In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the Apple Watch is better for your health, but maybe the rumored screen-free wearable could be better for your peace of mind.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.
Keeping customers alive with simplification
The September event schedule usually covers the key portable touch points Apple has with its customers. That is, iPhone, AirPods, and the Apple Watch. This year was no different, and for the wearable side, that meant new wrist-mounted models.
There’s a lot to talk about, including things like Audio Intelligence and the privacy implications, as well as Siri‘s overhaul. But health is a big thing here, too.
It is a bit for me too, on a personal note. After attending a funeral earlier in the week, it certainly makes you think about your life and about doing something that stops you from being the perennially overweight guy. But I digress.
Apple’s added a new health-sensing system with an expanded electrode surface area, more electrodes, and a better photodiode array. It’s now checking your heart every five seconds, so you know how your heart varies throughout the day.
So many electrodes…
The new Readiness score also sounds like a decently simple way to measure your capacity to work out, or quite frankly, to deal with the day ahead. It’s a fairly clear signal to anyone that they need to care more about themselves.
It’s not quite the Apple Watch screaming “Get more sleep!” or “Work out more!” but it’s going to be helpful to some of its audience.
This all plays into Apple’s changes in the Health app on iPhone and iPad, with a greater use of Apple Intelligence. Though I fear many will look at Health Age with some trepidation.
Some people will see Apple Intelligence comparing them to someone five years younger and think they’re extremely fit for their age. Others will see a Health Age that’s added a few too many years, and quietly laugh it off if it’s brought up by anyone.
I fear that if I check that figure out, I’ll face questions from Apple Intelligence asking how I’m not dead yet.
Would you just stop already?
These notifications and metrics also tie into something else that came up this week. There were rumors that Apple was prototyping a new fitness and health tracker.
Specifically, a tracker that isn’t intended to be a mini iPhone on your wrist, but more a collection of sensors that hands off the data to your iPhone. Something similar to trackers like the ones sold by Whoop, which collects data on your activity and nothing else.
You may consider it to be a dumb Apple Watch, and you’re right. It’s not going to provide you with information directly, but that is the point.
I have been a long-time user of the Apple Watch Series 4, specifically the Nike Edition one. As if the swoosh will make me do more exercise.
The Apple Watch Series 4, still working on my wrist. It’s more scuffed now, though.
I have written before about how the Apple Watch is great at data collection, but also that it is also insanely good at nagging you. Every so often, your wrist dings as yet another notification comes in, and you’re too lazy to keep looking at your iPhone for once.
The amount of dings I get every day on my wrist is infuriating at times. On many occasions, I have wanted to punt the Apple Watch through a window because I hear the chime and immediately do Pavlov proud by looking at my wrist.
I have, in recent months, started wearing the Apple Watch with Do Not Disturb enabled. It has certainly helped me become less wound up and more relaxed because I’m able to ignore those wrist pings, but it doesn’t stop me from checking.
This is a problem that Apple has partially solved. With the introduction of the fitness tracking capability in the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2, it does mean I can do some workouts and exercise without the Apple Watch at all.
However, if I want to check my health from throughout the day, that’s not an option. I still have to stick with the Apple Watch and live with the potential auditory distraction.
At least the Whoop-like tracker will be there for keeping tabs on my day.
It’ll still be silently judging me, but that’s the point.
Last week’s Sunday Reboot discussed the Battersea Power Station Apple Store, and how it should be a more-used design in Apple’s retail landscape
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