Apple's iWatch Pegged for 2015 Debut in Two Sizes With 8 GB Storage, Multiple Material Options

[rGiskard]

All that being said, we can bet the farm that the media spin on next week's product announcements will no doubt be around this being the first big new thing from Apple in the post-Steve era.

That's not spin, it's the truth. And you understate The Steve's involvement in product design and development, it went far beyond creating a corporate culture as he was directly involved in even the smallest product details.

It's true that Jobs wasn't able to oversee Apple as well in his last year or two, but that actually had a paralyzing effect on the company. No one wanted to contradict Jobs, but he wasn't there to give his input. iWatch development came to fruition after Jobs died. It is the true test of what Apple's current leadership can do. The more we learn of iWatch, the better it sounds, but remember that Jobs had an ability to identify the specific problem a device should solve, and to focus design into a cohesive solution to that problem. As Apple's competitors demonstrate, it is possible to have all the right design elements and technology yet fail miserably.

There is also the element of Steve's RDF. I think the RDF actually was more important inside the company than outside. He had a gift for motivating people to do what they believed impossible, and for keeping a whole team of headstrong "A-Players" working together. After his death there was a notable talent drain as some of these players left Apple.

 

[Chrjy]

What is wrong with a rectangular watch? It is one of the standard watch shapes.

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Exactly!

 

[IJ Reilly]

That's not spin, it's the truth. And you understate The Steve's involvement in product design and development, it went far beyond creating a corporate culture as he was directly involved in even the smallest product details.

It's true that Jobs wasn't able to oversee Apple as well in his last year or two, but that actually had a paralyzing effect on the company. No one wanted to contradict Jobs, but he wasn't there to give his input. iWatch development came to fruition after Jobs died. It is the true test of what Apple's current leadership can do. The more we learn of iWatch, the better it sounds, but remember that Jobs had an ability to identify the specific problem a device should solve, and to focus design into a cohesive solution to that problem. As Apple's competitors demonstrate, it is possible to have all the right design elements and technology yet fail miserably.

There is also the element of Steve's RDF. I think the RDF actually was more important inside the company than outside. He had a gift for motivating people to do what they believed impossible, and for keeping a whole team of headstrong "A-Players" working together. After his death there was a notable talent drain as some of these players left Apple.

You omitted the first part of my post entirely and did not respond to the bulk of what I said. I won't repeat everything I already mentioned about corporate culture, only say again that it is key, and more important than a CEO getting their hands dirty on every product (which can be a real problem, too). If you don't believe me, ask Mike Spindler. Ask Gil Amelio. Pretty soon, you could ask Satya Nadella.

Failures to alter a company's destiny isn't entirely the fault of a lack of leadership. New leaders can say they will bust heads and take names, but in reality, all large organizations are prone to doing what they've done before, and short of a near-death experience, are resistant to change. Steve returned to Apple at the very moment when betting the company's entire future on a few crazy ideas made sense.

So I think what is coming up is less a test for Apple's current leadership than it is a test of a persistence of corporate culture. Either Steve (and his team) set down that foundation in a way that will last, or he did not. I happen to think he did, but time will tell. The problem is the media will spin any new Apple product as a "What Would Steve Do?" moment. And that, of course, is the wrong question.

 

[rGiskard]

So I think what is coming up is less a test for Apple's current leadership than it is a test of a persistence of corporate culture. Either Steve (and his team) set down that foundation in a way that will last, or he did not. I happen to think he did, but time will tell. The problem is the media will spin any new Apple product as a "What Would Steve Do?" moment. And that, of course, is the wrong question.

Mostly agree, except a corporation's current leadership can indeed have a profound effect on the company. After all, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and transformed the company. He radically transformed Apple's corporate culture.

There is already talk of Cook aiming to create a more harmonious culture at Apple, free of tension and politics. That's part of why Forstall got canned. It will be years before we truly know the full effect of Cook's harmony, but it's a demonstration that a CEO can shape a corporate culture. Thus the iWatch cannot be a test of whether Jobs could leave the right corporate culture, since his successor (and others) are actively working to change it.

