Apple Will Light the Wearable Tech Fire

Personally, I'm impressed with the early teaser of the Moto 360 -- and pleased to see a company take on a major design challenge and create a sweet product, which incidentally plays well with the roundness of the Web these days, not to mention Google+. But it's not enough. It's going to take Apple to fire the shot heard round the wearable tech world.

I'm usually not a prediction sort of guy because it's cosmically silly -- we're tiny little humans on a tiny little rock spinning in a very large universe. Yet here I am, looking at 2014 and the latest batch of smartwatch efforts from Samsung, Google, Motorola and LG.

Here's what I see: All of these manufacturers and creators are charging forward into the smartwatch arena with some interesting and incremental improvements to the watch. However, none has created anything that will resurrect the watch for whole generations of people who have either abandoned it in favor of smartphone clocks -- or never wore one in the first place.
Earlier this week, Google announced its Android Wear program to help extend Android to wearable devices -- to smartwatches and beyond. Nice. It's a good start.

Motorola also revealed a sleek (and nearly sexy) round Moto 360 smartwatch.


Meanwhile, LG is getting in on the action, and Samsung has released pricing on its Gear 2 (US$295) and Gear Fit ($197) smartwatches, which will hit the market in April.
It's all good stuff -- just not insanely great.