The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the soon-to-be-released Apple Watch, the company’s most ambitious new product in years, won’t include several hoped-for health tracking tools. According to The Journal, it won’t measure blood pressure, heart activity, or stress levels. “That left Apple executives struggling to define the purpose of the smartwatch and wrestling with why a consumer would need or want such a device,” the paper says.
Perhaps. But the Journal‘s reporting notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine an Apple executive “struggling” at the moment. The company is riding an unprecedented wave of corporate success fueled not by obtuse financial antics but by the sheer popularity of its gadgets.
The Journal also reports Apple is producing five to six million watches for the initial release—a modest number by iPhone standards but hardly a sign that the world’s most valuable company is worried about the success of its new product. And it shouldn’t be. The Apple Watch doesn’t have to do anything special at all for Apple to sell millions and millions of them.
“Wearables” have long suffered as a product category because the companies making them have failed to make clear why you would need their devices in addition to your smartphone. But the perks of Apple’s success include not having to explain yourself too deeply. (Speaking of which: Apple declined to comment on the Journal’s story).
Not that Apple has solved the problem that’s stymied other makers of wearable tech. It’s just that Apple’s gadgets come with a built-in purpose no other device maker can offer: to tie your digital life together through Apple.
Each is part of an integrated system, and it’s in the integration itself—not some specific feature set, like measuring stress levels—that they become useful.
Remember the last time Apple made a device that didn’t seem to have an obvious reason for existing? It was called the iPad, and it was “just” a giant iPhone. Similarly, the Apple Watch is “just” your iPhone on your wrist, but even more so: Many of its features work only when connected to your iPhone.
But like the iPad, the Apple Watch won’t likely need to stand alone and apart to be seen as useful and desirable to those who already have locked themselves into Apple’s connected world. Considering Apple sold nearly 75 million iPhones during the last quarter alone, that’s a lot of people.
Over the past few years, Apple has made plain its intention to knit its devices together as closely as possible, to create one integrated experience across Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs. Each piece of its hardware can stand alone, but they flourish when used together. Or more to the point, they flourish less when used in conjunction with other companies’ devices.
An Apple Watch is just another portal, a way for the digital platform at the center of Apple users’ lives to seep into one more context, as is the car Apple is reportedly trying to design. Apple isn’t creating any of these devices in isolation, and in that sense Apple needs to do much less work to define what they’re all for. Each is part of an integrated system, and it’s in the integration itself—not some specific feature set, like measuring stress levels—that they become useful.
“None of us want to have different platforms in different parts of our lives. We want one, seamless kind of life,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said last week at Goldman Sachs’ tech conference. Users aren’t going to reject the Apple Watch because it doesn’t have way to check their blood pressure. They’re going to reject everyone else’s device because it doesn’t have Apple.
Source: Wired.com
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