Say hello to Apple Watch: will Apple’s timepiece inspire wrist envy?

At the near end of today’s Apple media event, the audience heard a familiar phrase for the first time since Steve Jobs last addressed the press.

“One more thing…”

Tim Cook announced Apple’s first move into wearables with Apple Watch, a highly-anticipated play that had the rumor mill churning out predictions until minutes before the event.

Certain circulating expectations were spot on—the Apple Watch will come in two sizes and will combine health and fitness monitoring functions with mobile computing tasks. The hype around Apple and mobile payments via the new iPhones left everyone wondering if the wearable would have NFC pay capabilities—it does. The single layer of sapphire crystal coating the Apple Watch answered questions surrounding Apple’s purchase of an Arizona sapphire plant last year. And as predicted, the Apple Watch won’t be available until early 2015—though Cook assured the audience the wearable is “worth the wait.”

In classic Apple fashion, the company was able to keep details of the Apple Watch a complete secret from the public. The watch’s shape was unspoiled for the big reveal, and appeared on screen with a rounded square face. The device will come in three collections that differ by material finishes—Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and Apple Watch Edition—each with a variety of band and clasp styles.

“Apple designs technology to be worn, to be truly personal,” described Apple VP of Design Jony Ive.

The watch surprisingly included a physical dial and inlayed button on its side to assist with touchscreen navigation—a design choice described as serving the user’s best interest given the watch face’s limited fingertip real estate. Apple takes advantage of the area on the back of the watch with its proprietary Taptic Engine, which delivers haptic notifications and the new Digital Touch messaging system that resembles morse code.

The internal accelerometer, pedometer, and heart rate sensor work together to offer a comprehensive picture of the device’s—and its user’s—motion through space over the course of the day, helping customers understand their activity and the impact on their overall health. User experience is crucial to a device’s success—when Apple VP of Technology Kevin Lynch took the stage to demo the Apple Watch, the experience was faintly familiar to its iPhone cousin, but felt fresh and appropriate for the new small device. Gestures like swipe and tap still exist, but another dimension of force touch enables users to access additional options and controls, similar to a “long press” on Android or a “right click” on traditional desktop operating systems.

Smartwatches aren’t completely new in the way the original iPhone was back in 2007—so why does this new device matter for Apple and, ultimately, for the tech industry? To begin, the design elements of the Apple Watch still feel like Apple, but are distinct from the other products in the Apple Family.

“Helvetica and Myriad are gone as branding or UI typefaces, replaced with a more industrial-looking font,” said Punchkick iOS developer Chris Cieslak. “iOS 8’s bright colors are still there, but expressed in a different way than on the iPhone or iPad. Even the name marks a break with Jobs-era Apple—it’s just ‘Watch,’ not ‘iWatch.’”

Apple is aiming to revolutionize their own revolutionary user interface. Apple is also pushing the boundaries of existing health and wellness experiences. Punchkick quality engineer Liesel Hess has a background in biometrics, so she was eager to see how the Apple Watch engaged with the physical human body.

“The Apple Watch seems to have superior ability to record all kinds of health information,” Hess said. “If Apple pairs up with the medical industry, the kind of continuous, multifaceted data that would be gathered may enable scientists to diagnose illnesses more quickly, or even discover entirely new diseases and treatments based on correlative information.”

Apple’s new developer platform for the wearable, called WatchKit, will help developers build apps not only for users’ wrists, but for the future of personal devices. J.C. Subida, a developer at Punchkick, sees WatchKit opening a “whole new frontier” for iOS applications. Hess elaborates,

“What’s really exciting is the potential for background interfacing with other smart devices, like home automation gadgets or even your car,” she said. “With the spread of the ‘internet of things,’ we might be able to control every appliance in our house with an Apple Watch in a year or two. It’s like we’re living in the future we dreamed about as kids.”