Marc Newson is an outstanding product designer and also happens to be a good friend of Ive's.

I know Apple has made some fashion specific hires in the past but I don't think this is one of them.

This along with signing the CEO of Burberry and Yves Saint Laurent. Clearly, they're not trying to win the battle for best tech gadget which Samsung and others have flung themselves into in an attempt to beat Apple products.

I'm guessing things like the iWatch, phones, and tables will be fashionable, high margin products built to

1) be easy to use 2) look very good and stylish

rather than have the most features...

Apple products:

1) are very pretty/trendy/fashionable

2) have a very high build quality(no cheap plastic, lots of aluminum)

3) "just work"

Honestly 2 and 3 are why I stick with them. After owning a mbp and iphone I can't go back to the crappy plastic that every piece of tech seems to be made out of these days, and I never have to worry about something not working on my phone or laptop like I had to with my countless android devices.

When I need to get work done I'll open up my vm or boot into ubuntu/fedora/etc. but other than that I don't need/care about endless customizability that android/linux offer me. I want something works and is easy to use.

I agree with your 3 points but I would add one more that isn't positive:

4) designed to the limits of failure, low design quality/resilience

There ought to be an equivalent phrase to "never get involved in a land war in Asia" for getting into a feature war in technology.

I don't see how anyone would draw this conclusion from the facts given. They haven't had high-profile engineering-centric hires in the past year because there haven't been any high-profile engineering vacancies.

In any event, not trying to have the most features is a good thing. It's pointless to have the most features if the features aren't appropriate for the product. A big part of good product design is making sure that every feature that is in the product has a damn good reason for being there. Companies that pursue feature bloat for its own sake are usually just trying to pad out their marketing blurbs, or have a screwed-up management structure that incentivizes everyone involved to cram their pet features into everything for the sake of internal corporate politics.

Feature creep isn't the sign of high tech products, it's the sign of an unhealthy organization that doesn't know (or care?) what it's actually creating.

>> I'm guessing things like the iWatch, phones, and tables will be fashionable, high margin products built to 1) be easy to use 2) look very good and stylish rather than have the most features...

That seems like the smart way to go. Regardless of the features, for most people, it's a fashion accessory first. Take Google Glass for example. I tried one for a week. It was cool tech and I could see how it would be useful for me but there is no way I wearing that thing. Same goes for the watches.

The CEO of Burberry also happens to be a superb retail strategist with plenty of experience in selling within China.

She is a much needed and highly qualified replacement for Ron Johnson.

The YSL hire was specifically to help sell the iWatch.