The reason Apple is making an Apple Watch: 'Your phone is ruining your life'

Apple has opened up again to talk about the forthcoming Apple Watch.

This time, it's David Pierce at Wired who got time with Apple's top executives to talk about the process of designing the watch's software.

The Apple Watch will be released on April 24. It will be Apple's first move into a new product category since the iPad. It will cost between $349 and $17,000 depending on which model you buy.

This is the first post-Steve Jobs product, and as a result, it has added pressure. Apple wants to prove that it can create revolutionary, innovative products even without Jobs' direct input.

According to Pierce, when Apple started designing the Apple Watch after Jobs died in 2011, it didn't know what the watch would do.

Apple decided to make a watch and only then set out to discover what it might be good for (besides, you know, displaying the time). "There was a sense that technology was going to move onto the body," says Alan Dye, who runs Apple's human interface group. "We felt like the natural place, the place that had historical relevance and significance, was the wrist."

Alan Dye is the designer in charge of how we interact with Apple devices. The purpose of the wrist-mounted technology, what problems it might solve-that was something the Watch team would come up with slowly, during the process of inventing a bunch of new ways to interact with the device.

Eventually, Apple figured out what the watch would do. It would cut back on phone usage. According to Pierce, Apple thought "your phone is ruining your life" because it delivers too many notifications:

Along the way, the Apple team landed upon the Watch's raison d'être. It came down to this: Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us, Ive, Lynch, Dye, and everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz-the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications. "We're so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now," [Kevin Lynch, head of Apple Watch software] says. "People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much." They've glared down their noses at those who bury themselves in their phones at the dinner table and then absentmindedly thrust hands into their own pockets at every ding or buzz. "People want that level of engagement," Lynch says. "But how do we provide it in a way that's a little more human, a little more in the moment when you're with somebody?"

Our phones have become invasive. But what if you could engineer a reverse state of being? What if you could make a device that you wouldn't-couldn't-use for hours at a time? What if you could create a device that could filter out all the bullshit and instead only serve you truly important information? You could change modern life. And so after three-plus decades of building devices that grab and hold our attention-the longer the better-Apple has decided that the way forward is to fight back.

This is an interesting idea from Apple, but it seems somewhat flawed.

A watch can deliver us notifications, but the problem will remain the same. We will still be overwhelmed by notifications. Looking at a watch is no less rude than looking at a phone. In fact, as society has evolved to accept smartphones, it may be even less rude.

If I am in a meeting and you pull out your phone, I accept you are checking email/text. I am okay with that. If, however, you push back your sleeve to look at your watch, I'm a little bit offended. Am I boring you? Why are you checking the time?

Will a watch make the process of looking at notifications faster? Sure. But will the signal it sends be different? No. You will still be removed from the moment to see what's happening. Instead of quickly looking at a phone, you're quickly looking at your watch.

Read more on the watch at Wired >>