Apple’s product lines follow a very specific pattern: start small, and then grow into something bigger and more complex. There was originally one Mac, one iPhone, one iPad, one Apple Watch.
Over time, the product lines got more complicated. Sometimes too complicated, as anyone who remembers Steve Jobs returning to Apple with a four-quadrant grid in his back pocket, driving out an ocean of Performas and reducing the Mac to four simple products.
Too often, people take Jobs’s move to simplify an overcomplicated product line a bit more literally than they should. The Mac product line Jobs found on his return was too complex, yes, but as he rebuilt Apple, he knew he would have to simplify and focus things to get started. After the Power Mac, PowerBook, iMac, and iBook all shipped, Jobs was happy to toss in all sorts of Macs that didn’t fit into the grid, including the G4 Cube and Xserve.
Similarly, as modern Apple has grown in the years since Jobs, it has done so in part by dropping the simplicity and offering many different variations of its products. It just makes sense. And over the next few years, we may find new versions of familiar products that go far beyond what we’ve come to expect from Apple. Does this apply to the future of the Apple Watch? Let’s look at what history may tell us.
Pick your iPhone
2014’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were the first time Apple experimented with introducing two dramatically different iPhones at one time. But it really wasn’t until the iPhone X in 2017 that Apple really began experimenting with the iPhone line.
The important leap in 2017 was that the iPhone X cost a lot more than previous iPhones had. Apple still offered the “traditional” iPhones alongside the iPhone X, for more traditional prices… but the iPhone X seemed to sell well, encouraging Apple that there was at least some part of its customer base that was willing to spend even more for their iPhone.
So, the company kept experimenting: In 2018, the XS gained a larger and more expensive companion, the XS Max, as well as a larger and cheaper XR. In 2020, things settled down into a configuration that has more or less held true for the last five years: iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, iPhone, and a size-differentiated iPhone (mini or Plus).
So many iPhones! Steve Jobs would be appalled… or would he? The iPhone is so popular that it’s really impossible for a single model to appeal to everyone. Even if you design a phone that’s got mass appeal, a lot of people along the edges won’t like it. So it’s smart to make a bigger phone, a cheaper phone, maybe a smaller or bigger cheaper phone… the more variety you offer, the larger a portion of the universe of buyers you can address.
It was with the iPhone X that Apple started to make its simple product lineup a little more complex.
Apple
If news reports are true, things are going to get even wilder in the next couple of years. This year, we’re expecting Apple to replace its “cheap phone but a different size” tier with something completely different, a phone designed to be as thin as possible. That’s not necessarily going to be a phone for everyone, but since there are so many other models available, it doesn’t happen to be.
And then there’s the rumored 2026 folding iPhone. That thing’s going to cost a fortune. It’s probably going to have compromises in its display, its camera, its battery, and maybe more… but it’s also going to be an iPhone you can unfold into an iPad, more or less. If it were the only iPhone for sale, it would be a disaster, but it won’t be. Still, it is going to be a fascinating experiment in discovering what the upper price limit might be for iPhone buyers. My prediction is that Apple will discover that for some people, the coolest and most interesting iPhone is worth any price. The more Apple can charge those people, the more profit will roll in.
Room to be yourself
The iPad is a great example of how product differentiation can also help products be true to themselves. Ten years ago, Apple introduced the first iPad Pro. The casual case for an iPad was apparent almost immediately upon its introduction, but for the last decade, Apple’s been struggling to define what a professional iPad should represent. Is it cutting-edge tech? Is it just a nicer, more full-featured iPad? How much should the base-model iPad be compromised to hit a low price, when some people would obviously prefer something a little sleeker and streamlined?
In the last couple of years, Apple has found a happy medium for the iPad. The low-cost iPad really is for schools and kids, and people who don’t really care very much about the iPad. For people who care more, there’s the iPad Air (which is more or less what the iPad Pro was a few years ago) or the iPad mini.
Remember when there was just one iPad?
Apple
And at the top of the line, the iPad Pro is now a cutting-edge, M4-wielding, OLED-display-having monster–with the attendant high price. The existence of the iPad Air has freed Apple to make the very best iPad it can, for the people who really care about that (and are willing to pay the high price required to get it). Apple gets to lead the way (and lay the groundwork for future iPads, as the expensive cutting-edge tech becomes cheaper and less cutting-edge) while still offering a perfectly nice, good iPad in the iPad Air.
Will the Apple Watch get weird?
Which leads me at last to the Apple Watch. I was talking to someone the other day about whether or not Apple would ever redesign the Apple Watch, given its decade of stability in terms of design and even watch band compatibility.
Some customers would prefer that the Apple Watch was round, like the Huawei Watch 5.
Halyna Kubiv
The traditional argument is this: if Apple changes the Apple Watch, it risks offending Apple Watch fans with large band collections. If it changes the Apple Watch to be round (like most analog watches) instead of a rounded rectangle, is it throwing away a decade of brand loyalty? Does Apple want to make that sacrifice, or should it keep on keeping on?
I realized that all the lessons of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac can be applied to the Apple Watch, too. (Yes, there’s an Apple Watch Ultra, but it’s basically a larger version of the existing Apple Watch design.) Consider this: What’s stopping Apple from designing a new Apple Watch that is dramatically different from existing models, perhaps with a round display and a different approach to bands? What’s stopping Apple from designing a watchOS-based fitness tracker with a tiny display?
Nothing.
Apple doesn’t even need to think that either design is superior to the existing Apple Watch. At some point, Apple’s goals are to get people to spend more money and to reach potential customers who aren’t interested in the current Apple Watch. The conventional wisdom that Apple could only change the Apple Watch by discontinuing the current models and replacing them with something brand new is just not right. Apple could make a clean break, but it could also just add new devices to the Apple Watch product line and see what happens.
I’m not saying Apple is planning a radical approach to the Apple Watch. It might be perfectly happy with things as they are. I’m just saying that if you observe what has happened to the iPhone and iPad, it’s easy to imagine that Apple can make bold moves in other product categories without simply replacing one product with a different one. Apple is so huge that it has learned that not only can it afford to broaden its vision, it can profit from doing so.
Author: Jason Snell, Contributor, Macworld
Jason has written for Macworld for over 25 years and was lead editor for more than a decade. He writes about Apple at Six Colors and podcasts at Relay FM and The Incomparable.