After a decade of growth, the Apple Watch is principally the identical because it was when it launched in 2015. Sure, the know-how inside has gone by way of 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 all the pieces out of your coronary heart price to extremely nice actions.
However exterior, the Apple Watch nonetheless appears to be like 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 From 10 ft away, you wouldn’t have the ability to inform if somebody has a brand new Sequence 10 or an outdated Sequence 4.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 laborious to search 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, measurement, or curvature, however you’d be laborious 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 beloved the mockups individuals product of 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 may make it occur with a couple of tweaks to the OS.
And what occurred to colours? In fact, silver and black are the preferred watch colours, however lately, 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 sort 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 little bit fashion. How a couple of new clasping mechanism that permits for a tiny quantity of energy and knowledge switch, simply sufficient to energy some tiny microelectronics and ship a couple of kilobytes of information from time to time. Add a couple of developer frameworks, and each Apple and third-party builders may make good bands.
There have been varied rumors over time 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 that reveals a “complication” of kinds. An Apple Watch that helps new “good bands” could be a serious cause to improve—greater than yet one more well being sensor, actually.
Heck, I might purchase a wise band that simply had a button on the wrist facet that I may set to considered one 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 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 help Apple Intelligence, it’s solely going to worsen. Apple must discover a option to convey the brand new Siri to the Apple Watch. If the Siri fashions are too huge to run fully on the watch, the watch may 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 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 actually do, and whenever you inform them, they battle to really 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’d as nicely 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 (Checklist 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 follow the defaults, possibly change the colour, however do not know what problems 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. 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 thus far. 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 huge 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.