Apple has loosened the reins and is letting more of its top people talk to the press. Here’s what I learned from David Pierce’s interviews with Kevin Lynch and Alan Dye:
- Lynch didn’t know when Apple hired him from Adobe two years ago* that he was in charge of the Watch project, already behind schedule.
- Although the device began with Jony Ive’s obsession with horology, it’s raison d’etre — to free people from the tyranny of their smartphones — emerged late in the process.
- The biggest design challenge, according to interface chief Alan Dye, was to keep the thing on your wrist from becoming as annoying as the thing in your pocket.
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It’s a good read, once you get past the intrusive graphics.
LINK: iPhone Killer: The Secret History of the Apple Watch
*At the time Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, the dean of Apple bloggers, called Lynch “a bozo, a bad hire.”
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
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