Apple Watch Secret Development Revealed

Wired Magazine published a candid look into the secret history of the birth of the Apple Watch. Author David Pierce got inside access to the Apple for this story.

Apple is keeps usually everything secret about the development of a product. For the Apple Watch the company is giving the world selected glimpses into the inner workings of Apple to underline the effort Apple went through to develop the Apple Watch. The other week, Apple granted ABC an exclusive look into the multi-million secret fitness lab Apple created for the Apple Watch.

Today Wired published an in-depth piece about the history of the Apple Watch inside Apple.

David Pierce (it’s his first Wired Feature) begins the story with Apple hiring Kevin Lynch, former CTO at Adobe. Lynch got into hot water with the Apple fans after fighting with Steve Jobs over Flash support on the iPhone.

The product definition was basically not there when Apple started the Apple Watch project back somewhen around 2011. David Pierce writes: “Apple decided to make a watch and only then set out to discover what it might be good for (besides, you know, displaying the time).”

“There was a sense that technology was going to move onto the body,” says Alan Dye, who runs Apple’s human interface group. “We felt like the natural place, the place that had historical relevance and significance, was the wrist.”

Apple approached the development from the software and user experience first. The team used for the longest time an iPhone strapped to the wrist that ran a Apple Watch simulator. The hardware design came last. 

The story highlights as the central idea of the Apple Watch to escape the tyranny of the buzz that smartphones have created. Apple is not innocent in flooding people with notifications and information.

“Take the feature called Short Look: You feel a pulse on your wrist, which means you’ve just received a text message. You flick your wrist up and see the words “Message from Joe.” If you put your wrist down immediately, the message stays unread and the notification goes away. If you keep your wrist up, the message is displayed on the Watch’s screen. Your level of interest in the information, as demonstrated by your reaction to it, is the only cue the Watch needs to prioritize. It’s interactions like this that the Watch team created to get your face out of your tech.”

Waking up at 3AM to watch your first @wired feature go live is weird and probably super unhealthy, yet, uh, here we are— David Pierce (@piercedavid) April 2, 2015

Read the full story on Wired.