Ultimately I think we'll learn a lot about this new leadership team at Apple with the release of the iPhone 6 and iWatch. To be honest, I'm not very optimistic, as iOS 7 & 8 in my view are half-baked designs compared to what Jobs would have demanded. I suspect there will be more missed opportunities in Yosemite, more design oversights in the iWatch and iPhone 6. The elements will all be there, but they won't all be in tune, so the product will be "really great" as Cook likes to say, but not "insanely great" as Jobs used to say.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Mostly agree, except a corporation's current leadership can indeed have a profound effect on the company. After all, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and transformed the company. He radically transformed Apple's corporate culture.

There is already talk of Cook aiming to create a more harmonious culture at Apple, free of tension and politics. That's part of why Forstall got canned. It will be years before we truly know the full effect of Cook's harmony, but it's a demonstration that a CEO can shape a corporate culture. Thus the iWatch cannot be a test of whether Jobs could leave the right corporate culture, since his successor (and others) are actively working to change it.

Ultimately I think we'll learn a lot about this new leadership team at Apple with the release of the iPhone 6 and iWatch. To be honest, I'm not very optimistic, as iOS 7 & 8 in my view are half-baked designs compared to what Jobs would have demanded. I suspect there will be more missed opportunities in Yosemite, more design oversights in the iWatch and iPhone 6. The elements will all be there, but they won't all be in tune, so the product will be "really great" as Cook likes to say, but not "insanely great" as Jobs used to say.

What you are talking about here is not culture, but atomspherics. As I said before, large organizations don't make major changes willingly, and it did not happen that way at Apple. It required a major crisis, a near death experience. It takes having nothing left to lose. Even then, it does't always happen. Not hardly. The fact that it happened at Apple is quite exceptional.

Nadella can lay off thousands of employees, reorganize, and talk about his new vision for Microsoft, but the reality is, short of some sort of calamity, Microsoft is going to ride the horse that brought them. Even though changing the culture would do them good, they will implement small and incremental alterations at most.

I can appreciate what Steve Jobs accomplished without wearing rose-colored glasses. He made lots of mistakes during his day, which fortunately were either corrected or papered over. He got a lot of mulligans. Tim Cook is probably not going to get any, and I suspect he knows it.

 

[britboyj]

We're not talking about a phone. We're talking about something tiny around your wrist. With battery life.

The actual storage material within a micro-SD card is actually even smaller. You can't possibly tell me that that can't be fit on a wristwatch. I'm not talking about actually inserting a Micro-SD card.

 

[rGiskard]

What you are talking about here is not culture, but atomspherics. As I said before, large organizations don't make major changes willingly, and it did not happen that way at Apple. It required a major crisis, a near death experience. It takes having nothing left to lose. Even then, it does't always happen. Not hardly. The fact that it happened at Apple is quite exceptional.

Nadella can lay off thousands of employees, reorganize, and talk about his new vision for Microsoft, but the reality is, short of some sort of calamity, Microsoft is going to ride the horse that brought them. Even though changing the culture would do them good, they will implement small and incremental alterations at most.

I can appreciate what Steve Jobs accomplished without wearing rose-colored glasses. He made lots of mistakes during his day, which fortunately were either corrected or papered over. He got a lot of mulligans. Tim Cook is probably not going to get any, and I suspect he knows it.

While I agree with you on the momentum of corporate culture, I believe much of the Apple experience was not directly due to culture. Steve Jobs was directly involved in much of the design process of both software and hardware. Obviously not the engineering side, but he was a proxy for us users, since he scrutinized the user experience. Case in point: the new iOS GUI. Jobs would have taken on look at it and said "this is 5h!t!" With some of the new functional aspects, it's not so easy to know how Jobs would react, but we have a lot of data on Jobs' design sense, and iOS ain't it.

