Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Don't buy the Apple Watch 7. It's identical to the 6.

Totally believed explanation:


People were complaining and not happy when rumors were out saying the flat edge boxier design looks uncomfortable, it is too square and boxier shape, it looks ugly. Now this conspiracy is out 😂 shows you! You can’t make everyone happy. People can’t decide what they want.
 
I’m glad that they scrapped the boxy square-edged design. But I’m also convinced that was the plan for 2021. I think it’ll inevitably come in 2022.

The guys from MaxTech are right on the money.
Oh my, hopefully they won’t make it boxy, it looks terrible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: iOS Geek
I am one of the people who was excited for the boxy design. The video is interesting but I don’t think that the truth lies there. The engineering process and design for a product like Apple Watch is settled months in advance. I don’t think that any company in the world, even Apple, could scrap last minute a design so different from the previous gen, try to fit the bigger displays into the old body and mass produce it in only six weeks. I do believe that Apple had production issues at the end of august, but I think it was with the current S7 design all along. The boxy design seems legit but maybe for the S8 or later.

We will never know for sure, but this is for sure the weirdest Apple Watch launch.
 
Not necessarily this channel / linked video specifically, but I do wonder how much these kind of stories are based on first person facts, some are presenting Nth party rumours as fact, and some are purely feeding off the intended audience's confirmation bias, the target audience expect something to be true hence publishing a video stating this as fact is going to generate more views?
 
I am one of the people who was excited for the boxy design. The video is interesting but I don’t think that the truth lies there. The engineering process and design for a product like Apple Watch is settled months in advance. I don’t think that any company in the world, even Apple, could scrap last minute a design so different from the previous gen, try to fit the bigger displays into the old body and mass produce it in only six weeks. I do believe that Apple had production issues at the end of august, but I think it was with the current S7 design all along. The boxy design seems legit but maybe for the S8 or later.

We will never know for sure, but this is for sure the weirdest Apple Watch launch.
Well said! There’s no way apple could pull that off especially that the new watch has different case size too and it’s shape is rounder so bascially new mold
 
I’ve been in manufacturing for well over 20 years and I’ve seen my fair share of manufacturing line holdups. But they usually arise late in the R&D phase. You have to build a full manufacturing line in order to get proper takt times. These times are necessary to estimate your full capital expenditure on additional lines. If you know you need X million units per week, you simply divide your desired output by your line capacity to estimate the number of lines you’ll have to build.

The last Apple Watch design was introduced with the Series 4 in 2018. That means Apple has had at least 3 years to work on the Series 7 redesign. If there were any “manufacturing issues” Apple would have ironed them out long ago.

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky is the former Apple Watch product design lead. In an interview with Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac, she confirmed that Apple works on what they call their “golden line” before they ever start construction of their actual Apple Watch production lines. This is how you meet deadlines. You flush out problems long before they become an issue because you uncover problems in advance. Companies that don’t do this, like Tesla, simply wing it and deal with the quality problems and blown deadlines later.

The fact that Apple was “ironing out manufacturing issues” in August of 2021 means that they were essentially still in a late R&D phase. They were wrapping up work on their golden line and about to start construction on all of their new lines in September. This is much too late for Apple. The reference line should have been done at least 6 months prior.

The manufacturing group can’t start working on the golden reference line until the design group finishes the specs. The only logical reason for Apple to be working on their golden reference line in August is because the Series 7 design wasn’t final. And considering that Apple had 3 years to finalize the design, it sounds like something major happened. Like a late design-change.

Naysayers of this theory say that it would be impossible for Apple to go back square one on a design so late in the game. But Apple wouldn’t have to. When I was working at Gateway Computers, we always had multiple designs to pick from. That way if one design didn’t work out, you had others to pick from. Plus, you wanted the design teams to feel a little sense of competition to really bring out their creative juices. I’m sure that Apple probably does the same thing.

If there was ever a square-edge design for the Apple Watch proposed, this current bulbous design was probably also presented at the same time. It is entirely possible that at a later time, Apple decided to pull the plug on the square-edged design and go back to the bulbous one.

Plus, the Series 7 looks like it simply is reusing many of the Series 6 components. So it’s not really an all new design any way. A lot of the work was done already. It’s possible that this really was done on short notice.
 
Does the video actually present proof, or just a theory?
 
Last edited:
I’ve been in manufacturing for well over 20 years and I’ve seen my fair share of manufacturing line holdups. But they usually arise late in the R&D phase. You have to build a full manufacturing line in order to get proper takt times. These times are necessary to estimate your full capital expenditure on additional lines. If you know you need X million units per week, you simply divide your desired output by your line capacity to estimate the number of lines you’ll have to build.

