Jony Ive has designed someone of the worlds most iconic tech devices, but when it came time to revolutionizing the wrist watch, Ive says it was even more challenging to make than the iPhone.
Speaking to an audience at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Thursday night, Ive said that societal expectations for a wristwatch posed some serious challenges when creating the Apple Watch, but he believes with “every bone in his body” that Apple will usher in an entirely new computing device category.
“Even though Apple Watch does so many things, there are cultural, historical implications and expectations. That’s why it’s been such a difficult and humbling program.”
Apple revealed the Apple Watch last month, after a wave of manufacturers have tried to make smartwatches mainstream, with little impact. The Apple Watch will be available early 2015 and come in three different varieties that can be customized by the user: a key ingredient to getting people to want to wear a smartwatch, according to Jony.
Ive says that because Apple Watch is something you wear, the expectations consumers have of it will be completely new. No one chooses to wear the exact same thing (except in jail). “As soon as something is worn, we have expectations of choice,” said Ive.
The wide ranging interview hit on many topics at Apple. Jony said he’s proud of Apple because it creates great products, rather than chasing profits, and to emphasize his point, he swears he doesn’t know that he just helped the company make $40 billion in profit for 2014.
Source: WSJ
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
6 responses to “Jony Ive says Apple Watch was much harder to design than the iPhone”
In a related bit of news DUH! It’s a freaking super watch!
I really can’t wait to have one of these on my wrist to see how it works and feels to use. It’s those AHA! moments that bring me joy.
it’s disturbing to read an article with such poor grammar and spelling errors.
“No one chooses to wear the exact same thing (except in jail)”
Or if your founder and CEO of Apple or Facebook or a brilliant theoretical physicist.
Plus as mobile developers have found – it is very hard to program for confined areas. As desktop developers we had all just gotten use to big monitors but had to check at 1024×768 then smart phones came out and we had to think really small to become a mobile developer. Then phones got bigger and we had some room.
Now come the watches and small is back with a vengeance. As an iOS and Android developer I can tell you making things work and look good in a small form factor is not easy.
I think the Apple watch is rubbish, it looks awful, just like all the other big square smart-watches, completely inelegant. Functionally smart watches are virtually pointless, poor battery life and the absence of a killer-app should consign the entire category to history.
No-doubt the Apple watch will sell very well (at least initially) due to the huge fan-base being desperate for anything that’s not just another size of i-phone/pad so they can convince themselves that their precious Apple is innovative after all.
The margin will be good though and that’s good for shareholders (like me). I’ve got to hand it to Apple, they really know how to milk those fools.