I’m standing outside my apartment building now. On my left wrist is an Apple Watch Series 2 and turning it to face me, I see Mickey Mouse pointing to the time, and tapping his foot to an unheard rhythm (exactly once per second). I swipe across the face of the watch with one finger, and Mickey slides away. Swiping past several watch faces I don’t need, I get to the Activity Digital face, which shows the time, as well as Move (red) Exercise (green) and Stand (blue) goals for the day. I tap the small icon at the top right of the screen showing a running figure, and the Workout app launches; I select Quick Start for an outdoor run and set off.
The Apple Watch Series 2 is a significant upgrade to the original, which is in both hardware and software.
A few people in serious running togs blow by me, but I’m taking it nice and easy. A light tap on my wrist tells me without my having to look that I’ve just hit the one mile mark, as the GPS receiver in the watch and the one in my phone (which is in the pocket of my jacket) chit-chat silently over Bluetooth to track my position. A glance at my wrist shows me my heart rate, which has climbed up above 100 beats per minute, as well as distance, and calories burned – it’s a little depressing to know, thanks to the miracle of modern biosensor technology, that the calorie-burning benefits of a 5k run can be wiped out by a single decent ham and cheese sandwich, but the Apple Watch doesn’t make the news, it just reports it.
Passing under the Williamsburg Bridge, and start back after I turn back. Little taps on my wrist let me know when I’ve hit the two and three mile marks, and as I huff to a stop in front of my apartment building, I tap the End icon in the Workout app. Mileage is 3.36 and thanks to GPS I’m within a hundredth of a mile of yesterday’s run along the same route – just a little over five kilometers.
A new Control Center puts eight essential functions at your fingertips.
Upstairs, I run a hot shower and swipe up on the Apple Watch face. A screen slides up and into place showing eight icons – this is the new Control Center. There are icons for battery life, airplane mode, silent mode, do not disturb mode, something called Find My iPhone that sets a beeper going so I can, well, find my iPhone, a lock button, and one that launches Airplay. There’s also one with a little drop of water on it and I tap that. This locks the screen so that every drop of water from the shower isn’t interpreted as a finger tap. Five minutes later I jump out, towel off, and give the crown a twist, which in turn causes the speaker to start emitting a series of high-pitched beeps – it’s blowing water out of the speaker aperture with sound waves.
On the way to work, I get a text from a co-worker. Holding the watch to my mouth, I say, “I’ll be at the office shortly.” The words appear on the screen with almost zero lag and I hit Send. Wondering if the morning’s clear weather will hold up, I hold down the crown until an oscillating wave and the words, “What can I help you with?” appear – Siri’s on the line. “Open Dark Sky,” I tell the watch. Siri says she’ll let me know when she’s gotten the forecast, and a second or two later, I feel a gentle tap on my wrist. I glance at the day’s hourly weather – rain this afternoon.
When I get to the office, I switch the Apple Watch to my right wrist, and dip into the Watch App on the phone to change the orientation setting to right wrist, crown right; I strap a nice mechanical chronograph that’s sitting on my desk to my left wrist. That’s the first time since waking up three hours ago that I’ve actually taken my phone out of my pocket. When I go to bed that night (early, around 10-ish, as I’m getting up at the crack of dawn the next morning) I tell the watch “wake me up at five AM” and Siri responds, cheerily, “setting the alarm.” Despite having had the watch on all day, and having used it fairly frequently, there’s still plenty of juice left in the battery.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Siri now responds more rapidly and accurately, and many functions can be accessed with voice commands.
The new Apple Watch Series 2, running watchOS 3, has a sense of identity, and consequently a seamlessness in its presence, that the very first Apple Watch pointed to but didn’t quite achieve. The first Apple Watch had design chops to spare and I thought it was a fascinating window into the possible, but seen through the lens of Series 2, you recognize how much unrealized potential there was. Apple Watch Series 2, running watchOS 3, also really clarifies just how much the experience of the Apple Watch, and any smartwatch, depends on the operating system.
Apple Watch Series 2: Hardware
Externally, the Apple Watch Series 2 and the original Apple Watch are nearly identical.
At first glance – and even second or third glance, really – you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the first Apple Watch and Series 2; the same rounded-rectangle form factor is there, and the Digital Crown and Home button are right where you remember them. On the other side are apertures for the speaker and the microphone. (Rather enigmatically, there are two mic ports rather than the single one on the side of the first Apple Watch, and there has been some speculation online that one of them is an opening for a barometer, but Apple tells us that this is in fact not the case.)
