People are sneakily taking photos of Apple employees testing the Apple Watch

Apple has unleashed its Apple Watch into the wild, and people are starting to notice.

The Apple Watch was first spotted outside of Apple's Campus back in September. But it looks like Apple has released more testing units for employees to try out in the real world. Mac Rumors reports that there are now so many Apple Watches being tested that people are regularly taking stealthy photos of Apple employees with the devices.

Testing out new devices in the real world is a useful part of the development of new products. You can find bugs and problems with devices that you simply don't encounter in testing laboratories.

But Apple's policy of testing devices on the streets has hit upon problems. Back in 2010, an Apple employee left a prototype iPhone at a bar, and someone picked it up. It was then sold to gadget news site Gizmodo (reportedly for $5,000).

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced during the company's most recent earnings call that the Apple Watch is set to ship in April. There's no specific date yet, but an April ship date is later than March, which was the previous estimate for when the product goes on sale.