 The Apple Watch Ultra. Photographer: Nic Coury/Bloomberg The new Apple Watch Ultra is marketed as a device for serious athletes, explorers, scuba divers, intense hikers and marathon runners. As of now, I am none of those things. But I absolutely love this latest incarnation of the company's smartwatch, and it's my favorite new Apple Inc. product in years. While the Apple Watch Ultra certainly has capabilities geared towards the extreme-sports crowd—namely the upgraded GPS, new compass features, and a water-depth sensor for divers—it has other features that anyone can appreciate. That includes the vastly upgraded battery, considerably better screen, Action Button, new microphone and speakers, and a more rugged design. That makes it a solid upgrade for anyone looking for the best Apple watch—even if they rarely break a sweat. For me, the battery life has been a game changer. I've found myself using the device for two days without the need to recharge it. Suddenly, it's a lot easier to take advantage of sleep tracking. I've worn an Apple Watch nearly every day since the Series 5 launched in 2019, but I've rarely used that feature until now. Given the vastly improved battery life—rated at 36 hours instead of 18—I have the confidence to use sleep tracking nightly without worrying about needing to quickly charge it at bedtime or before heading out for the day. I've slept with the watch on nightly since it went on sale a week or so ago. The new display is a massive improvement. Not so much because of its larger size—the watch offers only about 7% more screen area, and the bezels appear to be thicker than on my Series 7 from last year—but because of the brightness. With previous Apple Watches, I'd frequently find myself looking to increase the brightness only to realize I was already on the max setting. That's not an issue with the Ultra. The Action Button is another great addition. I have mine set to launch the Workout app, rather than a specific workout, because I rotate between indoor and outdoor walks as well as the treadmill. I sometimes also use the elliptical. Therefore, I didn't want to lock myself into a specific workout action. Besides tying it to workouts, users can set the Action Button to the stopwatch, a compass waypoint, the compass backtrack feature, the Dive app, the flashlight or an action from the Shortcuts app.  Bands for the Apple Watch Ultra. Photographer: Nic Coury/Bloomberg I think the company should expand the Action Button to more Apple Watch features. Ideally, it would have the ability to launch any app, music playlist or health-monitoring feature (like the heart-rate or blood-oxygen functions). For many tasks, a quick button press is far more convenient than digging around for an app through the home screen or calling it up through Siri. And I'd imagine this button eventually makes its way down the line to other Apple Watch models. The next big improvement is the audio. Call quality in both directions—via the speakers and microphone—is vastly improved. When I'm speaking to people who also have an Apple Watch Ultra, I often can't tell the difference between that and a phone. With older watch models, it could feel like the caller was in a wind tunnel or skydiving. Though it might be a drain on battery life, I think Apple should open up the speaker beyond phone calls and alerts and allow music playback. The Ultra could be an interesting gateway to watching quick videos too, and I think YouTube and Instagram should consider bringing versions of their apps to the device. Apple also needs to create a proper Safari app for the watch. Lastly, I find the new Apple Watch design to be an improvement, though it is clearly bulkier than the other variations. The titanium is a nice change compared with the stainless steel Apple Watch Series 7. And having a rugged watch is a real benefit even if you're not skiing the Swiss Alps or trekking through the Sahara. Then there's the price. If Apple had decided to charge north of $1,000 for the Ultra, I do think it would have been more of a niche product for hardcore athletes. But at $799, it's the exact same price as a 45-millimeter Apple Watch Series 8 with a Braided Solo Loop, Leather Link strap or Milanese Loop. It's hard to imagine paying that amount for an inferior Apple Watch when you could get the Ultra at the same price.  The Apple Watch Ultra, the SE and the Series 8 models. Photographer: Nic Coury/Bloomberg To be sure, there are plenty of people who will find the Ultra to be too large. Even for me, the device felt bulky, and I was uncertain about it for the first day or so. But as I kept using it, I was glad I upgraded. For the next version, I'd like to see Apple add a faster processor (the chip in the company's latest smartwatches is essentially the same as the one found in the S6 from 2020), a black titanium color option and double the internal storage (64 gigabytes versus 32). I'd also want the temperature sensor to show your actual temperature, not just how far you've veered overnight from your baseline. There are also a few improvements that adventure seekers will want as well, including making the onboard siren louder, adding the emergency SOS satellite feature from the iPhone 14, a weather app with more data, offline mapping (this is critical) and an even longer battery life. But for both the extreme-sports market and non-athletes, the Ultra is a pretty great start.  