After a decade of improvement, the Apple Watch is principally the identical because it was when it launched in 2015. Sure, the expertise inside has gone by means of important enhancements its early days a dacade in the past. Greater, brighter shows. Extra highly effective processors. An ever-growing suite of sensors to detect the whole lot out of your coronary heart price to extremely positive actions.
However outdoors, the Apple Watch nonetheless seems to be just like the Apple Watch—extra so than every other Apple product. From 10 ft 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 yr and counting, it’s exhausting to seek out one thing to stay up for 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 system was already drastically completely different from its first few years.
So play with the form, Apple. Give us a watch with flat sides—I cherished the mockups individuals fabricated 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 might make it occur with just a few tweaks to the OS.
And what occurred to colours? After all, silver and black are the most well-liked watch colours, however today, rose gold is the one different possibility. The place did the colourful inexperienced, blue, and crimson 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…nicely…the identical. The supplies and colours may be completely different, however none of them add something to the watch aside from a bit fashion. 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 just a few kilobytes of knowledge every so often. Add just a few developer frameworks, and each Apple and third-party builders might make good bands.
There have been numerous rumors over time a few new mechanism, and one might think about good bands including customized sensors for particular sorts of actions, or perhaps a small, skinny secondary display screen that exhibits a “complication” of types. An Apple Watch that helps new “good bands” can be a serious 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 aspect that I might set to one among 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 lots Apple can and must 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 pretty much as good because the one on our iPhone. Since none of the present Apple Watch fashions help Apple Intelligence, it’s solely going to worsen. Apple must discover a option to carry the brand new Siri to the Apple Watch. If the Siri fashions are too large to run fully on the watch, the watch might merely work as a “speakerphone” for Siri in your iPhone more often than not.
After I watch individuals use their Apple Watch, I’m struck by how a lot of the core interface goes fully unused. Management Middle 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 could do, and once 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 worried, it would as nicely not be there.
Then there’s the bizarre honeycomb app grid that’s like an annoying little sport to seek out what you’re searching for (Listing View ought to actually be the one possibility), the restricted watch faces… with primary customization that also appears past the common person. Most individuals I see simply stick to the defaults, possibly change the colour, however do not know what issues are or how they work in any respect.
However all of this stuff—software program that concurrently does method an excessive amount of and never sufficient, and whose greatest options are opaque to the common person—must 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 might change up the Apple Watch line—a bit enjoyable and a few outside-the-box considering.
