This is Technology Bytes, episode 80 for September 15th, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy and here we go.
So this week I am building on what I did last week where I was talking about what I thought going into the Apple event called It’s Glow Time.
And this week I want to talk about one of the devices that they spoke about and that is the Apple Watch 10.
But before I get there I want to remind people that last week I thought there might be some M4 hardware, maybe an iPad mini announced, but that did not happen so I was wrong there.
But it was an iPhone event and then the periphery things that go with the iPhone that are used with an iPhone and almost always with an iPhone and that’s the Apple Watch and AirPods.
Although I understand that AirPods can be used with other devices because they are just Bluetooth headphones.
And so this week again I’m going to focus on the Apple Watch 10.
That’s one of the purchases that I’m making, not for me.
I have the Ultra 2 and there was no upgrade there or update really except for a new color.
But my wife is getting a new Apple Watch.
She’s getting the Apple Watch 10 moving up from the Apple Watch 6.
So I think that will be a big jump for her and she will really like it.
So first I thought I’d just cover some of the basics, things that kind of jump out at me on the basics of the watch and what makes it different than the previous versions.
And the one thing that Apple has done is to make the iPhone bigger.
So the screen is its biggest display.
It’s even bigger than the Ultra 2.
And so that’s kind of an interesting thing.
But at the same time they’ve made it lighter and they’ve made it thinner.
And so maybe the increased size will not be as noticeable.
My wife wears the smaller Apple Watch and she’s like I don’t want anything bigger and so I was looking at the physical dimensions and even though the display is bigger the actual physical size of the watch is very minuscule measurements of millimeters larger.
But it’s lighter.
I think she will like that.
And then of course with the new internal I think it’s a S10 this year chip that’s going to be faster.
Looking at the screen, the screen is going to be brighter.
There’s a number of other things that make the Apple Watch a great upgrade.
But those are some of the basics that I noticed first.
There were some things that stood out to me.
In general many of the additions to the Apple Watch 10 were already on the versions of the Ultra that Apple has released.
So some of those are copies.
Things like water temperature when you’re swimming in the ocean or in a pool.
A depth sensor when you do any kind of diving with the Apple Watch 10.
They talk more about snorkeling because the depth that you can go with the Apple Watch 10 is not as far as you can go with an Ultra.
So some of those natural things that they’ve copied.
There is no action button like you get with the Ultra and the GPS is not the same.
The Ultra is still better in the GPS department because I think they use two GPS radios versus the one that’s in the rest of the watches.
But that in and of itself means that if you don’t want the ruggedness and some of the bulk of the Ultra, you can get most of its capabilities by moving up to the Apple Watch 10.
So a couple other things that jumped out at me.
One is the always-on display.
So that is not new.
But the one thing on the always-on displays up until the Apple Watch 10 is that the refresh rate was 60 hertz which basically means once a minute it’s going to refresh.
So you don’t see any action in that internal minutes when the watch is just in its display mode.
But with the Apple Watch 10, they’ve moved that down to one hertz.
So basically you can watch the second hand sweep if you have a second hand on the watch face that you’re using just by glancing at your watch.
It doesn’t have to come on.
It’s always on.
And so that’s kind of interesting because you would think that would use more battery.
But they’re getting longer battery life out of it as well.
One of the other things that jumped out at me is sleep apnea.
Now one of the neat things about what Apple has done here is it’s not only the Apple Watch Series 10 that gets that.
It’s the 9 and the Ultra because they have enough of the sensors that they use.
I’m not about to explain why that works or how that works.
I just know that there’s some medical science that goes into sleep apnea that they can gather data from the watch on your wrist while you’re sleeping.
I don’t believe my wife or I suffer from that.
But it is something that would be interesting to know as you wear the watch while you sleep.
Now my wife isn’t going to wear a watch at night because it will bother her too much.
I do wear mine.
It doesn’t seem to bother me.
So it’ll be interesting to see if I get any data out of that improvement.
A couple other things.
The viewing angle on the Apple Watch Series 10 is apparently greatly improved.
The Ultra is a very flat face.
So I think the viewing angle is low because of that.
But the Apple Watch 10 is supposed to have a way better viewing angle.
So that will be interesting to see if my wife notices that.
A couple other things.
The usable speakers.
This is the first time that a watch is being allowed to actually play audio without going through a Bluetooth attached device.
Headphones or speakers or something like that.
And so that’ll be interesting to well I guess one to see if people will use it because you know when you’re out in public or somewhere people don’t want to hear what you’re hearing.
That’s why people wear headphones.
But we’ll see how that works.
And then of course there’s lots of health and fitness related things.
And they continue to improve those over time.
Crest detection and fall detection and all of those types of things that help those who wear an Apple Watch remain healthy.
And then it actually gathers that data that you can share with doctors.
It keeps it private in your health data and those kinds of things.
And so those are all neat things.
Not necessarily new but I think they’re better.
The data that is able to be collected from the sensors is a little more accurate and they’re doing more things with it.
They being Apple doing more things with that data to allow their users to use it to either converse with doctors or share that data with medical professionals.
So one of the things that I thought was pretty interesting is the Tide app.
You know I remember when I was a kid so I grew up in Alaska and Tide was super important.
And I remember my dad having charts and tables that told him what the Tide was going to be.
And we used that quite a bit.
Well we would go get clams or we would wonder if we could launch our boat.
We always had to time it so that we could do it when the Tide was at the appropriate level.
Or maybe just how the water would be running through a river or a channel or something like that where the Tide makes a very big difference.
And you know that’s just the way I grew up.
I grew up knowing that Tide was important.
My dad thought it was important so of course I thought it was important.
But we knew why and there were reasons for it.
So I don’t know.
I live in Arizona so now being next to water is not something that occurs very often for me.
But I still thought it was interesting that that was an app that Apple decided to release.
And it does make some sense for people who are surfing or snorkeling or diving.
Those kind of things where the Tide makes a difference.
So the one thing that is not really changing is the fact that the colors of the Apple Watch are generally not that aggressive or that varied.
And this year it doesn’t change.
They’ve got the silver, they’ve got a black, they’ve got a rose gold.
Those are very common things that they’ve done.
They did have titanium cases so that kind of makes it even more like the Ultra.
But those colors are fairly well they’re not bright colors.
And they also are very expensive.
Adding $300 just because of the titanium case to the price of the watch.
And that is the one thing that has disappointed my wife.
She liked that.
I can’t remember what the color they still carried in the SE but it’s just kind of a softer I think they call it starlight and she really liked that.
So she was quite disappointed that the new watch that I made her wait for doesn’t come in a color that she really really likes.
But the one that we landed on was the polished black and I think she will like it.
And this is actually a new color for Apple even though it’s still black.
But to have it so highly polished that it’s almost a mirror finish.
I think that she will like that.
And black does go with much if not all of everything.
So that being said this coming up week Friday is my wife’s birthday and she’s getting the Apple Watch 10 and I hope that she enjoys it.
And even though the color isn’t exactly what she wanted that she still appreciates the improvements the better screen the larger text that she can see on her wrist and the more information that will be there.
Plus all the other enhancements that they’ve made.
Well that is all I have for today.
As always I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast.
If you have any questions comments suggestions you can send them to technologybytes at merigfamily.com that’s m-e-a-r-i-g family.com and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
