The Apple Watch Sport Band Design Is Now Commonly Copied

I got a press release about this Safe Spacer product today. It’s a wrist device meant to help keep employees at a business from getting too close to each other under coronavirus safety measures. What caught my eye is the design of the band — it’s exactly like an Apple Watch sport band. Just look at it.

Here’s what I wrote about this design two years ago, in my review of the Series 4 watches:

Every other aspect of Apple Watch other than the case is, in fact, world-class nice. The default watch strap, the Sport Band, is absolutely wonderful. Jony Ive’s close friend Marc Newson is renowned in the watch world. Ive brought Newson to Apple to make an even better version of his 1996 Ikepod strap. You know what’s not nice about most watch straps? The extra bit of strap that sticks out after you buckle it. Newson’s insight, that it could be neatly tucked under the other side of the strap, is simply genius. Tens of millions of Apple Watch owners now enjoy this design. And that’s just the default strap — Apple Watch’s well-liquor straps are far better-designed than the top-shelf-liquor straps from many luxury watchmakers.

This design is so clever and, once seen and experienced, so seemingly obvious. And yet it wasn’t obvious, until Marc Newson designed it and Apple popularized it. Makes me wonder how many other obvious good designs remain undiscovered.

★ Thursday, 10 September 2020