Crucially, we've learned that these needs are not hierarchical. Think of yourself: You don't wake up in the morning and only think about food, then worry about making money, then think about loftier pursuits. Neither your day nor your life unfolds like that. It's messier, because of our adaptive and clever biology. Our hormones, our neurotransmitters, even our gut bacteria cause us to think about base needs like survival and loftier ones like personal fulfillment simultaneously. In fact, they compete with one another for our attention, and we prioritize and re-prioritize them on the fly, as context changes.

Apple's understanding of this is what sets it apart when it comes to launching market-changing products, including the newly announced Apple Watch. Apple doesn't lock into one need on the hierarchy (soup that satisfies hunger, or perfect luxury car), but instead builds and markets products that connect on all four of the human needs that we're grappling with constantly. Let's use the Apple Watch as an example:

Texts, finger-drawn emoticons, even the feature some consider hopelessly gimmicky, heartbeat sharing, are all central to the device keeping you connected.

Connections to loved ones is part of comfort, and so is the built-in health and fitness tracking, which makes the device something of a coach in your quest to improve yourself.

An easy box for Apple to check. Though many were surprised by the Apple Watch's conventional look (which pundits immediately declared savvy), Apple actually took the traditional winding crown of a watch and with it created a unique UI and UX, making it a tool for zooming in and out of maps or menus. The same is true in Apple's creation of an original touch interface which distinguishes between a tap and a press, giving the small screen twice as much utility as it would otherwise have.

Design plays a big role here through interchangeable watch bands. We've seen recently examples even in Apple's own marketing of customers celebrating uniqueness even though the products are remarkably uniform. Think of the commercial that flashes through the lids of dozens of MacBooks, each been dressed up with its own clever stickers, literally wrapped around the company's brand mark. Variety can of course also come from the suite of apps available to put on your watch.

But couldn't other smart watch entrants do the same thing? Forrester survey data shows that interest in wearing a wrist-based computing or sensoring device had grown from an already-high 28% in 2013 to an impressive 42% in 2014, all before the Apple Watch was a thing. But ask an average person if they know about the Pebble, the Samsung Gear products, or the new Moto 360 and you'll get blank stares in return. They may know the Nike Fuel Band or Fit Bit.

I'd argue that none of those devices delivers on our four needs as fully or as conveniently as Apple. For example, even though Pebble is aiming for all four needs, it has used less-convenient technology to deliver on those needs — admirable as the early entrant but insufficient at this stage in the market. Samsung, on the other hand, has created a device that promises to meet these four needs fully, but as a company it doesn't have the market power to draw other app makers into the environment as quickly as Apple can, giving Apple an app variety advantage from its first day on sale — as the mobile payment system announcement demonstrates. And in the mind of the potential buyer, Samsung and the others suffer vis-a-vis Apple because none can offer the reassurance — itself a form of comfort — that the company behind it has delivered on this before.[/en

[en]That's another secret to Apple's dominance. Once it established itself as a company that could meet these needs, people tend to trust the brand more — maybe more than it deserves, but certainly more than other entrants — giving it an advantage that other brands need to fight just to get people to listen; that's why so many competing companies literally use Apple in their marketing, comparing their own products and features to the one's that seem to hog all the attention: Apple's. Apple seems to own the conversation. Other, highly-regarded smartwatches already exist, but now people are talking about Apple's proposed definition of a smartwatch.

This was precisely the strategy that Apple used to sell the iPad, showing dialogue-free commercials that merely depicted the magical things the iPad could do for you. This made some people buy an iPad, and others know what they would want when they finally got a tablet from another manufacturer. Either way, Apple dominated by controlling the expectations the user had about what needs the iPad would fulfill.

The watch experience will be harder to illustrate than the iPad's, to be sure, but I suspect Apple's not done creating this experience. The smartwatch is the spearhead to a broader wearable experience, populated with a phone, a watch, an earpiece, health monitors, and more things that, deep down, you know you need.