Jony Ive on Watch: Like iPhone What Happens in The Next Two, Three, Four Years Will Be Dramatic

At the Manus x Machina exhibit hosted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sponsored by Apple and Vogue, Jony Ive spoke to Business of Fashion about the role of technology in the growing world of wearables.

When specifically asked about the Apple Watch and its future, Ive declined to offer any specifics but offered some interesting comparisons to the iPod and iPhone:

While Ive declined to discuss the future of the Apple Watch directly, he was willing to speak more broadly about his general approach when it comes to the progression of a product. “It’s quite interesting that if you look back at the first generation of the iPod or the Phone — what happens in the next two, three, four years is dramatic. You’d be very surprised about some of the things you would absolutely assume that the first Phone did and it didn’t have,” he said. “Of course, this is a new category for us, one that we think is such a natural one because we think in a very authentic way. It’s not us being opportunistic in the way our competitors are. It’s not us thinking, ‘Well, this is a growing category.’ That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

The timeline of “two, three” years is inline with what Apple CEO Tim Cook said during yesterday’s interview on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money, something I also tend to believe as well.

Ive also made a point that Apple is still learning, something Cook also said during yesterday’s interview:

Regardless of whether we declare an interest in fashion or not, we are making products that are more and more personal… products that you wear and you wear every day. We’ve not done that before and we’ve got a lot to learn. Just talking to Andrew [Bolton] is hugely informative. I think we have always had a very clear and a very singular approach to how we design products that are more familiar to people, more established in terms of product categories. I think it’s very hard to have that same clarity and singularity when you’re not absolutely confident in your subject matter.

Apple seems to be admitting that while they still believe strongly in the Apple Watch as a product, they may not have executed the product perfectly. And that’s ok. In fact, that’s always going to be the case with a brand new product category. I’m actually really happy Apple is saying this out loud. If they want this product to be a huge hit, resting on their laurels is not going to work.