It was five years ago today... Is the email watch to the 1990s what the flying car was to the 1950s? Trumpets are blown, predictions made, expectations raised:

Apple, Swatch to make e-mail watch

By Mike Magee
Published Monday 12th July 1999 07:41 GMT

A Swiss site is reporting that Apple and Swatch have launched a watch that allows you to read your email. The report, which you can find in French and English here, reckons the watch will cost about £80. It comes with an ADB or USB port and will be out by the end of the year, the report suggests.

There's a picture of a watch on the site too, but it isn't the Apple-Swatch beastie. Do you think Apple and Swatch got the idea from our Tony's headline earlier this year: Apple apes Swatch as iMac ships in multiple colours? And will Swatch OEM it for Tag? The world waits....

Well, Swatch is offering watches which run on "Internet Time" - a system which divides the day into 1000 "beats" and is, to all intents and purposes, as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

The company also offers a "cyber.commander" timepiece which is "equipped with a special microchip that contains a personal identification number. With the Swatch system the user can store unlimited number of different services which can be updated and replaced at any time. This enables the watch to access a host of personally selected data such as password protected mailboxes, preferred websites, instant messenger services and the Swatch Club House. If the cyber.commander is lost, the data stored in the watch can be immediately blocked to prevent any fraudulent uses of the data. The cyber.commander is Swiss-made, shockproof and waterproof to a depth of 30 meters."

Yes, yes, all very interesting, but where's our bloody email watch? ®

Bootnote

Readers will doubtless be better informed than ourselves as to the current state of play regarding email watches. Be warned, however - don't write in unless the product you wish to highlight actually works - not sort of works, but really works. We've seen plenty of wannabe flying cars come and go in our time...