Apple Partners with Luxury Brand Hermès on New Smartwatch

On October 5, the Apple Watch Hermès, priced between $1,000 and $1,500, will go on sale in Apple and Hermès stores in 14 countries including the U.S., China, France and Switzerland. The new watch is Apple’s first partnership with a luxury brand, and also the first time that Apple has permitted another brand’s components — in this case, signature watchbands, clasps and fonts — on one of its products. The Apple Watch Hermès was the most expensive new item at Apple’s recent new product introduction. Continue reading Apple Partners with Luxury Brand Hermès on New Smartwatch

Celebrating Steve: Special Event with Jonathan Ive, Tim Cook, Al Gore

  • Apple held a company-wide “Celebrating Steve” event on October 19 that featured tributes by Tim Cook and Al Gore and performances by Norah Jones and Cold Play. An 80-minute video of the event is available online.
  • Fortune suggests that the most touching part of the tribute was Apple’s chief designer Jony Ive speaking about Jobs and the fragility of ideas.
  • Ive said: “Steve used to say to me, ‘Hey Jonny, here’s a dopey idea.’ And sometimes they were. Really dopey. Sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room and they left us both completely silent. Bold, crazy, magnificent ideas. Or quiet simple ones, which in their subtlety, their detail, they were utterly profound.”
  • “And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.”