iWatch concept design by Martin HayekReports this week indicate that Apple is building a substantial team of veterans from multiple industries to build a stylish, multi-functional iWatch. The timing of the hires points to a late 2014 release, according to an analyst report and a story in the Financial Times. Far from being a bad sign for Apple, I think the delay indicates its intention to create another iPhone-level, category-defining product.
The team is rumored to include Apple's Senior Vice President of Technologies Bob Mansfield along with VP Kevin Lynch and senior hardware director James Foster. Outside hires that are possibly related to the formation of this team include fingerprint authentication experts from the recently acquired Authentec, fashion branding player Paul Deneve, former CEO of Yves St. Laurent, and fitness guru Jay Blahnik, who was instrumental in the development of Nike's Fuel Band. Apple has also recently poached staffers from medical sensor companies, including AccuVein, C8 MediSensors, and Senseonics.
The picture that is emerging from these staffing moves along with off-hand comments from CEO Tim Cook is of a device that does many things well, all packaged in affordable, high-tech luxury. Both Mansfield and Cook have been seen wearing Fuel Band and marketing chief Phil Schiller has been spotted with a Jawbone Up, so these kind of sports/activity sensors are clearly part of the equation. The emphasis on medical sensors makes me think that the audience for this product may skew older than other Apple launches.
The concept renderings by Martin Hayek above point to this tech/luxe/traditionalist approach. He articulates one of the key differences between the Apple and Google approaches to wearables. Google's Glass is a disruptive product that requires its wearer to change their outward appearance and, in a sense, state of being, to use it. The iWatch is a watch. It's on your wrist, possibly hidden by your shirt sleeve or jacket. And in the renderings above, it looks like a watch!
The Google idea, which is borne out as well in its approach to mapping (as I will discuss in an upcoming post), is entropic. We become real-time sensors in the ever-changing network. We give up a measure of personal control in order to participate in this world of accessible big data. The Apple idea by contrast is inertial. We are the same people, just with more convenient access to some of the information we most value.
The fact that the goal is not a radical remaking of personhood does not mean that the problem is not hard. In some ways, the design problem of Google Glass is easy, because it is a wholly new category of product. With the iWatch, Apple has to deal with the history and use patterns (including the recent non-use) of the wrist watch. And it has to deal with the expectations built up by its previous products, most relevantly the iPhone. Users will expect the iWatch to "just work," and they will expect it to replace a traditional wristwatch and a whole host of recent band gizmos.
And pursuant to the Pebble watch and the rumored plastic iPhone, Apple is dealing with the greater expectation that consumers have of its products. So it will need to be high-touch with beautiful and durable finishes and brilliant, Ive-grade industrial design. This is one reason that the rumor of the deployment of Liquidmetal (finally) in this product are so intriguing. A recently awarded patent suggests that Apple has worked out some of the limitations that have prevented it from using the material for anything more than a SIM card remover.
If Apple is coming to the watch market late, it will have to come with a product that is difficult to copy and protected by defensible patents. The durability of Liquidmetal is very appealing for a device that will swinging on people's wrists. The screen, too, will need to be similarly scratch-resistant. I had a much-loved Swatch in the 80s that became all-but-unusable because of scratches to the plastic "crystal."
The year that it looks like it will now take Apple to bring such a watch to market will reveal the hits and misses of products like the Pebble. Apple can use that information to tune its software in the direction of ways that consumers demonstrate they actually want to use these kind of devices. For me, the killer-app so far with the Pebble is getting text messages on my wrist. Each person will have these kind of "wrist-bits" that are important to them, and I suspect they will be different between people and types of people. They may well also be different by time of day or day of the week or time of year. (I propose that the Google Glass equivalent of these "wrist bits" would be "eye blicks," after the German word for "glance.")
I think that the informational modules of iOS 7-the clocks, stocks and compass, etc.-have been created in anticipation of how they will play out on a watch face (among other places, of course.) The kinds of apps that will work on the wrist are minimal and simple, but they will need to be very easily configurable from the iPhone or the watch itself. Anything that is too hard to configure will either use the default or not get used at all. These kind of tradeoffs will all have to be explored in a preliminary way before the launch of the iWatch, but it will be time well-spent.
What Apple still has, stock price not withstanding, is an ability to develop the first-class version of a product that other companies can't quite get right. I think that by the time the iWatch is a reality, it will be good, and we will want it.
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