The Fruity cargo-cult Apple is so far behind on its iWatch vapourware that even Microsoft is going to beat it to market.

Word on the street is that Redmond is releasing a smartwatch in the autumn. Another deep throat also told Tom’s Hardware claims that will be in October, which is the suspected launch date of the Apple iWatch. Microsoft’s watch looks vaguely interesting. It will have 11 sensors and will apparently not be much like any of the LG or Samsung smart watches which have been released.

The position of the screen is said to be on the inside of the wrist rather than the outside like a normal watch and more like a Nike Fuelband. What is more interesting is that the watch will have open APIs and cross platform capability, which will mean that it can talk to Android phones. This will make it a lot more flexible than Apple’s closed source model and will mean that Apple will depend on its marketing to make the watch popular. Not that it has done it any harm so far.

Apple convinced the world that Microsoft’s keyboardless netbooks were the way forward when there was an Apple logo on them and people were convinced they had been invented by Steve Jobs.