Jony Ive Interview Sheds More Apple Watch Details

Just days ahead of the anticipated Apple media event, Jony Ive, the company’s head of design, appeared in an interview with the Financial Times’ Nick Foulkes, discussing his career and the highly anticipated wearable, the Apple Watch.

Apple is expected to reveal further details of the wearable device, so analysts were placing their best bets on how many units would be sold this year. The latest came from Strategy Analytics: 15 million units.

Everything looks different from Jony Ive’s perspective: He is more concerned about whether Apple can make them as good as possible. “We’re brutally self-critical and go through countless iterations of each product,” he says.

We can understand his concern: This is the most personal product Apple has ever made, so everything has to be perfect. While the first impressions were highly positive, there are nagging issues, such as battery life: Tim Cook suggested that users will charge it on a daily basis.

Ive defends Apple’s choice:

“Even now, when the design of the Apple Watch is incredibly mature and has gone through thousands and thousands of hours of evaluation and testing, we’re still working and improving. You are trying to keep everything fluid for as long as possible because everything is so interconnected. The best products are those where you have optimised each attribute while being very conscious of other parts of the product’s performance.” (Talking of performance, when the issue of the frequent need to recharge the iPhone is raised, he answers that it’s because it’s so light and thin that we use it so much and therefore deplete the battery. With a bigger battery it would be heavier, more cumbersome, less “compelling”.)

The interview reveals pricing details as well:

He runs through the three ranges of Apple Watch with their different materials – the stainless-steel Apple Watch (price as yet unconfirmed), the anodised-aluminium Apple Watch Sport (from $349) and the Apple Watch Edition in 18ct yellow or rose gold (with an as yet unconfirmed price of around $4,500) – and almost infinite combinations of colours and aesthetics.

The whole interview is a must read, especially in the light of the forthcoming Apple Watch event.