Apple Watch will replace your car keys, says Tim Cook

Exclusive interview: The Apple chief executive reveals to Allister Heath how the revolutionary features in the company's smartwatch could forever alter our daily lives

Apple CEO Tim Cook meets staff at the company's Covent Garden store in central London
Apple CEO Tim Cook meets staff at the company's Covent Garden store in central London Credit: Photo: Kensington Leverne

Like millions of people, Tim Cook stopped wearing a watch a while back. The Apple boss no longer needed one: his iPhone told the time just fine. There was just one problem, as he readily acknowledges in his interview with The Telegraph: glancing at one's wrist can be a very useful way to find out information. It is less rude and less intrusive.

So Apple now wants to pull off something that no company has ever managed before: it wants to reverse a cultural trend that it had created itself. It wants us to start wearing a watch again.

The big event on 9 March will showcase the Apple Watch; and it will be launched to consumers in April. Cook, needless to say, is already wearing his new Apple Watch. He couldn't even contemplate living without it anymore, he says.

"I'm now so used to getting all my notifications and all my messages," he says. "It's so incredible just to do this."

Apple CEO Tim Cook at the company's Covent Garden store in central London

Tim Cook on an unannounced visit to the Covent Garden Apple store on Friday

Reinventing the wrist watch

The Telegraph had a peek at two watches, one worn by Cook and the other by another senior member of staff. Three versions will be available to consumers; the two we saw seemed to be the Sport edition. One had a dark wristband; Cook's had a white one.

The watch's screen boasts all of the usual Apple interface, but the icons are rounder than those of an iPhone, presumably to match the watches' shape. The first reason to buy the watch will be as a fashion statement and for its striking design, Cook believes. He is full of praise for Sir Jony Ive, Apple's British creative genius. "He did such a great job with the design. It's beautiful".

Five things you need to know about the Apple Watch

The watch has also been designed and engineered to be a great time-keeper: it will be correct to 50 milliseconds, he promises. But when consumers witness the Apple Watch's full potential for themselves, Cook says, they will understand just how different it is from a traditional watch.

"This will be just like the iPhone: people wanted it and bought for a particular reason, perhaps for browsing, but then found out that they loved it for all sorts of other reasons."

Designs for the Apple Watch, which will be available in April

Cook expects an explosion of new apps for the Apple Watch. One of the Apple Watch's great missions will be to harness new technology to help improve users' health. The Apple Watch will of course be able to monitor heart rates, Cook says; but it will be far more sophisticated than that. It is bad for people's health to sit too much; so the watch will gently tap people's wrist every hour to remind them to stand up and go for a walk if they haven't had enough exercise.

Even more intriguingly, the Watch will operate a special rewards system: users will get credits if they exercise enough. They will also be encouraged to increase their metabolic targets if they meet their exercise targets consistently. Consumers will clearly have an incentive to wear the watch for as much of the day as possible, and even in the shower.

There will be lots of other potentially revolutionary uses. The watch is designed to be able to replace car keys and the clumsy, large fobs that are now used by many vehicles, Cook told The Telegraph. This could be a major development and will reinforce the view that Apple is circling the automotive market.

Another major application will be for paying: the Watch will be able to serve as a very usable credit card, courtesy of Apple Pay. The system will be ultra-safe, Cook says, certainly more so than the plastic cards currently in use in the US. It will also respect users' privacy: Apple won't know what consumers are buying, where they are purchasing their goods and how much they are paying for them.

Connectivity and the future of tech

The Apple Watch will allow the filtering of message, Cook says. It will make it much easier to prioritise, spot and react to urgent messages, such as a family emergency. These notifications will be much easier to deal with via one's wrist than through an iPhone, especially in meetings.

The watch's battery life will last the whole day, Cook says, in another revelation that will please potential users, and it won't take as long to charge as an iPhone. He praises Ive again when it comes to watch's "incredible" charger, which will use a special magnet technology which the British designer has created for efficiency as well as beauty.

