IPhone Killer: Apple Watch Secret Story

In early 2013, Kevin Lynch accepted a job offer from Apple. What is interesting, he was not told what exactly he would do. For reasons of commercial secrecy, he only knew that he would be vice president of technology, and would work on something completely new. It’s strange that he was offered this position at all - for 8 years of his work at Adobe he became famous only by a public dispute with Steve Jobs because the iPhone did not support Flash-video.

Lynch had to prove and do a lot. On the first working day, they didn’t even conduct a regular meeting with the company. His new boss, Bob Mansfield, ordered to immediately go to the development studio and get to work. When he came to his workplace, he found that the project for which he had been hired was not only on the eve of the deadline, but was also behind schedule. Two days later, a design review was to be conducted with the manual.
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There were no working prototypes, no software - only experiments and a bunch of ideas. What was required of him was this: the senior vice president of design, Johnny Ive, set the task of making a revolutionary device that could be worn on the arm.

Arrogance or justified expectation? All at once. Over the past 15 years, Apple has achieved success in three areas of consumer electronics, making it the richest company on Earth. Before the iPod, there were mp3 players, and the iPhone transformed the smartphone from a business accessory into an attribute of pop culture. iPad popularized tablets, overtaking Nokia and Microsoft over the years. For the fourth time the clock was selected. And it should have been the first step without Steve Jobs. The expectations and attention to this product will be incredibly high. The clock must be unreal cool.

Worry about nothing, Kevin.

Apple decided to first make a watch, and then understand what they are useful for (except for demonstrating time). “It was felt that electronics moved closer to the body,” says Alan Dye, who leads the human interface group. "It seemed to us that the wrist was a natural place with historical roots."

When asked why technology was needed on the wrist and what problems it was designed to solve, the Watch team had to search for answers slowly, inventing new ways to interact with the device. One thing was clear: the success of Watch will depend on the interface. He will determine whether the Watch will be on display in different museums, or it will be the greatest fall of Apple since Newton .

Alan Dye is just responsible for how you communicate with the device and how it responds to you.

Even the appearance of Day says that he does not miss a single detail. He came to Apple in 2006 with a resume, which mentioned Kate Spade's work in the fashion house and work at Ogilvy & Mather with brands such as Miller and Levi's. After working in Apple's marketing, he was given the reins of the “human interaction” group.

Ive began to dream about Apple watches immediately after Jobs died in October 2011. He came up with an idea for Dai and several designers. Then they worked hard on mobile iOS. “We almost lived in a development studio,” says Dye, “a few people working on iOS 7.” It was not just a OS redesign, it was a change in the tone of the entire company, marking the rise of Apple to Johnny Ive on the throne of design. They had to reinvent every interaction, every animation, every function.

Producer Saturday Night Live Lorne Michaels is known for encouraging frenzy reworking of staff, because people usually become the most creative and fearless when they get tired. So it was in the design studio Apple. When the team was working all day on a smartphone software, in the evenings they were already starting to talk about other devices. They began to think that they could bring a watch into people's lives? What new can we do with wearable devices? Ive became interested in the science of time measurement, studied how tracking the position of the sun evolved into a wall clock, and how they became wrist watches. And all this resulted in the final product.



Meanwhile, the Apple team came to understand what the watch is for: your phone keeps you from living. Constant calls, vibrations, check notifications. “We are all connected all the time thanks to technology,” says Lynch. "People carry phones and often look at the screen." People want to return the balance of involvement in the phone. How do we give them the opportunity to do it in a more human way? "

Phones invade life. What if you could make a device that you couldn’t use and don’t use for hours? Which would filter all garbage and serve as a supplier of only the necessary information? It would be possible to change the style of modern life. After 35 years of working on devices that absorb all your attention, Apple decided to go in the opposite direction.

Apple has created this problem, and now it thinks it can solve it with a square piece of metal and a clasp.

The task was to free people from phones, so the irony was that the first working prototype of the watch was an iPhone, fastened with velcro. As Lynch says, "a very well-developed velcro."