Tony Blevins in a TikTok video posted by Daniel Mac. Source: tiktok.com/@itsdanielmac Apple's vice president of procurement to leave after comments in viral TikTok video. The veteran executive is departing the company following a human-resources investigation. Tony Blevins, who worked at Apple for 22 years, appeared in a viral TikTok video by Daniel Mac and made a crude joke in a response to being asked what he does for a living. I first reported on the departure and the video on Thursday, noting that it was Apple operating chief Jeff Williams's decision for Blevins to leave. The 25-second video had been a hot topic among Apple operations staff and suppliers in recent weeks, with some employees voicing serious concerns and anger about it. Blevins said he "would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended" by what he called a "mistaken attempt at humor." An Apple spokesman, in response to questions about the matter, confirmed that he's leaving the company.  Amazon's Halo Rise bedside device. Source: Amazon.com Inc. Amazon launches bedside sleep tracker and makes minor updates to Echo speakers. The e-commerce behemoth made a slew of announcements during a one-hour presentation last week, but I think the most significant new product is the Halo Rise. This device vaults Amazon.com Inc. further into the sleep-tracking space, giving consumers an alternative to a wrist-worn monitor. The Halo Rise promises to gather the same type of data as a Halo Band, Fitbit or Apple Watch by using bedside sensors rather than equipment attached to the body. I'm looking forward to seeing how accurate the device is—and how much of a difference there is between bedside and wrist-worn sensors. The rest of Amazon's new lineup was a bit less exciting, but there were some other highlights. They included a high-end Kindle with a pen and drawing functionality, a second-generation Echo Auto to bring Alexa to cars, upgraded TV sets and new Ring cameras. Amazon's flagship hardware device, of course, remains the Alexa-equipped Echo smart speaker. That product got some updates as well, but they were probably the least significant I've seen from Amazon in years.  The Apple Park campus. Photographer: Sam Hall/Bloomberg Apple names new VPs for engineering, maps and its silicon teams. Around September or October each year, Apple announces new vice presidents as part of its performance-review season. I covered the promotions in 2019 and 2021, and I'm back to it for 2022. Apple has about 100 VPs among 160,000 employees, making that title the most senior position at the company beneath the C-suite and senior vice president level. This year, Apple named a vice president of its maps division, a pair of new VPs for its chip engineering department and an engineering vice president within services. Max Muller, who has run Apple Maps for some time and is a 20-year veteran of the company, is the new VP overseeing maps, the Find My feature and other geography-related tools at Apple. Payam Mirrashidi is now vice president of engineering within Eddy Cue's services organization. And Apple chip veterans Charlie Zhai and Fabian Klass are the executives rising to VP status in Johny Srouji's silicon group.  The iPhone 14 Plus, at left. Photographer: Nic Coury/Bloomberg Oct. 6: Google gives details on Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch. The company has already essentially unveiled its 2022 set of devices, but it will use this New York event to detail pricing, colors and other new features for the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Watch. Oct. 7: Apple's iPhone 14 Plus goes on sale. The company's new 6.7-inch non-Pro iPhone hits stores, bringing that screen size to the below-$1,000 price point for the first time. Oct. 12: Microsoft holds event to launch new Surface devices. Updates to the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro—with a new choice of Arm or Intel chips—are expected. Oct. 27: Apple announces fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. The latest results should give investors a sense of how the iPhone 14 is selling, since the period includes a couple weeks' worth of sales for the new device. Executives will also provide an update on how the company is handling a shaky economy and a broader slowdown in consumer tech spending. Q: Will Touch ID make a comeback next year on the iPhone 15?
Q: When are the next Apple products launching?
Q: Will Apple launch a bedside sleep tracking device like Amazon? | 
No comments:
Post a Comment