The Apple Watch Series 2 is slightly thicker than the first Apple Watch, but not by much – 0.9mm –and about 4.2 grams heavier, largely due to the higher capacity battery. The Series Two also features a brighter display (more than twice as bright as the original Apple Watch, although by default it’s set to the medium brightness setting; if you don’t go into the Watch app, or the Settings menu on the watch, and turn it up all the way you might miss that). A very big part of the identity of the Series 2 is its usefulness as a fitness tracker and in keeping with that, in addition to software supporting swimming the Series 2 is also water resistant to 50m.
The last bit of big news is that the Apple Watch Series 2 now comes with a GPS receiver, so if you don’t feel like taking your iPhone with you (or if you’re doing something that makes carrying the phone on your person impractical, like an open water swim) you don’t have to. Quite a lot of the data the Apple Watch Series Two needs to accurately estimate things like calories burned by swimmers, came from Apple’s no-longer top secret Fitness Lab, which gives you some notion of what R&D in the modern smartwatch landscape really requires (and why it’s increasingly hard to compete with companies with budgets like the one Apple has).
The mic apertures are now sealed against up to 50m of water pressure, and the speaker now uses sound pulses to clear moisture from its interior.
For the rest, you’re pretty much on familiar ground; the back of the watch is ceramic (zirconia; and as we reported not long ago, if you love you some ceramic, Apple has you covered) and houses LEDs and sensors that allow the watch to track your heart rate. You don’t usually see them in action but if by chance you’re in a situation where you need a flashlight and your phone isn’t with you, you could do worse than turn on the heartbeat tracker. (If you want to disable the heart rate sensor, in order to save power, you can do it in the Watch app; go to My Watch, Workout, and then turn on Power Saving Mode.)
You won’t usually see these in operation but the LEDs for the heart rate sensors make quite a light show.
The system for swapping straps remains blessedly intact as well, which means you may swap back and forth at whim, and this, in combination with the new ease of transition between different watch faces, means it’s easier than ever to dress the Apple Watch up or down. Other upgrades include a faster dual core processor, and a new GPU, all of which add up to an altogether zippier experience. Which brings us to watchOS 3.
Apple Watch Series 2: watchOS 3
watchOS 3 and iOS 10 have been designed to provide much more seamless integration between your iPhone and the Apple Watch Series 2.
Fifty-meter water resistance, a more powerful battery, and a built-in GPS receiver are all terrific, but it’s in watchOS 3 that we really see how much further the overall Apple Watch experience has come. Thanks partly to a redesign of the OS, and to the use in Series 2 of a much faster processor, the Apple Watch Series 2 feels a much more natural partner in daily life. One feature that really underscores just how much more user-friendly the watchOS 3 user interface has become, is the use of the side button as a dedicated SOS switch.
Holding the side button down for six seconds brings up two options: powering the watch off and activating the SOS beacon. (If you have enabled medical alerts in the Health App on your iPhone, this information is also available, and as it can be accessed when the watch is locked, it’ll be available to first responders as well.) Activating Emergency SOS will place a call to emergency services anywhere in the world, and will also share your location with your emergency contacts. If your phone isn’t in touch with your watch, the watch will attempt to place the call using any available Wi-fi network (yes, the Apple Watch Series 2 is wi-fi enabled and Apple recommends leaving both Bluetooth and Wi-fi on; the watch and phone will attempt to communicate using Wi-fi if they’re out of range of Bluetooth).
The new app dock in watchOS 3 means that what you want to do is almost always at your fingertips.
The reason I think this is an important instance of how Apple’s thinking has changed in designing watchOS 3, is that it’s all about putting what you need most within easy reach. Changing the watch face, managing watch faces, putting frequently used apps in a to-Mac-users instantly recognizable Dock, and making commonly used functions quickly accessible through a one-swipe-away Control Center mean that about 90% of what you want to do is at the top layer of the OS, not several swipes and/or button pushes away.
Since you can get where you want to go faster, you end up doing more with the watch, and not only does the new OS make the Apple Watch Series 2 much more user friendly, it also makes it better at doing one of the things we’ve liked best about it so far: filtering data coming into your email, messaging, and social media accounts. You certainly can set up notifications on the watch so that all these accounts generate notifications, but when I first tried out the Apple Watch, I felt that a better idea was to set notifications so that non-essentials are culled. If you do that, the Apple watch can actually significantly decrease your information overload; it was true with the first Apple Watch and it’s even more true with Series 2. And, in addition to filtering non-essential information, the Apple Watch can be very useful for letting you know quickly when something genuinely urgent does come in.
