MATT BOLTON...
When the question of whether Apple is still as innovative as
it’s been in the past comes up, I’m happy to point to the Watch
as a positive answer. It’s no surprise there are diminishing
returns for notebooks and phones after a certain amount
of time, but features such as fall detection – along with the
ECG function and a few other things that could help it save
your life – show that there’s tons of clever new ideas powered
by technology. You just have to think of innovation in terms
outside of traditional computing.
Apple has also really found its rhythm for the Watch as a
fashionable physical item, despite dropping the fashion focus
largely. The high-end yellow gold original raised more
eyebrows than a space anomaly encountered by a starship
crewed by Spock clones, but the current stainless steel burnt
gold is fantastic shade that’s bold and showy without losing a
sense of class. Meanwhile, the seasonal release of new straps
keeps a steady f low of new looks for existing Watch owners.
So it’s great, right.
And yet... When I look down at
the screen, I’m just bored. I use the
Infograph Modular face, which is
perfectly nice, but it’s just a bunch
of information. And the reason I
use that one is simply that I don’t
find the actual clock faces any more
enticing. I can’t believe how little
the faces have progressed in four years!
I see a lot of watches passing through my inbox in my day
job. I’ve seen beautiful splashes of colour in dials, and gorgeous
hand and numeral designs. I’ve seen ingenious creations that
tell the time in a whole new way. I’ve seen classic faces go
untouched for years – I was going to call these timeless, but the
editor frowned at me – because they’re
among the greats of aesthetic-meets-
functional design... and shouldn’t that
be an area where Apple excels?
When you think of making a watch
an opportunity to really flex those
aesthetic-function mix muscles, it
becomes clear why Jony Ive would
have been so keen to make one in the
first place. This has been his passion at
Apple, but I really struggle to imagine
he’s happy with what’s on offer. (I’m
thinking he probably has the HermèsAPPLE CORE Opinion
Here’s an innovative face: the Optik Instruments
Horizon uses a mark on the bezel to show the
current time on the rotating 24-hour disc.The faces have grown so stale that this Teletext-style
page is somehow my favourite way to use my Watch.18 | MACFORMAT | JUNE 2019 macformat.com @macformatABOUT MATT BOLTON
Matt is the editor of Future’s flagship
technology magazine T3 and has been
charting changes at Apple since his
student days. He’s sceptical of tech
industry hyperbole, but still gets warm
and fuzzy on hearing “one more thing”.I want watchOS 6
to use the infinite
possibilities of a
digital watch face
THINKS THE WATCH MAY BE
APPLE’S MOST EXCITING PRODUCT
FOR THE FUTURE, SO WHY IS HE
SO BORED OF LOOKING AT IT?
face, which is by far the nicest, yet is locked to
a specific expensive model.)
I want watchOS 6 to bring new faces that
not only look fantastic, but also use the
infinite possibilities of a digital watch face to
their fullness. Light effects that depend on
the height of the sun in the sky, backgrounds
that reflect the weather, arrangements that
use the fact that the hands don’t have to
be attached to anything, avant-garde designs
that tell the time in weird new ways...
The possibilities are genuinely endless.
It shouldn’t be the case that my favourite
features of the Watch are the life-saving ones,
sitting invisibly in the background and that,
ideally, will never come into use. It should
make me smile every time I look down.Im
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