Tim Cook: Apple Watch Will Be First Smartwatch That Matters
You have to hand it to Apple, it thinks big. Apple executives are confident in their products and seem to have a pretty good idea about what customers want. The “Apple Way” has also allowed Apple to become the world’s largest listed company.
However, with Apple’s success comes more than a bit of arrogance. This time around, CEO Tim Cook is wagging his finger at the competition with regards to the upcoming Apple Watch (which will retail from $349 to $17,000). In a new interview with Fast Company, Cook describes why his competitors have “gotten it wrong” with the current crop of smartwatches.
“The inputs that work for a phone, a tablet, or a Mac don’t work as well on a smaller screen,” Cook explains. “Most of the companies who have done smartwatches haven’t thought that through, so they’re still using pinch-to-zoom and other gestures that we created for the iPhone.”
Cook goes on to describe how technologies like Force Touch make more sense for a wearable platform, and allows the user to accomplish more on such a tiny display. Cook also states that being the first to the market is not often admirable, and that putting out a fully functional product that “[gets] its right” is paramount.
And then Cook lays it on thick, throwing all of the smartwatches that have been released up to this point under the bus. “We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone,” Cook continues. “But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch—the first one that matters.”
Them’s fightin’ words where I come from and actually pretty bigheaded, but that has been par for the course for Apple over the past month. In February, Jony Ive took Motorola to task for daring to offer customers the option of customizing their smartphones using the Moto Maker tool. Ive said that the Moto Maker “[abdicates] your responsibility as a designer.” Ive caused a few more eyes to roll earlier this month when he declared that customers prefer thinner smartphones over thicker devices with longer battery life. According to Ive, larger batteries make for a device that is not as “compelling.”
