9 biggest challenges Apple
had to overcome to make the Watch
The Apple Watch will finally be available for
purchase this month, starting April 24. In the lead-up to the launch, Wired
published an in-depth behindthe-scenes look at what it was like to
conceptualise, develop and build the Apple Watch.
Thanks to a combined effort from A p p l e 's d
e s i g n and engineering teams, the Apple Watch will be able to show you all
your notifications in bite-size, easyto-dismiss `glances', let you respond to
texts and calls from your wrist, and also give you real-time information about
your personal health.
But, when the team was just building the Apple
Watch from scratch, it ran into several challenges before finally settling on
the first-generation design.
Here are the top nine challenges:
Long hours.
The software team worked
round-theclock to develop the in-app animations and interface from scratch,
asking themselves difficult questions like, “How could this device add to
people's lives?“ and “What new things could you do with a device you wear?“ as
they worked long into the night. Wired points out that Saturday Night Live
encourages a similarly crazy work schedule because “people tend to be most
creative and most fearless when they're deliriously tired“.
Undoing the stranglehold our phones have on our
lives. Apple's technology VP, Kevin Lynch says, “People are looking at the
[phone] screen so much,“ and the Watch needed to filter out the BS “and instead
only serve you truly important information,“ according to Wired.
Prototyping on an iPhone.
Even though the Apple
Watch was never supposed to be an iPhone on your wrist, that's how it started:
The dev-team's prototype “was an iPhone rigged with a Velcro strap,“ according
to Wired. All the physical and virtual elements were made in a virtual app,
even though swiping a `knob' wasn't the same as twisting a real digital crown.
Making the Apple Watch comfortable to wear.
Lynch says the first prototypes seriously hurt to wear. It was painful to hold
up your arm to look at the watch -even for 30 seconds.
Figuring out a way to force people to use the
Watch less.
To prevent people from looking at their wrists all day, which could
be uncomfortable, Apple's team came up with a robot called `Quickboard' that
`reads your messages and suggests a handful of possible responses'. In the end,
Lynch and his team reengineered the Watch's software twice before every
interaction lasted between 5 and 10 seconds.
Offering enough features but never making it
feel overwhelming.
Apple's team didn't want people getting nonstop buzzes and
notifications, but they didn't want the Watch experience to feel empty,
either.So, the team came up with Glances, which works like the Control Center:
Swipe up from the bottom, and check out all your `quick hits' like sports
scores.
Making vibrations feel right.
The Apple Watch's
`Taptic Engine' is the first Apple product that will vibrate to provide a new
level of interactivity. But, Apple's design chief, Jony Ive didn't want all
vibrations to feel the same. After testing different sounds and vibrations for
over a year, with Ive having the final say, the team finally settled on a
litany of different buzzes for texts, phone calls, tweets, and more.
Getting tiny text to feel big.
The Apple Watch
team built a new typeface, called `San Francisco' to let small text look
beautiful on the small screen. The letters are more square, but they have
rounded corners, much like the Apple Watch itself.
Creating enough options for everybody.
Unlike
previous Apple devices, where the company would sell one device in a handful of
colours, Apple wanted to make the Watch feel truly customisable. The team
landed on two sizes, three `tiers' made of different materials, dozens of
interchangeable straps, tons of watch faces to choose from and `complications,'
which are digital add-ons to your watch face to show you things like the
weather, stock prices, times for sunrise and sunset and much more .
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