Apple Continues to Put Together Its Wearable Devices Dream Team


News just broke that Apple has hired Ben Shaffer, a now former top design director at Nike.  He is the man behind the Flyknit shoes.  This is a huge deal.  Shaffer is a design guru and will likely fit in extremely well at Apple.  What will he be working on?  You guessed it: wearables.  With this hire, Apple has really rounded out its dream team as the company begins its push into wearable devices.

The news of this hire comes not too long after, Jay Blahnik, a globally recognized fitness expert and instrumental consultant in the development of several Nike fitness products, confirmed his new role at Apple back in August.  It also wasn’t too long ago that Apple hired a former fashion company CEO and as we explained back in July, it was a hire we felt made perfect sense.

Now more than ever I’m convinced that Apple is putting together a dream team to create the ultimate wearable devices. Devices that look stunning and have incredible functionality.  And ones that even women will wear.

With these three new additions to Apple and the existing Apple team, including design genius Jony Ive and software guru Craig Federighi, I’m pretty confident the iWatch and any other subsequent wearables will be better than anything we’ve ever seen before.

Many people in the media have been saying Apple is doomed, that they are no longer innovative, and questioning where the company’s next innovative product is and what’s taking so long to release it.  The answer is it takes time to come up with, develop, and release great products, let alone innovative and new products.  If you want to see what a rush-job looks like, look no further than the Samsung Galaxy Gear.

It took six years to get from the iPod to the iPhone and three years to get to from the iPhone to the iPad (which for all intents and purposes was a small iteration compared to iPod to iPhone).  But the interesting thing about looking at the years is that we just passed six years since the release of the iPhone, could it be we’ll be seeing a major new product category very soon?  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say yes, it’s very likely.