After a decade of growth, the Apple Watch is mainly 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 the whole lot out of your coronary heart fee to extremely nice actions.
However exterior, the Apple Watch nonetheless seems to be just like the Apple Watch—extra so than some 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 arduous to seek out one thing to sit 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, dimension, or curvature, however you’d be arduous 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 totally 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 provide 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, absolutely Apple might 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 lately, rose gold is the one different possibility. The place did the colourful inexperienced, blue, and pink 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 one million Apple Watch bands on the market, however they’re type of…nicely…the identical. The supplies and colours is likely to be totally different, however none of them add something to the watch aside from a bit model. How a few new clasping mechanism that enables for a tiny quantity of energy and information switch, simply sufficient to energy some tiny microelectronics and ship a couple of kilobytes of knowledge now and again. Add a couple of developer frameworks, and each Apple and third-party builders might make sensible bands.
There have been numerous rumors through the years a few new mechanism, and one might 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 serious purpose to improve—greater than yet one more well being sensor, actually.
Heck, I’d purchase a wise band that simply had a button on the wrist facet that I might set to one in all a dozen totally different features similar to the Motion Button on the iPhone and Apple Watch Extremely.
Software program, software program, software program
Clearly there’s loads 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 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 approach to carry the brand new Siri to the Apple Watch. If the Siri fashions are too massive to run solely on the watch, the watch might merely work as a “speakerphone” for Siri in your iPhone more often than not.
Once I watch individuals use their Apple Watch, I’m struck by how a lot of the core interface goes utterly 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 could actually do, and while you inform them, they battle to truly entry it. It’s taking a bunch of core iPhone (or Apple Watch) features and intentionally stuffing them in a hidden and complicated menu, and so far as the typical person is anxious, 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 in search of (Listing View ought to actually be the one possibility), the restricted watch faces… with fundamental customization that also appears past the typical person. Most individuals I see simply follow 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 means an excessive amount of and never sufficient, and whose finest options are opaque to the typical person—needs to be fastened on all current Apple Watches. Possibly 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 course for {hardware} that’s wanted to essentially make Apple Watch thrilling once more. Apple appears so laser-focused on the subsequent massive 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 pondering.