The last Apple Watch design was introduced with the Series 4 in 2018. That means Apple has had at least 3 years to work on the Series 7 redesign. If there were any “manufacturing issues” Apple would have ironed them out long ago.

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky is the former Apple Watch product design lead. In an interview with Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac, she confirmed that Apple works on what they call their “golden line” before they ever start construction of their actual Apple Watch production lines. This is how you meet deadlines. You flush out problems long before they become an issue because you uncover problems in advance. Companies that don’t do this, like Tesla, simply wing it and deal with the quality problems and blown deadlines later.

The fact that Apple was “ironing out manufacturing issues” in August of 2021 means that they were essentially still in a late R&D phase. They were wrapping up work on their golden line and about to start construction on all of their new lines in September. This is much too late for Apple. The reference line should have been done at least 6 months prior.

The manufacturing group can’t start working on the golden reference line until the design group finishes the specs. The only logical reason for Apple to be working on their golden reference line in August is because the Series 7 design wasn’t final. And considering that Apple had 3 years to finalize the design, it sounds like something major happened. Like a late design-change.

Naysayers of this theory say that it would be impossible for Apple to go back square one on a design so late in the game. But Apple wouldn’t have to. When I was working at Gateway Computers, we always had multiple designs to pick from. That way if one design didn’t work out, you had others to pick from. Plus, you wanted the design teams to feel a little sense of competition to really bring out their creative juices. I’m sure that Apple probably does the same thing.

If there was ever a square-edge design for the Apple Watch proposed, this current bulbous design was probably also presented at the same time. It is entirely possible that at a later time, Apple decided to pull the plug on the square-edged design and go back to the bulbous one.

Plus, the Series 7 looks like it simply is reusing many of the Series 6 components. So it’s not really an all new design any way. A lot of the work was done already. It’s possible that this really was done on short notice.
Fantastic post!!!!!
 
  • Haha
Reactions: jdb8167
I’ve been in manufacturing for well over 20 years and I’ve seen my fair share of manufacturing line holdups. But they usually arise late in the R&D phase. You have to build a full manufacturing line in order to get proper takt times. These times are necessary to estimate your full capital expenditure on additional lines. If you know you need X million units per week, you simply divide your desired output by your line capacity to estimate the number of lines you’ll have to build.

The last Apple Watch design was introduced with the Series 4 in 2018. That means Apple has had at least 3 years to work on the Series 7 redesign. If there were any “manufacturing issues” Apple would have ironed them out long ago.

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky is the former Apple Watch product design lead. In an interview with Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac, she confirmed that Apple works on what they call their “golden line” before they ever start construction of their actual Apple Watch production lines. This is how you meet deadlines. You flush out problems long before they become an issue because you uncover problems in advance. Companies that don’t do this, like Tesla, simply wing it and deal with the quality problems and blown deadlines later.

The fact that Apple was “ironing out manufacturing issues” in August of 2021 means that they were essentially still in a late R&D phase. They were wrapping up work on their golden line and about to start construction on all of their new lines in September. This is much too late for Apple. The reference line should have been done at least 6 months prior.

The manufacturing group can’t start working on the golden reference line until the design group finishes the specs. The only logical reason for Apple to be working on their golden reference line in August is because the Series 7 design wasn’t final. And considering that Apple had 3 years to finalize the design, it sounds like something major happened. Like a late design-change.

Naysayers of this theory say that it would be impossible for Apple to go back square one on a design so late in the game. But Apple wouldn’t have to. When I was working at Gateway Computers, we always had multiple designs to pick from. That way if one design didn’t work out, you had others to pick from. Plus, you wanted the design teams to feel a little sense of competition to really bring out their creative juices. I’m sure that Apple probably does the same thing.

If there was ever a square-edge design for the Apple Watch proposed, this current bulbous design was probably also presented at the same time. It is entirely possible that at a later time, Apple decided to pull the plug on the square-edged design and go back to the bulbous one.

Plus, the Series 7 looks like it simply is reusing many of the Series 6 components. So it’s not really an all new design any way. A lot of the work was done already. It’s possible that this really was done on short notice.
Interesting thoughts and experience…… however with respect the design of a Gateway PC is really not comparable to an Apple Watch IMHO ….. nevertheless your input will no doubt suit the conspiracy theorists.

The reality is none of us know why the series 7 has gone through a strange or out of character product release.
 
More realistically: the AW7 design was completed in March 2021 and the fake boxy designw was purposefully created by Apple to weed out internal leakers.

I do think they hit some manufacturing issue in August 2021 with this exact design. My guess is that the larger screen made waterproofing/sealing the device harder, and it failed the mass production quality control.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.