In Bloomberg's big story on Apple's iWatch, it dropped this nugget:
Apple design chief Jony Ive has long had an interest in watches. Besides owning many high-end models himself, he had his team visit watch factories and ordered boxes of a sports watch made by Nike Inc. in the mid-2000s, said Wilson, who was then Nike’s creative director.
The "Wilson" Bloomberg referred to is Scott Wilson. Wilson led one of the first big Kickstarter successes with the TikTok and LunaTik, which were watchbands designed for the small touchscreen iPod Nano. He's the creative director of design studio MNML.
We emailed him to find out which watches Ive bought. He told us:
Well, he didn't buy them. We just gave them to them as designer bro deals. He and others in the design group just requested them and we sent them a ton of Nike Presto Digital Bracelets and the aluminum Oregon Series Alti-Compass watches. Was flattered that they were requesting them. Thought they were only personal requests but their materials guy followed up with many questions on the materials and processes. This meshes up with their research in watch manufacturing during that timeframe which has been documented in previous stories. They definitely drew upon watch industry techniques and manufacturing in their products since the first iPhone. Interesting that it may come full circle to an actual iWatch at some point.
These Nike designs were circa 2002-2004.
He included the watches, which we've published below. It's interesting that Ive and his team have been thinking about this stuff for a long time.
Bloomberg reported Apple is hoping to start selling an iWatch this year.
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