The simulator showed the image of the display Apple Watch on the screen in full size. There was even a digital adjustment wheel. But since the movement of the finger on the screen could not replace the real scroll, they specifically made a test wheel, connected to the phone with a cable. The first prototype of the watch was similar to the project with Kickstarter - an incomprehensible iPhone case with a strange accessory.

With such a prototype in hand, or on hand, the team could test the basic functions of the device, which it could take away from the phone. Sending messages - initially this process resembled sending from a phone, but on the clock it took too much time and it was difficult to keep a hand on the weight.

Therefore, Quickboard was invented - a robot that reads messages and offers a set of suitable answers. When you are asked if you want to go to a Mexican restaurant or to a Chinese one, then “Mexican” and “Chinese” automatically appear in the list, and you just have to choose one of them. And for complex messages, the team provided the clock with a mic for dictation. If the message was too complicated for dictation, then it was suggested to use the telephone.

It soon became clear that the main thing in Watch was the quick execution of actions. Any action should not take more than 5-10 seconds. Something that could not be done quickly, simplified, something thrown out. The software had to be redone twice, until it became fast enough.

Take the function Short Look (peek) - you feel the vibration, which means receiving a text message. You look at the wrist and see the words "Message from Vasya." If you lower the wrist, the message is not read and notification of it disappears. If you hold the hand, the message is displayed on the screen. This way, Watch will know if you want to read the message. And so the new technology should wean you constantly staring at the screen.

This was done with the rest of the applications. A glances screen was developed - one page with extracts of information such as news or competition results. “We reworked the UI,” says Lynch. Rebuilt all applications, - messages, mail, calendar, - several times. "



All software sharpened to present information in a compressed form. If the flow of information will annoy the user, he will remove the clock and they will be the first device that you buy and immediately return.

But if the software was difficult, then the iron in general turned out from another planet - the engineers worked to create a new kind of interaction. The Taptic Engine system should create the sensation of touching your wrist with a finger. Since our bodies are sensitive to touch and vibration, Watch can transmit different information, only slightly changing the forces and frequency of vibrations. One touch sequence means an incoming call, the other - an appointment after 5 minutes.

Among the tested prototypes there were many different - some were irritating, some were difficult to feel, others were felt as the presence of an insect on the skin. Then work was done on the presentation of different events through vibration. How can I send a tweet? How - important information? Engineers took various sounds and turned them into vibrations.

The small screen required a new approach to the interface. Here you will find both the digital adjustment wheel and the Force Touch system, when a slightly stronger pressure opens access to the additional menu. A new font, called San Francisco, was developed, which is easier to read on a smaller screen than Helvetica. The letters are more square, but with rounded corners - they repeat the shape of the dial.

All people working on the project seriously perceived the difficult task of developing a device that people wear on their wrist. However, Swiss watch designers are doing it all the time. After adopting their experience, Apple decided to deviate from the standard approach and manufactured three different devices: Sport, Watch and Edition. The $ 349 Sport aluminum watches work just like gold for $ 17,000, but Dai thinks these are different products.

The experience of the watch industry suggests that personalization is very important - the only way to meet the needs of different people with different capabilities. “If you put something on your body and wear it on your wrist, you should pay attention to this,” says Dai.

Watch is not just a cool toy that conveys messages - it is a fashionable statement. Now we need to convince users, drowning in a variety of gadgets, that this thing is worth adding to their lives. If Apple can become a company selling watches for $ 17,000, it can conquer other luxury markets - cars, for example.

The implications for business, of course, are important - but Watch must solve a problem that matters not only inside Cupertino. If the watches are successful, they can affect our relationships with devices. Technology distracts us from more important things - friends, amazing moments, the smile of another person. But maybe the technology will be able to return these sensations to us. Whether Apple fits the role of a company that develops this technology is a ¾ trillion dollar question.

Lynch leans forward, sitting in a chair, and tells about his children: how it will be convenient for him to just look at his watch, understand that the last message is not very important, and return to his family. How little such things will distract him.

Then he gets up - he needs to leave, to report something to Dai and Quince. For all the time of our conversation, he never looked at his phone.