After a decade of growth, the Apple Watch is principally the identical because it was when it launched in 2015. Sure, the expertise inside has gone via vital enhancements its early days a dacade in the past. Greater, brighter shows. Extra highly effective processors. An ever-growing suite of sensors to detect every part out of your coronary heart fee to extremely superb actions.
However exterior, the Apple Watch nonetheless appears just like the Apple Watch—extra so than every other Apple product. From 10 toes away, you wouldn’t be capable of inform if somebody has a brand new Sequence 10 or an previous Sequence 4. Maybe that’s by design, however with main new well being applied sciences like blood glucose monitoring nonetheless years away and even the blood oxygen sensor “on pause” for over a 12 months and counting, it’s exhausting to search out one thing to look ahead to in a brand new Apple Watch.
Apple doesn’t want a brand new well being sensor to make Apple Watch thrilling once more. It must take some dangers.
Shake up the form
The form of the Apple Watch hasn’t modified in a decade. There have been slight variations in thickness, measurement, or curvature, however you’d be exhausting pressed to inform the distinction with out holding one subsequent to a different.
Think about if the primary decade of the iPhone was like that! By the point iPhone X celebrated the tenth anniversary of Apple’s smartphone, the gadget was already drastically completely different from its first few years.
So play with the form, Apple. Give us a watch with flat sides—I liked the mockups folks made from such a watch again when it was rumored that the Sequence 7 would sport such a glance.
Jon Prosser
Or supply two sorts of Apple Watch, one rectangular and one—gasp—spherical! Android watches have been round for years now with out main compromises to options or battery life, certainly Apple may make it occur with a couple of tweaks to the OS.
And what occurred to colours? After all, silver and black are the most well-liked watch colours, however as of late, rose gold is the one different choice. The place did the colourful inexperienced, blue, and purple choices of the Sequence 7 go? Or the pink Sequence 9? Just like the iMac, the fashion-forward Apple Watch is a chance for Apple to have some enjoyable.
Do one thing with bands
There are 1,000,000 Apple Watch bands on the market, however they’re form of…effectively…the identical. The supplies and colours may be completely different, however none of them add something to the watch apart from a little bit type. How a few new clasping mechanism that enables for a tiny quantity of energy and knowledge switch, simply sufficient to energy some tiny microelectronics and ship a couple of kilobytes of information once in a while. Add a couple of developer frameworks, and each Apple and third-party builders may make sensible bands.
There have been numerous rumors over time a few new mechanism, and one may think about sensible bands including customized sensors for particular sorts of actions, or perhaps a small, skinny secondary display screen that reveals a “complication” of kinds. An Apple Watch that helps new “sensible bands” can be a significant motive to improve—greater than one more well being sensor, actually.
Heck, I’d purchase a wise band that simply had a button on the wrist facet that I may set to considered one of a dozen completely different capabilities identical to the Motion Button on the iPhone and Apple Watch Extremely.
Software program, software program, software program
Clearly there’s rather a lot Apple can and needs to be doing with software program on the Apple Watch, beginning with making Siri nice. Even earlier than Apple Intelligence, the expertise on the Apple Watch wasn’t nearly as good because the one on our iPhone. Since none of the present Apple Watch fashions assist Apple Intelligence, it’s solely going to worsen. Apple must discover a approach to convey the brand new Siri to the Apple Watch. If the Siri fashions are too large to run fully on the watch, the watch may merely work as a “speakerphone” for Siri in your iPhone more often than not.
After I watch folks use their Apple Watch, I’m struck by how a lot of the core interface goes fully unused. Management Heart is simply as dangerous on Apple Watch as it’s on iPhone—so many individuals don’t know what it’s or the place it’s, don’t know what it will possibly do, and while you inform them, they wrestle to truly entry it. It’s taking a bunch of core iPhone (or Apple Watch) capabilities and intentionally stuffing them in a hidden and complicated menu, and so far as the common person is anxious, it would as effectively not be there.
Then there’s the bizarre honeycomb app grid that’s like an annoying little recreation to search out what you’re in search of (Record View ought to actually be the one choice), the restricted watch faces… with primary customization that also appears past the common person. Most individuals I see simply persist with the defaults, perhaps change the colour, however do not know what issues are or how they work in any respect.
However all of these items—software program that concurrently does method an excessive amount of and never sufficient, and whose finest options are opaque to the common person—needs to be mounted on all current Apple Watches. Perhaps the shift to the brand new design with iOS 19 will spur Apple to rethink watchOS 12 as a turning level for a rethink of the Apple Watch interface.
However new software program solely goes to this point. It’s a brand new route for {hardware} that’s wanted to actually make Apple Watch thrilling once more. Apple appears so laser-focused on the following large heath and health sensor that it appears to be ignoring all the opposite methods it may change up the Apple Watch line—a little bit enjoyable and a few outside-the-box pondering.
