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 way of vital enhancements its early days a dacade in the past. Larger, 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 high quality actions.
However exterior, the Apple Watch nonetheless appears just like the Apple Watch—extra so than another Apple product. From 10 ft away, you wouldn’t have the ability to inform if somebody has a brand new Collection 10 or an outdated Collection 4.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 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, 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 system 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 folks product of such a watch again when it was rumored that the Collection 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, absolutely 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 today, rose gold is the one different possibility. The place did the colourful inexperienced, blue, and pink choices of the Collection 7 go? Or the pink Collection 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 sort of…effectively…the identical. The supplies and colours is perhaps totally different, however none of them add something to the watch aside from a bit of fashion. How a couple of 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 once in a while. Add a couple of developer frameworks, and each Apple and third-party builders may make good bands.
There have been numerous rumors through the years a couple of new mechanism, and one may 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 significant cause 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 may set to one in every of a dozen totally 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 assist Apple Intelligence, it’s solely going to worsen. Apple must discover a option to deliver the brand new Siri to the Apple Watch. If the Siri fashions are too large to run totally on the watch, the watch may merely work as a “speakerphone” for Siri in your iPhone more often than not.
Once 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 unhealthy 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 probably do, and whenever 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 typical consumer is anxious, it’d 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 on the lookout for (Listing View ought to actually be the one possibility), the restricted watch faces… with fundamental customization that also appears past the typical consumer. Most individuals I see simply persist with the defaults, possibly change the colour, however don’t know what problems are or how they work in any respect.
However all of these items—software program that concurrently does manner an excessive amount of and never sufficient, and whose greatest options are opaque to the typical consumer—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 date. It’s a brand new course for {hardware} that’s wanted to actually make Apple Watch thrilling once more. Apple appears so laser-focused on the subsequent large heath and health sensor that it appears to be ignoring all the opposite methods it may change up the Apple Watch line—a bit of enjoyable and a few outside-the-box pondering.
