Ex-Apple designer Steve Jacobs looks to enter the smartwatch game with his own Olio Model One, a potential rival to the iPhone maker’s upcoming Apple Watch, says a report from BGR. The Model One, with a mesmerizing metallic design, marks the first real competitor of the Apple Watch.
Potential rival to Apple Watch
Jacobs, a former product development manager at Apple, left the company to co-found his own firm, Olio. He has worked for companies such as Google, Beats by Dr. Dre and Amazon.
Now with the Model One being released, Olio seems to be following in the footsteps of Apple. A higher-end smartwatch, the Model One makes style and design front and center instead of fitting a smartwatch operating system into an appalling watch-like housing. Appearing similar to higher-end watches with leather or stainless steel bands and a simple round dial, the Model One was created to be the “antithesis of a mass market product, produced to be everything to everyone,” according to Jacobs.
In addition, the company is expected to be joined by designers and engineers from companies such as NASA, Pixar and Swiss watch maker Movado to aid the former Apple executive in his pursuit of creating “thoughtfully crafted products for the discerning individual who wants the latest technology, but on their own terms.”
Impressive features
Further, the watch displays notifications into a “simple and intuitive time-based format” to avoid an overflow of data at any point. Also it categorizes information on the basis of how frequently any piece of data is being used and sorts it all accordingly. Other features include Olio Assist, a cloud-based assistant that provides suggestions based on your preferences, a Control Hub that can be used to regulate thermostats, lights and make payments, and Temporal Streams that organize notifications and information into two basic and intuitive time streams—earlier and later.
As far as the hardware is concerned, the watch has an attractive Swiss-inspired metal design, and it was reported by Forbes that Olio is “building all of its hardware and software from scratch.”
Olio has planned for two limited production runs that will manufacture 500 units of the stainless-steel watches priced at $595 per piece and 500 black steel watches costing $745.
