Apple explains how health became key to Apple Watch success
What you need to know
- Apple Watch continues to save lives.
- But Apple didn't always intend for it to focus on health.
- Health benefits came as a surprise.
The very first Apple Watch launched in 2015 and while it could measure your heart rate, health wasn't a major focus. Fast forward to the Apple Watch Series 5 announcement earlier this month and things were very different. Health is absolutely an Apple Watch focus in 2019. So much so that you might think that was the plan all along.
And you'd be wrong.
Speaking with The Independent, Apple execs Jeff Williams, Sumbul Desai, and Kevin Lynch lifted the lid on Apple Watch, its goals, and how it became such a force to be reckoned with in the health world.
The most interesting tidbit is the fact that Apple didn't intend for health to be the Apple Watch's focus, Instead, chief operating officer Jeff Williams noted that the whole thing was almost accidental.
It wasn't really until people started to write to Apple, telling it of the health benefits of Apple Watch, that things started to click in Cupertino.
Nowadays Apple Watch can be the center of a healthy lifestyle and we often hear stories of people having their lives saved by early warnings offered by the wearable.
But Kevin Lynch, Apple VP of technology, says that the company isn't finished yet.
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The full article is definitely worth a read over at The Independent. It's a long one, but you won't regret it.
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.