The Apple Watch made smartwatches the wearable of choice

Ten years ago, aft announcing the iPhone 6, Tim Cook had 1 much happening to amusement the world. Cue the first-ever sizzle reel for the Apple Watch.

It’s comic watching that video today, particularly erstwhile you zero successful connected the features Apple claimed would revolutionize the smartwatch category. There was the Digital Crown — a alleged breakthrough successful input exertion that would fto you scroll and zoom connected what was fundamentally a mini wrist computer. It had a Taptic Engine that would discreetly buzz erstwhile a substance oregon notification came in. Glances were expected to beryllium digestible tidbits of information, a benignant of presumption update for your apps. Also, retrieve Digital Touch? That weird diagnostic wherever you property 2 fingers connected the surface and nonstop a person an animation of your heartbeat? 

Fast guardant a decade, and the sizzle reels for the Apple Watch are wholly different. Now, they’re afloat of radical sharing stories astir however the Apple Watch saved their lives. Year aft year, astir of the caller features absorption connected caller ways to adjacent your rings. Whatever you deliberation of the Apple Watch, it’s present the astir fashionable smartwatch successful the satellite and has been for years. In 2020, it outsold the entirety of the Swiss ticker industry. It is an undeniable success. But 10 years in, wherever does the Apple Watch spell next?

The archetypal Apple Watch arrived during the aureate property of the fittingness tracker. Fitbits and devices similar the Jawbone Up reigned ultimate with their agelong artillery beingness and simplicity. Smartwatches benignant of sucked. Pebble was beloved for its simplicity among gadget nerds, but the institution ne'er achieved mainstream appeal. Google was adjacent to the country with Android Wear successful 2014, but arsenic a platform, it was plagued by laggy interfaces, questionable tracking accuracy, bulky signifier factors, and piddling artillery life. Samsung had a fewer options connected its Tizen OS, but it struggled with galore of the aforesaid issues. So did the archetypal Apple Watch. For astir people, the smartwatch was an overly costly instrumentality that couldn’t regenerate a fittingness tracker oregon your smartphone. So, what was the constituent successful buying one?

Nobody had a bully answer, including Apple (which is astir apt wherefore truthful overmuch of the Apple Watch’s aboriginal selling focused connected fashion, of each things). And it wouldn’t commencement figuring retired the reply until 2017.

That’s erstwhile Apple added LTE with the Series 3. Suddenly, the Apple Watch wasn’t tethered to your phone. You could inactive telephone for assistance successful an emergency. I retrieve calling my roommate to springiness myself the illusion of information portion freaked retired connected a walk. Safety was a persuasive argument, albeit 1 tempered by inactive laggy performance. It surely didn’t assistance that making that telephone perfectly zapped my artillery beingness successful a specified 30 minutes. After I finished investigating the Series 3, I went backmost to my Fitbit Alta HR — but my cognition of the instrumentality arsenic an unnecessary luxury had shifted.

And past the existent industrywide crippled changer came successful 2018 with the Series 4. Now the Apple Watch had FDA-cleared EKGs that could observe atrial fibrillation. It could fig retired erstwhile you had a hard autumn and telephone for assistance connected your behalf. On apical of that, you could get alerted if your bosom complaint abnormally spiked erstwhile it shouldn’t. Your telephone can’t bash that. Suddenly, the Apple Watch wasn’t a fancy artifact that, astatine best, helped triage notifications. It could prevention lives. And did. 

It turns out, wellness is what’ll get the mean idiosyncratic to bargain a smartwatch. Anecdotally, it’s the fig 1 crushed wherefore friends and household inquire maine astir smartwatches. I’ll get texts from folks disquieted astir their parents’ wellness or, arsenic we get older, acrophobic friends pursuing a less-than-stellar doctor’s visit. It’s wherefore I personally made the switch, too. It’s wherefore it’s so hard to find anyone making fittingness bands anymore. 

The lone occupation is that tech moves fast. Health is notoriously slow.

The Apple Watch has gotten much clever updates than I tin count. So galore that the Series 9, Ultra 2, and second-gen SE are vastly antithetic devices than the archetypal watch. (I, for one, americium a large instrumentality of past year’s double pat gesture.) But adjacent the astir ardent Apple Watch fans can’t contradict the updates consciousness much iterative with each passing year. Aside from introducing the Ultra successful 2022, determination hasn’t been an industry-shaking update since the Series 4. 

Not for deficiency of trying. There person been respective rumors that Apple’s been moving connected features similar high humor pressure and sleep apnea detection, positive the beatified grail of each wellness tech, noninvasive humor glucose monitoring. But the raison d’être that catapulted the smartwatch — the information that it tin prevention lives — is besides the precise happening that’s kept it successful limbo. If radical judge this tech tin prevention lives, it has to walk a higher regulatory barroom than immoderate different user gadget. 

This is simply a bully thing! FDA clearance is determination to support consumers and guarantee guardrails are successful place. But it does mean Apple is benignant of stuck. For amended oregon worse, it acceptable user expectations sky-high successful this space. Yet, precocious wellness features necessitate companies to tread the bladed enactment betwixt regulatory clearance, accuracy, and patents. All this takes an unthinkable magnitude of resources and time. (You request look nary further than Apple’s ineligible conflict with aesculapian instrumentality shaper Masimo implicit humor oxygen tech to spot wherefore Samsung bushed Apple to an FDA-cleared slumber apnea feature.) 

In essence, the Apple Watch is benignant of wherever the iPhone was a fewer years agone — solid, but insignificant updates with the vague consciousness that thing large mightiness beryllium astir the corner. But wherever generative AI has breathed caller beingness into smartphones, nary one’s figured retired however champion to worldly it into a smartwatch yet. Based connected what we saw astatine WWDC, Apple Intelligence isn’t headed for the Watch anytime soon, either. So, wherever does that permission the Apple Watch implicit the adjacent decade?

There’s ever a accidental that Apple volition propulsion an industry-first wellness diagnostic retired of bladed air. Just a fewer days ago, Bloomberg and 9to5Mac some reported the long-delayed slumber apnea diagnostic mightiness marque an appearance. But without health, Apple has to spell the much accepted route. Bigger screens. Better artillery life. Upgraded sensors. More in-depth fittingness features to vie with the likes of Garmin, Polar, and Suunto. More ways to integrate with different Apple devices. New, non-health ways to marque your beingness better. Apple’s successful a tricky spot, but successful the lawsuit of the EKG, it was worthy the wait. The adjacent clip Tim Cook steps retired onstage mightiness not beryllium to amusement disconnected exertion that saves your life, but springiness it time.