There are reports about Jobs evaluating the original Mac OS design, and he obsessed over EVERY single design element. As Apple CEO, he probably wouldn't have time for such detail, but you can bet that if something struck him as out of place, he would get involved.

Even in Issacson's biography, there are numerous examples of Jobs' involvment in product design. My question is, without Steve's input, how do Apple products and OSes turn out? Corporate culture has nothing to do with that aspect of Jobs' involvment.

 

[IJ Reilly]

While I agree with you on the momentum of corporate culture, I believe much of the Apple experience was not directly due to culture. Steve Jobs was directly involved in much of the design process of both software and hardware. Obviously not the engineering side, but he was a proxy for us users, since he scrutinized the user experience. Case in point: the new iOS GUI. Jobs would have taken on look at it and said "this is 5h!t!" With some of the new functional aspects, it's not so easy to know how Jobs would react, but we have a lot of data on Jobs' design sense, and iOS ain't it.

There are reports about Jobs evaluating the original Mac OS design, and he obsessed over EVERY single design element. As Apple CEO, he probably wouldn't have time for such detail, but you can bet that if something struck him as out of place, he would get involved.

Even in Issacson's biography, there are numerous examples of Jobs' involvment in product design. My question is, without Steve's input, how do Apple products and OSes turn out? Corporate culture has nothing to do with that aspect of Jobs' involvment.

Yes I know how much Steve was (at least said to have been) involved with product design. At the time, his obsession with detail was useful, if for no other reason than Apple was rudderless when he took overhand somebody needed to take charge. But it also has to be said that his very particular set of compulsions were not always productive. Throughout his career he had to be talked into things that turned out to be important to the success of a product. He was neither all-seeing nor all-knowing. His influence was not 100% positive.

Your assumption that without Steve that nobody at Apple can or will say "this idea sucks" is really huge and I think unfounded. Quite a few sucky ideas made it through the Steve filter, and it isn't like we didn't hear lots of complaints about Apple products when he was in charge. Everything from OSX to the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad were rated as total fails by users who hated one or another aspect of them. This is what I say to your comment that "iOS ain't it." It's the kind of thing that makes for a lot of discussion in geek forums, but few in the general public have issues with it.

The bottom line: No matter what Apple announces next week, you can bet your last dollar that the media spin will be that it would have been better with Steve. Lots of of MR readers will no doubt say that very thing, including you I strongly suspect, since you've said it already -- even though the damn thing is a total unknown at this point. Personally, I'm getting really sick of all this preemptive criticism.

 

[TWSS37]

Well, mix it with these ideas:
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and a bit of this design language when it comes to new materials and machining

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And add some good software and capabilities and there you have a killer product

Don't even need to mix them, the first concept would be outstanding.

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No Moto 360 today. Apparently we had the preview and press brief at google IO months ago, and today were are getting a private press event. No launch. WTF

Well got my 360 preorder in today

 

[filmantopia]

Very true....I just hope I'm in that broad stroke. lol

Now that we know what it looks like, are you?

 

[dannyyankou]

Looks like Kuo was right (again)

 

[Locoboof]

Now that we know what it looks like, are you?

Wow... Lol. That's a very good question. They have still left out a lot of details. Battery life,price points for all 3 models of the phone. Release date. Prices of the extra bands. It looks cool,but not as "futuristic" as I thought it would look like.
It's nice,but I'm not craving it. The iPhone 6 (grande) plus I WANT! This...I don't have that same burning desire.

To answer your question,I'm on the fence. I'm also a tech head,I may end up buying it totally on impulse on the release date. Lol

How about you? Your thoughts?

 

[dannyyankou]

Could we please get a round up of all Ming-Chi Kuo's reports for the iPhone and watch? I'd love to see them all lined up.

Well, it looks like Kuo nailed this prediction.

Edit: Didn't realize I bumped this thread already, lol