What’s an “iWatch”?
I don’t know. And unless you’ve signed an Apple nondisclosure agreement, I’m pretty sure you don’t either.
But thanks to Google, Samsung and LG, we know what it won’t be.
It won’t be a miniature smartphone strapped to your wrist.
Several of those, built on Google’s (GOOG) Android Wear platform, have already hit the market, and the Wall Street Journal‘s Joanna Stern put two of them through their paces last week.
Her verdict: They are nothing she or any of her friends would ever consider buying. Her best friend, who is getting married this summer, told Stern on camera in no uncertain terms that if she tried to wear either one to the ceremony, she’d be disinvited.
In a two-hour episode of The Talk Show podcast that aired Friday, Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber and Stratechery‘s Ben Thompson took Stern’s video review as their starting point and made a strong case that Apple would never come out with anything that looked remotely like the Samsung Gear Live ($199) or the LG G Watch ($229).
It might not have a screen, suggests Thompson, thus avoiding the need for daily recharging. It might not even tell the time, adds Gruber, since the iPhone already does that.
It’s more likely, they suggest, to be a $300 fashion accessory that does a couple of things so cool that when you see it you say: “Hey, I’d like one of those.”
What those things would be is anybody’s guess.
LINK: The Talk Show with John Gruber, Episode 87. The iWatch discussion begins at 1:22:50.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe (free!) via his RSS feed.