Apple CEO Tim Cook

The Apple chief executive launching the Apple Watch

The launch of the watch will undoubtedly pose a challenge for Apple's stores. "We've never sold anything as a company that people could try on before", he says. This may require "tweaking the experience in the store", he told his staff at the Covent Garden store.

He speaks extremely highly of Angela Ahrendts, the former Burberry boss who now runs the stores and has been tasked with making the online and bricks and mortars elements work seamlessly.

Crucially, Cook believes that the Apple Watch will help create a new blockbuster product category. There are already smatwatches on the market, just as there were MP3 players before the iPod and smartphones before the iPhone. But he believes that the Apple Watch will revolutionise the market and become "the modern smartwatch" - the only one anybody wants to buy.

We shall soon find out whether he gets his way - though on past form, Apple could well be sitting on yet another huge success story.

Rounds at Apple's genius bar

Staff rarely choose to leave Apple of their own volition: in many cases, they work there for years. The company enjoys extremely high levels of employee retention and loyalty - and from the scene in the Covent Garden store in London on Friday morning, the last stop on a whirlwind tour of Europe and Israel by the Apple boss, it's not difficult to see why.

Cook and The Telegraph entered a rear entrance; nobody at the store bar the manager knew of the visit. I have witnessed many shop,office and factory visits before, with bosses being received in a variety of ways. In some cases, they were welcome but often they were met with indifference or, of course, outright hostility.

But the reaction at the Covent Garden store was off the charts: the staff gasped, and then burst into spontaneous, loud applause as soon as they spotted Cook, who walked in behind them.

Around 50 of them, wearing their blue T-shirts and jeans, were grouped together, taking part in what the company calls its Morning Download.

Apple Chief executive Tim Cook tells The Telegraph about key features in the new Apple Watch

Within seconds, somebody asked about the watch.

Cook, who was wearing a smartly tailored dark suit, an open-necked shirt and brown shoes, showed them his wrist, and they cheered. The Australian team-leader was left speechless, at least for a few seconds. He subsequently regained his composure, asking Cook what made him the most proud in the past year.

"I'm proud we stayed true to our North Star", Cook replied. "We are pro-privacy, pro-environment and pro-human rights." He added, for good measure, that this was "one of my favourite stores in the world" and praised to the skies the contribution of the retail staff to Apple's overall success.

Cook, who has piercing blue eyes, was born in 1960 in Alabama; it soon becomes apparent when talking to him that he retains a little Southern twang, which adds to his charisma.

In other companies or industries, these sorts of questions or answers might trigger cynicism, or be obviously affected. Not at Apple, where Cook and the senior management team are evidently held in extraordinary regard.

In the case of Friday’s visit, shop floor staff treated their CEO like a visiting guru. It could have been embarrassing or cringe-inducing- but for some reason wasn’t.

One member of the sales staff put his hand up: he wouldn't ask a question, he said, but wanted to deliver a short statement.

He thanked Cook for coming, and for his hard work and that of the senior staff in California. The staff then mobbed their hero, taking selfies with him and shaking him by the hand.

"It's a day we will never forget", one said. It was a scene that any other business leader, let alone a politician, could only dream of.

Waking up at 3.45am, a day in the life of the Apple CEO

Chief executives sometimes seem to be waging a race to see who can get up the earliest in the morning; the days when 8am meant an early start are long since gone. The world's corporate elite needn't bother: not only does Tim Cook run the most valuable company in the world but he is clearly also the earliest bird of them all.

He gets up at 3:45 every morning, puts on his brand new Apple Watch which he charges overnight - "I want to make sure I measure all myactivity", he explains, which means that wants his wrist to be full during all his waking hours - and begins to check his email.

He then goes to the gym at 5am and to work at 6:30am, already fully briefed and with the day ahead planned out. The downside is that he goes to bed early: by 9:30pm or sometimes 10pm.

"I miss the late night shows", he jokes, but adds that he "loves the quiet" and the sense of "control" at that time in the morning.

As he points out, the world doesn't stop during Californian night-time for a global giant such as Apple: there is Asia in particular to think about, where Apple manufactures most of its products, as well as the rest of the world.

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