Picking up from Part 1 of my WWDC Preview, let’s take a look at the Apple Watch. The Watch and watchOS have grown up quite a bit since their release in 2015. Four years have brought much more speed and stability, a better app experience, a smart focus on health and wellness features and even LTE and the ability to use an independent data connection.
Apple has been on a hardware hot streak this week, releasing new iPads, updated iMacs and new AirPods. However, they dialed things down a bit today and quietly released their annual Spring refresh for iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands.
The smartwatch field is still crowded, but Apple remains all alone at the top. According to a recent report from Strategy Analytics, Apple’s Watch platform still makes up a majority 50% of the market, with 22.5 million devices shipped in 2018. Considering that Samsung continues to pour money into their platform and that Fitbit and Garmin have been able to capture solid niche audiences, it is impressive that Apple can still command over half of the market.
The Apple Watch wasn’t the instant hit that some thought it would be, but it did grow steadily through its first couple of years. Now that pace has picked up and the Watch can’t be thought of as anything but a huge success for Apple. They now own the smartwatch market the way they once owned portable music players.
With the new Series 4, Apple finally has its act together when it comes to the Watch running apps. The Series 3 brought the speed up to par, and the latest evolution brings even more in that department and pairs it with a dynamite screen. Unfortunately, the situation for developers was so poor in the Watch’s infancy that many of them bailed before things got interesting.
One of the standout features of the new Apple Watch Series 4 is its gorgeous screen. I have owned the Series 0, Series 1, and Series 3 Watches, and I would call their screens adequate, with each a little better than its predecessor. This isn’t an insult, as an adequate screen on a smartwatch that got a full day or better battery life was nothing to sneeze at a couple of years ago when this category was in its infancy.
However, the Series 4 is a completely different story. There is really no comparison between it and what came before. If you look at it next to any previous version, the difference is immediately noticeable. The Series 4 screen isn’t only larger, but it is also brighter and has a much higher resolution. Text, colors, and images just pop in a way that they couldn’t on previous Watch hardware. As much as the coming EKG capability grabbed the headlines after Apple’s release event, the screen is the real star of this show in my book.
Launch days rarely work out for anymore. I thought I had it all set up today, and that I would be able to come home a little early to start playing with the new toys. Well, real life and work both intervened and that didn’t happen. In fact, I didn’t get home until after 8 PM, so my phone is still restoring, and I’ve only had a little while to play around with my new 44 mm Apple Watch.
Some of the usual suspects have started to weigh in on Apple’s Watch and iPhone XS and XS Max preorders. Leading off, Ming-Chi Kuo says that sales are following the pattern that I suggested yesterday (I make no claims of genius or inside knowledge, just common sense). He reports that sales of the iPhone XS Max are meeting expectations, which I don’t think is a surprise. It has a novelty factor that the XS no longer holds. Speaking of the XS, Kuo says that pre-orders are “lower than expected.” I don’t find this surprising in the least, either, as the majority of people who wanted this design got an X last year.
Photo Source: 9to5Mac
Over the last week, 9to5Mac has let us know that the coming Apple Watch Series 4 will have both a little larger screen and a higher resolution. The new model’s screen is expected to be edge to edge and the resolution will jump significantly from 312 x 390 to 384 x 480. Both of these improvements will allow users to see more information at a glance (the watch face above is an excellent example), and should give developers more flexibility to create more useful apps for the platform.
The Apple Watch has quickly become one of the big stars in Apple’s hardware lineup. In three years, it has basically taken over the wearables market and become the world’s de facto smartwatch. A big reason for this is Apple’s investment in the platform and consistent innovation. They have already released one major re-write of watchOS (watchOS 3), have delivered four total updates to watchOS in three years, and have released one major hardware upgrade. That’s a lot of change in a short amount of time, especially for Apple.
When you refer to a product as a lifesaver, it’s usually an exaggeration referring to something makes makes simple tasks a little easier. However, that isn’t the case anymore when it comes to the Apple Watch. We are now seeing multiples stories per month talking about how an Apple Watch notified its wearer of a dangerously elevated heart rate, leading to a diagnosis of a critical condition or illness. In fact, there was a new report of just such an event from Hong Kong just a couple of days ago.