Hacking on Empty

It’s uncharacteristic of Apple to announce things so for in advance of their availability. Usually they wait till the hardware is going into production. I can think of only three times they have done this recently: the watch, the phone, and the x86 switchover.

I’m sure Apple would have preferred to release the watch fully formed and ready to go as a surprise in the spring of ’15. However, it would be impossible to make a product of the quality that Apple desires while keeping it a secret from most of the company. That’s why I believe the announcement was not directly for the public’s benefit. Instead, Apple announced the watch far in advance of availability mainly to inform their employees.

With the watch public knowledge, everyone at Apple can get excited about it and make all of Apple’s products work with the level of integration that their customers expect. It would be impossible to keep it a secret if everyone at the company was aware of it so Apple made a dramatic public announcement. That way they also get to control the message, kill competitors, and deny months worth of leaks to naughty reporters and rumor sites. Same deal with iPhone and x86. Achieving success as defined by Apple required a concerted effort by most of the company.

The downside: competitors get some extra time to try to copy it. That’s why Apple only does this for the really big changes.