Jony Ive discusses the future of Apple Watch and more at Met Gala

“The term ‘fashion-tech’ may be less than 10 years old, but many of the garments on display in Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology date back to the early 1900s,” Imran Amed and Lauren Sherman report for Business of Fashion. “The exhibit, which opens publicly at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, takes a broader view of the interplay between technology and fashion, at a time when tech companies are marketing their devices as fashionable and fashion companies are eager to be seen as tech-savvy.”

“This year, Apple, which is marketing its “wearable tech” device — the Apple Watch — as a fashion accessory, is sponsoring the exhibition,” Amed and Sherman report. “The company’s chief design officer, Jony Ive, has been the connective tissue of sorts between the technology giant and the event.”

“At the opening gala.. the influence of the tech world was felt mostly in the guest list, which included Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, and Tesla’s Elon Musk,” Amed and Sherman report.

“What was also wafting through the proceedings was Apple itself, ever present not only thanks to the company’s representatives — including Ive, chief executive Tim Cook and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs — but in the number of guests wearing Apple watches: at least 10 women by our count, and likely more men, although theirs were hidden by jacket sleeves.”

“While Ive declined to discuss the future of the Apple Watch directly, he was willing to speak more broadly about his general approach when it comes to the progression of a product,” Amed and Sherman report. “‘It’s quite interesting that if you look back at the first generation of the iPod or the Phone — what happens in the next two, three, four years is dramatic. You’d be very surprised about some of the things you would absolutely assume that the first Phone did and it didn’t have,’ he said. ‘Of course, this is a new category for us, one that we think is such a natural one because we think in a very authentic way. It’s not us being opportunistic in the way our competitors are. It’s not us thinking, ‘Well, this is a growing category.’ That couldn’t be further from the truth.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Upon its release, the original iPhone did not have apps, MMS, or cut/copy/paste. iPhone finally got MMS and cut/copy/paste with iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3 in June 2009, two years after the iPhone debuted and 11 months after the App Store opened.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]