Taking out the iPhone, with Apple Watch Series 2 and watchOS 3, now feels a bit more like sitting down at a laptop or desktop computer used to when smartphones were just coming into the picture. Yes, it’s still true that the number of ways you can control the watch can lead to confusion. You can control the Apple Watch via either a button press on one of two buttons, the rotation of the crown, swiping, or using Force Touch (and via voice commands to Siri as well) and the number of possibilities can sometimes slow things up. For instance, if you want to switch to metric units for workouts, you have to select a workout, swipe to the Distance goal, and then firmly press the screen; you then see the option to change from miles to kilometers. However, it’s important to note that even here, missing that option doesn’t break anything mission critical about the app, and in general finding what you want in watchOS 3 is a piece of cake compared to earlier versions.
The bubble-icon app view is still available, but with watchOS 3, you’ll be needing to look at it a lot less.
Between the greater speed of the new processor, the much better organization of the OS, and the new physical attributes of the hardware, many of the major caveats with the original model have been addressed. Pain points have either been eliminated entirely, or reduced to the status of very occasional minor annoyances – I wish, for instance, that it were possible to edit the Control Center so that I could switch wrist orientation without going into the Watch app on my phone; I had to re-pair the Watch and iPhone when first setting them up, in order to get the Apple Watch equivalent of a minute repeater to work (when you tap Mickey or Minnie – now available in a very nice retro-style black and white face as well as color – they will announce the time in a pleasantly authentic squeak).
I personally find the Breathe app, which pops up periodically and talks you through a one minute guided meditation, a little bit of a nag, and I’ve toyed with the idea of disabling its notifications, but honestly, gently nudging people to stop what they are doing and mindfully breathe for one minute a few times a day is not the worst idea anyone has ever had.
The Breathe app wants you to chill for a minute. It’s not bad advice, even if it’s annoying sometimes.
One thing that did occur to me is that it would be nice to get blood pressure info, as well as heart rate, from the watch, but it would be difficult. Let us consider the problem.
Traditionally, blood pressure is taken by compressing the brachial artery with an air-inflated cuff. You then put a stethoscope in the hollow of your elbow (the cubital fossa, as anatomists call it) and start deflating the cuff. As blood starts to flow through the artery again, you hear the so-called Korotkoff sound: turbulence as flow resumes. That’s your systolic pressure: the 120 in 120/80, which you read off the pressure gauge on the cuff. When the sounds become inaudible you read off the diastolic pressure: the 80 in 120/80. (The former battlefield medic who taught me to take blood pressure told us you always have to pump the cuff up to at least 200mm/hg. One of my fellow students asked, “Um, doesn’t that kind of hurt?” She gave him a rather fixed look, and then said, very deadpan, “That’s right. Never forget, medicine hurts.“)
You can take blood pressure nowadays via fingertip compression, so clearly it’s not essential to use the brachial artery, but tightening and loosening some sort of motorized strap seems a big ask. (You’d need some sort of hot-shoe attachment for the strap, and you might be able to use some sort of flexible linear motor, and you could put some sort of thin-film battery in the strap in which case you actually don’t need a vulnerable physical electrical connection with the Watch, come to think of it . . . well, Apple?)
It’s 5:00 AM, and I’m standing outside my apartment building in the pre-dawn darkness. On my left wrist is an Apple Watch Series 2. Turning it to face me, I see Mickey Mouse pointing to the time, and tapping his foot to an unheard rhythm (exactly once per second). I swipe across the face of the watch with one finger, and Mickey slides away. Swiping past several watch faces I don’t need, I get to the Activity Digital face, which shows the time, as well as Move (red) Exercise (green) and Stand (blue) goals for the day. I tap the small icon at the top right of the screen showing a running figure, and the Workout app launches; I select Quick Start for an outdoor run and set off.
The Apple Watch Series 2 is a significant upgrade to the original, in both hardware and software.
Out by the East River you don’t have a ton of company at this hour; a few people in serious running togs blow by me, but I’m taking it nice and easy. A light tap on my wrist tells me without my having to look that I’ve just hit the one mile mark, as the GPS receiver in the watch and the one in my phone (which is in the pocket of my jacket) chit-chat silently over Bluetooth to track my position. A glance at my wrist shows me my heart rate, which has climbed up above 100 beats per minute, as well as distance, and calories burned – it’s a little depressing to know, thanks to the miracle of modern biosensor technology, that the calorie-burning benefits of a 5k run can be wiped out by a single decent ham and cheese sandwich, but the Apple Watch doesn’t make the news, it just reports it.
