One of the Apple Watch’s coolest features was inspired by lightsabers

Apple designers spent over a year perfecting the vibrating function of the Apple Watch, which buzzes your wrist to let you know there is a notification.

A new Wired feature looks at the development of the Apple Watch, detailing how it evolved from a clumsy prototype to the finished product that started appearing in stores April 10.

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The “taptic engine” on the back of the Apple Watch has a collection of different vibrations that mean different things. Apple vice president of technology Kevin Lynch said: “Some were too annoying. Some were too subtle; some felt like a bug on your wrist.”

Apple wanted to experiment with different kinds of vibrations, so it sampled different sounds and turned them into physical movements that the taptic engine could make. Wired says Apple used the sound of bells, birds, and even lightsabers, the preferred Jedi weapon from “Star Wars,” to find out which vibrations worked best.

Weirdly, Apple has a history with lightsabers. Its design chief, Jony Ive, found himself sitting next to director J.J. Abrams at a dinner party in New York. They got talking, and Ive turned the discussion to the coming Star Wars movie, which Abrams is directing. Ive gave him “very specific suggestions” about how lightsabers should look in the new movie.

Here’s what Ive told The New Yorker about his conversation with Abrams:

It was just a conversation … I thought it would be interesting if it were less precise, and just a little bit more spitty … [a lightsaber should be] more analog and more primitive, and I think, in that way, somehow more ominous.

We don’t know exactly what Abrams did with Ive’s advice, but a distinctive lightsaber in the trailer for the new “Star Wars” film certainly matches Ive’s description of his advice.

 

This story originally appeared on Business Insider. Copyright 2015

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