I never said they'd make a watch. I said it's curious that they're so obviously aiming it at a very resources-constrained device (or optimizing out the wazoo for energy efficiency) for which they don't have a client of their own or an announced third-party client. You'll note that they didn't announce "iOS in the Nebulous Theoretical Arbitrary People Transporter" and hope people take it from there.

With iOS in the Car, whatever they're using - probably AirPlay or something riding the various MFi (made-for-iWhatever) protocols - is already transmitting screen images. If they have a notification protocol like ANCS, they will probably not reinvent it, but iOS in the Car already involves several of their own protocols, so why use yet another connection - and if they do, why invent a new protocol and publicly document it for this use case?

Maybe it's about roaming notifications to OS X Mavericks, but there are no (revealed) commands for getting i.e. app icons.

Actually, whether they make a watch or not, it's very curious to see them introduce a new binary protocol in the open. If this is a turn towards being more open, I welcome it. It's far from enough, but it's a start.