Jony Ive says Apple Watch was much harder to design than the iPhone

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Now's the time to order your new Watch band.
The many faces of Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

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

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