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“People don’t appreciate the kind of artistry of what we did here.”

The artistry of watchmaking is pretty obvious with luxury brands like Rolex, Audemars Piguet, and Omega. But in exploring the Apple Watch’s band release buttons — our latest Button of the Month — we learned from ex-Apple engineers just how much went into its strap system and how Apple bought up the same CNC machines used by Rolex to do it.


A side-view render of the Apple Watch strap system, showing the internal springs and band release button assembly.
A cutaway render of the Apple Watch’s strap system. This little assembly opened up a $1 billion accessory ecosystem of straps alone for Apple.