Apple confirms working with new materials – iWatch? iPhone 6?

Apple’s Design Supremo Jonathan Ive has given a long-ish interview to the New York Times, which is summarised here by The Guardian. In it he says ,well practically nothing interesting. But then again did you really expect him to share too much of Apple’s future plans?

In among the bluster and the reiteration that Tim Cook was always Steve Jobs’ man, is a quote or two about Apple working with new materials.

Ive says

“I would love to talk about future stuff – they’re materials we haven’t worked in before. I’ve been working on this stuff for a few years now. Tim is fundamentally involved in pushing into these new areas and into these materials.”

New materials? Well the big money is on Apple experimenting with sapphire crystal and Liquidmetal alloys.

MacRumours adds “sapphire crystal which may make its way into the iWatch and the iPhone 6, Liquidmetal alloys, which the company may use for various iPhone parts, and possibly graphene, which is seen as the hot new manufacturing material.

Apple has experimented with sapphire as a cover for the home button and the camera lens on the iPhone 5s, and Liquidmetal has been used in the iPhone 3G’s SIM tool removal device, but both materials are ripe for extended usage in Apple’s future devices.”