Would Apple godhead Steve Jobs have HATED the Watch?

No, if you ask Tim Cook. Yes, if you ask us. Bah humbug

Comment Staffers at Apple have been working on their latest wearable wheeze for three long years, while the rest of us wondered where on Earth its legendary spirit of innovation had disappeared to.

If you believe Tim Cook, Apple was on the job the whole time, beavering away in secrecy to create a timepiece which would once again become the totem for a whole new product range.

After all, we're all still taking the tablets following the 2007 launch of the iPhone and the 2010 revelation of the iPad, so surely we can all expect to be wearing smartwatches by this time next year?

After announcing a brand new Apple product for his very first time, the new CEO was in jubilant mood.

Given that the Apple Watch took three years to develop, there must have been plenty of time for Cook to ponder the mysteries of life at Cupertino. And sure enough, the current CEO has a lot of thoughts about his predecessor - particularly about what he would have made of Apple in its later, riper incarnation.

“I think about Steve a lot. I love Steve dearly and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him, and this morning, being here, I especially thought about him,” Cook gushed.

“I think he would be incredibly proud to see that the company that he left us, which I think was one of his greatest gifts to mankind was the company itself, be doing what it’s doing today, I think he’s smiling right now.”

Intriguingly, Cook said the deceased Apple daddy's "DNA will always be the foundation of Apple". Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that a small army of clones in black turtlenecks are about to issue forth from Cupertino (what a product announcement that would be), but that there will forever be something Steve-esque about Apple.

"To me it’s not as a big deal whether he personally saw something or didn't," Cook said. "It's that his thinking and his taste and his incredible perfectionist kind of view and his view that you should always innovate. All of those things are alive and well in the company and I think they always will be."

It doesn't take a genius to see that Jobs probably wouldn't be totally enamoured with Apple 3.0. First on his list of grumps might be Apple's partnership with IBM, which Jobs loathed almost as much as he hated visible buttons.

Just look at this quote from an interview he gave to Playboy:

"If for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening."

Jobs was also famously averse to mergers and acquisitions, whereas Cook is happy to sign a deal which allows Beats to essentially operate like an Apple subsidiary.

Under Jobs, Apple employed just one M&A bod, whilst now there is a small department of them. Jobs also cut back Apple's charitable wing during difficult times, while one of Cook's first steps was to reinstate it.

Lastly, we note that Jobs was well known for his excellent taste in music, delighting in the tunes of Bob Dylan and other luminaries. So what would he make of Apple's linkup with U2, which is set to release its new album through iTunes?

Well, apparently an argument between Bono and Jobs once got to the "F-you stage" during negotations over a special edition, charitable iPod.

The problem was that Bono wanted the slogan (Apple) Red printed on the music player. But ain't no one gonna put Apple in brackets, said Steve, arguing for days until the words "(Product) Red" were put on instead. So have fanbois still not found what they are looking for? We'll see about that when the Apple Watch hits the streets next year. ®