iOS apps with a slight hack, but it has to be redone every time the Bluetooth connection breaks.
