The Apple II Watch is a DIY project for geeks

Apr 10, 2015 09:21 GMT  ·  By

Apple has officially opened up pre-orders for its highly hyped Watch this week, which is expected to draw in numerous eager customers.

But albeit being labeled the Messiah of all wearables, the Apple Watch has failed to impress some folks. It’s the case of this DIY enthusiast who built his own replica of Cupertino’s smartwatch and modestly called it Apple II Watch.

Aleator777 created its own Apple Watch using 3D printing technology, and he took inspiration from the retro design of the Apple II. The gizmo actually works and is capable of telling you the time.

The creator has attached a parody press release where he announces Apple’s greatest wearable to date. The “smartwatch” includes a “Digital Crown” (or a knob in this scenario) and can be used to display text and relatively simple graphics. It also arrives with two disk drives.

The Apple II Watch is just a DIY product

The user interface is a rotary encoder, which has the task of powering the Digital Crown. The main program takes advantage of an Arduino sketch running Teensy 3.1.

When a user spins the knob, it cycles through the sub-menu section, while highlighting each line. In order to enter the sub-menu, one needs to press the knob.

Apart from displaying the current date and time, the Apple II Watch can also show the following sub-categories: fitness, pictures, weather, music, phone book, and disk manager.

These features are mostly for show, and accessing them will bring up a picture or some text. The disk manager, however, will prompt the LED lights to blink a few times.

The floppy disks we mentioned above were made using a high-res photo of a 7/8-inch disk. This image was shrunk down and printed on a vinyl sicker paper.

The outer casing was 3D printed and then was painted with the “sickly beige” color characteristic of 1980s PCs.

Putting aside the humorous fake press release, this guy actually managed to build a tiny, working computer, which is quite impressive. Sadly, the gizmo won’t be available for purchase, unless you’ve invented the time machine.

We’re told the Apple II Watch will be available in early 1985 starting at $1,299 / €1,225. Auch, that’s a pretty steep price.

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Apple II Watch DIY (11 Images)

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