I turn back after passing under the Williamsburg Bridge, and start back. Little taps on my wrist let me know when I’ve hit the two and three mile marks, and as I huff to a stop in front of my apartment building, I tap the End icon in the Workout app. Mileage is 3.36 and thanks to GPS I’m within a hundredth of a mile of yesterday’s run along the same route – just a little over five kilometers.
A new Control Center puts eight essential functions at your fingertips.
Upstairs, I run a hot shower and swipe up on the Apple Watch face. A screen slides up and into place showing eight icons – this is the new Control Center. There are icons for battery life, airplane mode, silent mode, do not disturb mode, something called Find My iPhone that sets a beeper going so I can, well, find my iPhone, a lock button, and one that launches Airplay. There’s also one with a little drop of water on it and I tap that. This locks the screen so that every drop of water from the shower isn’t interpreted as a finger tap. Five minutes later I jump out, towel off, and give the crown a twist, which in turn causes the speaker to start emitting a series of high-pitched beeps – it’s blowing water out of the speaker aperture with sound waves.
On the way to work, I get a text from a co-worker. Holding the watch to my mouth, I say, “I’ll be at the office shortly.” The words appear on the screen with almost zero lag and I hit Send. Wondering if the morning’s clear weather will hold up, I hold down the crown until an oscillating wave and the words, “What can I help you with?” appear – Siri’s on the line. “Open Dark Sky,” I tell the watch. Siri says she’ll let me know when she’s gotten the forecast, and a second or two later, I feel a gentle tap on my wrist. I glance at the day’s hourly weather – rain this afternoon.
When I get to the office, I switch the Apple Watch to my right wrist, and dip into the Watch App on the phone to change the orientation setting to right wrist, crown right; I strap a nice mechanical chronograph that’s sitting on my desk to my left wrist. That’s the first time since waking up three hours ago that I’ve actually taken my phone out of my pocket. When I go to bed that night (early, around 10-ish, as I’m getting up at the crack of dawn the next morning) I tell the watch “wake me up at five AM” and Siri responds, cheerily, “setting the alarm.” Despite having had the watch on all day, and having used it fairly frequently, there’s still plenty of juice left in the battery.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Siri now responds more rapidly and accurately, and many functions can be accessed with voice commands.
The new Apple Watch Series 2, running watchOS 3, has a sense of identity, and consequently a seamlessness in its presence, that the very first Apple Watch pointed to but didn’t quite achieve. The first Apple Watch had design chops to spare and I thought it was a fascinating window into the possible, but seen through the lens of Series 2, you recognize how much unrealized potential there was. Apple Watch Series 2, running watchOS 3, also really clarifies just how much the experience of the Apple Watch, and any smartwatch, depends on the operating system.
Apple Watch Series 2: Hardware
Externally, the Apple Watch Series 2 and the original Apple Watch are nearly identical.
At first glance – and even second or third glance, really – you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the first Apple Watch and Series 2; the same rounded-rectangle form factor is there, and the Digital Crown and Home button are right where you remember them. On the other side are apertures for the speaker and the microphone. (Rather enigmatically, there are two mic ports rather than the single one on the side of the first Apple Watch, and there has been some speculation online that one of them is an opening for a barometer, but Apple tells us that this is in fact not the case.)
The Apple Watch Series 2 is slightly thicker than the first Apple Watch, but not by much – 0.9mm –and about 4.2 grams heavier, largely due to the higher capacity battery. The Series Two also features a brighter display (more than twice as bright as the original Apple Watch, although by default it’s set to the medium brightness setting; if you don’t go into the Watch app, or the Settings menu on the watch, and turn it up all the way you might miss that). A very big part of the identity of the Series 2 is its usefulness as a fitness tracker and in keeping with that, in addition to software supporting swimming the Series 2 is also water resistant to 50m.
The last bit of big news is that the Apple Watch Series 2 now comes with a GPS receiver, so if you don’t feel like taking your iPhone with you (or if you’re doing something that makes carrying the phone on your person impractical, like an open water swim) you don’t have to. Quite a lot of the data the Apple Watch Series Two needs to accurately estimate things like calories burned by swimmers, came from Apple’s
no-longer top secret Fitness Lab, which gives you some notion of what R&D in the modern smartwatch landscape really requires (and why it’s increasingly hard to compete with companies with budgets like the one Apple has).
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