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Apple Watch designer reveals history of faces and features on fifth anniversary

Imran Chaudhri spent over 20 years at Apple and helped create the company’s hero products like iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Now on the fifth anniversary of Apple’s highly successful wearable, Chaudhri has shared some neat details on the history of what went into creating the Apple Watch‘s faces and features.

Chaudri left Apple back in 2017 and is currently working on a company that’s mostly still in stealth mode called Humane who just picked up another Apple veteran, this time its VP of product engineering.

But fondly looking back today, Chaudhri shared the fascinating details about Apple Watch on Twitter today including the original sketch of the UI, the first prototype band, and more (via TechCrunch).

Here’s a shot of the Apple Watch team five years ago on launch day and a reproduction of Chaudhri’s original sketch for the watchOS home screen.

Another fun tidbit, the Digital Touch feature that allows users to send their heartbeat and more was called “E.T.” for electronic touch at first.

And below he shared a look at the first prototype strap that was used with a 6th gen iPod nano.

The loop bands that arrived for Apple Watch were inspired by the velcro speedmaster used by Apollo astronauts and that Andrew Zuckerman was who captured the butterfly Motion watch face.

Another neat fact, the Solar watch face was designed by Chaudhri to be helpful for Muslims as they observed Ramadan as well as teaching everyone about how the sun and time are connected. Hodinkee also just shared a neat article about Apple Watch and twilight.

Just yesterday we also saw Hodinkee post a look at how Apple Watch has transformed the watch industry over the last five years.

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Avatar for Michael Potuck Michael Potuck

Michael is an editor for 9to5Mac. Since joining in 2016 he has written more than 3,000 articles including breaking news, reviews, and detailed comparisons and tutorials.