Isn't this what they are doing the exact opposite of? They made something wonderful the first time, but never seemed to move.

I don't think so. I actually see them at the bleeding edge with the watch, attempting to take a technology that long-term will be ubiquitous in a world where the screen in your pocket is abstracted away in favor of a computer whose interface does not involve mashing your meat sticks against a slab of glass.

Of course, we're nowhere near that yet. In particular voice recognition technology and the associated hardware (picking up a voice command in a loud public space has just as much to do with your mic as it does your noise cancellation and recognition software) is nowhere near where it needs to be, and by the time it is, the device might not be living on your wrist (although it could).

There's so much more that has to happen before people move beyond hand held computers. Battery life is another huge one. I just think it's interesting that a product that so many see no good reason for is already a billion dollar business at least, not even a year in. I actually have to give them credit for building something this strong while it's true potential is just so far out still. A lot of that has goes beyond technical capabilities and has to do with design and psychology. Between the time our computers are in our pockets and inside our bodies, we're going to wear them, and wearing things introduces a whole host of touchy-feely problems that non-fashion computers don't have to deal with, or don't have to deal with as much. To me, Apple's watch is everything Google's joke of a wearable wasn't. Apple was smart enough to not even try to make it too technically capable. A subtle but profound difference. Right now, I think the company best suited to disrupting the iPhone with another consumer product is Apple with their watch. I'll insert one major caveat, which is that the next wave of wearable computing is going ditch the screen and be heavily reliant on voice and cloud computing, an area where Google is absolutely king, and Apple has been historically suckass and weak (but undeniably improving). Another thought is that it may be enough to be good enough here. See Apple maps. Good enough for nearly everybody on iOS, but simply nowhere near as good as Google Maps, nor will it probably ever be.