By Edwin Chan and Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO, March 9 (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook began showing off features of the new Apple Watch on Monday at a presentation in which he is expected to give details of the launch of the product, the first created under his leadership.
Shares of Apple were up about 1.4 percent at $128.41.
The watch will track exercise, remind wearers of events with a tap on the wrist, and make calls through an electronically tethered phone, since the watch has a built in speaker and microphone.
"I have been wanting to do this since I was five years old," said Cook, who called the device revolutionary. He also laid out other product successes and launched a new MacBook notebook computer that starts at $1,299 and weighs as little as 2 pounds.
Every major car brand had committed to delivering Apple's CarPlay entertainment system, and the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have 99 percent customer satisfaction rates, he said. The Apple Pay payment system is now accepted at 700,000 locations, and Time Warner Inc's HBO in April will debut its streaming HBO NOW service on Apple TV.
Apple also is offering researchers new development tools, called ResearchKit, to help medical researchers design apps for clinical trials, the company said. (Reporting by Edwin Chan and Alexei Oreskovic; writing by Peter Henderson; Editing by Bernard Orr)