As a fitness enthusiast, one of the most attractive features of Apple Watch certainly has to be its ability to capture and analyze your post-workout heart recovery. I’m probably in good company when I say this tidbit caught my eye at WWDC 2017.
Apple unveiled its all-new Apple Watch Series 3 last week alongside the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, and while they were clear that it would become the flagship model of their popular smartwatch, they weren’t clear about how it stacks up to the current Apple Watch Series 2.
In this piece, we’ll go over the tech specs of each so that you can compare them side by side and choose what one is right for you.
Anyone having the pleasure (or obligation) of travelling overseas has likely had their share of exposure to currency converters on iPhone. Whether you have selected your travel companion on the basis of features, price or mindlessly downloaded the first search result, in my experience the common denominator across the board is an off-putting level of self importance. More often that not, currency converters lack an understanding of their role on your phone.
It’s the little shortcuts Apple Watch can provide in life that make wearing the device oh so rewarding at times. The most prominent ones have certainly saturated Apple’s marketing and most corners of the internet by now, still many smaller tricks are hardly covered simply because they can be so darn hard to find.
The following one certainly falls into that category, as I had never heard or read about it before, and I frankly came across it by pure chance. If you have to hit the roads regularly and rely on Apple Maps and your watch to get to your destination, it’s a deft shortcut that makes sure you can keep your eyes on the road at all times - even if you need to make a phone call to the place you are currently headed!
The ability to store and play podcasts on Apple Watch is one of many features advocated for regarding future watchOS updates, but so far it has fallen on deaf ears at Apple. With the cries for podcasts on Watch slowly reaching fever pitch, developers have taken matters into their own hands and released a fully functional podcast app that enables the transfer of your favorite subscriptions from iPhone to Apple Watch.
The app goes by the name WatchPlayer and (while moody at times) gives a solid account of itself, effectively beating Apple to the punch in the podcast race. Find out below how the data transfer is realized, where it trumps Apple's stock apps and what areas of WatchPlayer could do with some attention.
The developer team at Crunchy Bagel has taken the wraps of HealthFace, a product designed to assist regulars of Apple’s Health app in monitoring their vital data on the fly. HealthFace is capable of reaching deep into your personal Health catalogue and displaying virtually any data point in form of a complication on your wrist.
For users constrained to keeping a close eye on their vitals, food intake or other health related parameters, the app sets out to become a quasi extension of Apple’s Health app.
If you are not closely tracking every subtle interface change that Apple puts into practice on iOS, macOS or watchOS, it is likely you have entirely lost sight of a smaller feature or setting before. This is because, in short, Apple likes to relocate and thereby slowly supplant features no longer withstanding the test of time. With watchOS 3, the complete renovation of the operating system and reinvention of the Side button on top of it has had a similar ripple effect for numerous older features.
Power Reserve mode has become one of such cases, a feature still of much use despite the improved battery performance on Apple Watch Series 1 and 2. It used to be as easy as holding down the Side button and swiping to activate Power Reserve, but mind you, nothing is permanent with Apple and it has been silently relocated since. In case you have been caught napping on Power Reserve, let's quickly fill you in on how to deploy the potential life saver on the latest watchOS.
Much was made of Apple’s third major software overhaul for watchOS this year with Control Center and the Dock seeing the light of day, finally making for a much beefier experience on our wrists. The one other central interface of Apple Watch received no love though, meaning users are still embroiled in a love-hate relationship with their watch’s Home screen. It is easy to let patience wear thin with respect to Apple not pushing the Home screen on Watch forward, then again it took Apple more than a couple of years to refine the iPhone’s Home screen, just to put matters into perspective.
Regardless of the pace at which Apple is planning to shape up the screen accessed by pressing the crown, design and functionality changes are eventually going to take place. It’s a highly emotive topic and any watch owner will be able to raise one or two aspects they either dislike about the Home screen or wished to be fundamentally different. Personally, with the arrival of my snappier Series 2 watch, the Home screen is about the only qualm I still have with Apple's youngest product line. So there, let me add my voice to what the Home screen in watchOS 4 needs to implement in order to catch up with the rest of the operating system.
In case you missed this little yet important detail in an avalanche of web reports about the Apple Watch Series 2, Apple's second-generation wearable packs in a few handful improvements, among which is what appears to be a second microphone opening. As the original Apple Watch had a single tiny microphone hole, it couldn't suppress background noise.
In turn, the “Hey Siri” function on the original watch behaves somewhat erratically, struggling to recognize the command in noisy environments.
Wait, does that mean that the Apple Watch Series 2 should respond to the “Hey Siri” hot phrase more reliably than before? It's complicated...
Apple appears confident that the new Apple Watch Series 2 will be twice as successful as the original model and has reportedly ramped up chip and component orders for the device, according to Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes that has solid sources in Asian supply chain.
Trevor Edwards, president of the Nike brand, went on stage at Apple's event today to announce a collaboration with Apple regarding the Apple Watch. Called Apple Watch Nike+, it's not just the watch, it's your “perfect running partner” that delivers an elevated running experience.
But wait, is it a separate Apple Watch model or an app?
Byte, a UK-based retailer that sells Apple-certified accessories and parts, recently posted a video in which they showed off a few supposedly genuine parts for a second-generation Apple Watch, including a thinner OLED Force Touch display and a significantly thicker battery potentially giving the wearable device a few more hours of run time.
Today, Byte published precise measurements for the above components and the numbers lead to the conclusion that Apple may have been able to squeeze in a much more powerful battery without making the Apple Watch 2 any thicker.