Yesterday brought a surprising report about the development of an Apple pin, which The Information likened to the mysterious and as-yet-unreleased AI hardware device designed by Jony Ive.
I have a pretty strong suspicion about what the Apple pin is, and I’m very confident indeed that I know what it isn’t …
The Apple pin report
The report was a curious mixture of highly specific information and extreme vagueness.
The specificity related to the physical characteristics of the device. We’re told that it has a similar size and form factor to an AirTag, has a physical button along one of its edges, and contains two cameras, three microphones and a speaker. For an early-stage, unreleased product, that’s pretty specific.
However, the detail in the report ended there. We don’t know whether it’s a standalone product or an iPhone accessory, for example. Most crucially, there was absolutely nothing in the report about why the product was being developed or what it is supposed to do.
A crucial sentence
The report started confidently with the bold claim that “Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin.” Just two paragraphs later, however, was a rather crucial sentence:
Apple’s development is in the very early stages and could still be canceled.
We know that Apple experiments with all kinds of technology that never come anywhere close to being released – you only have to read the company’s incredibly diverse patent filings to know this.
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