Neil Cybart:

Last week, Apple quietly unveiled one of the more remarkable pieces of technology that has been developed in the past few years. AssistiveTouch allows one to control an Apple Watch without actually touching the device. Instead, a series of hand and finger gestures can be used to control everything from answering a call to ending a workout.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the video showing this off:

Back to Neil:

When Apple unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, Steve Jobs famously said that the iPhone was “literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.” He ended up being mostly correct. It took the competition a number of years, and a whole lot of copying, to catch up with what Apple had just unveiled.

With wearables, my suspicion is Apple’s lead is longer than five years.

Read the article for the specifics, but Neil makes a solid case. Between Apple’s investments in custom silicon and their ecosystem that let devices play off each other, Apple has built a seemingly insurmountable lead in wearables.