The Top New Features in Apple’s WatchOS 10

Last year, Apple introduced the Apple Watch Ultra, a fitness wearable meant to compete with Garmin in the premium outdoor watch category. The Ultra didn’t quite meet the mark—for starters, battery life that barely lasts three days is not enough for the shortest backpacking trip—but Apple’s quest continues. The company announced the next version of WatchOS at WWDC, WatchOS 10, and many of the new features are determinedly creeping into Garmin territory.

That’s in addition to the usual roundup of new and improved software, like easier navigation on the watch face, newly redesigned apps, and new watch faces. We break down the top new features below. Read our guides on iOS 17 and MacOS Sonoma to learn what's new on those platforms, and don’t forget to check out our Best Apple Watch and Best Apple Watch Accessories guides.

Is Your Apple Watch Compatible?

Apple's WatchOS 10 update will be available for the Apple Watch Series 4 and newer. However, you'll need to have an iPhone XS or iPhone XR or later running iOS 17 (find out which iPhones support iOS 17 here). To find what model you have, look at the back of your Apple Watch. 

When Will WatchOS 10 Arrive?

WatchOS 10 is currently in developer beta, but a public beta is expected to land in July. You'll be able to test it out then but expect to run into a few bugs. The betas will continue through to the fall, and the final version will likely launch in September. 

We've parsed out some of the top new features arriving in the next version of WatchOS. To read the full list, you can check out Apple's preview page here.

Biking Updates

Photograph: Apple

We first saw Apple begin to focus on outdoor activities with 2021’s Apple Watch Series 7, which was more dustproof than ever, and offered improved fall detection and the ability to differentiate between ebiking and regular biking when auto-sensing workouts. Last year, WatchOS 9 introduced running-specific features, like measuring vertical oscillation and stride length. 

Now, the watch and the iPhone together are becoming a specialized cycling tool that looks a lot like a dedicated bike computer. When you download WatchOS 10 and start a cycling workout on the watch, it immediately shows up as a Live Activity on your phone. Tap it, and the Live Activity immediately switches to a full-screen Workout View that displays important information like your heart rate zone and your route. This allows you to mount your phone on your handlebars, make sure you’re in the correct heart rate zone, and not get lost.

The Apple Watch can also automatically connect to Bluetooth-enabled sensors in WatchOS 10, like power meters and cadence sensors, which lets you see metrics like your rotations per minute (RPM) on your watch or Workout View. It can use all this new data to calculate your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), which is a measure of your highest cycling output over the course of an hour. The watch uses this data to calculate your personalized Power Zones as you work out. Zone training is complicated. Essentially, low-intensity zones let you up your endurance, high-intensity zones up your power, and switching between the two helps you fine-tune your performance.

It’s worth noting that whether you’re running, swimming, or cycling, an FTP exam has historically been done with a specific format at specific times in your training to prepare for a peak performance event. This is a niche metric. But you will also be able to use all your personalized data to create your own custom workout plan in Apple Fitness+.

Hiking Updates

Photograph: Apple

Last year, the Apple Watch Ultra introduced new navigational features to assist with outdoor adventures, but it had one big flaw—there were no offline maps nor any topographic maps. 

WWDC 2023: How Apple Could Revolutionize The Way We Work

During the WWDC 2023 keynote, Apple revealed its latest hardware and software advances for professionals using popular devices like Mac desktops, laptops, iPad, and iPhone.

Here’s a look at the WWDC 2023 announcements that could change how we work with machine learning (ML) models, spatial computing, augmented reality, and more.

We’ve seen the hype surrounding tech products like Google Glass and Meta Quest: innovations that promised to transform how we interact with the world.

But big tech has failed to deliver a wearable augmented reality device that the masses are willing to adopt.

So why should Apple be different?

Google may have the top search engine, and Meta, the top social network.

On the other hand, Apple has a proven track record spanning over four decades of introducing new technology – namely, hardware – that reshapes aspects of our personal and professional lives.

Now, 16 years later, Apple has another innovative new piece of technology designed to propel us into the future.

Apple Vision Pro has the potential to shift how people work by blending augmented reality into their daily workflows.

Vision Pro uses a combination of eye tracking, hand gestures, and voice commands as natural inputs, allowing users to manipulate digital content that coexists with the real world.

Powered by Apple’s M series chips, Vision Pro offers high-performance capabilities in a wearable device.

For work, Vision Pro removes the confines of a physical screen for apps, allowing users to place multiple apps around them and enhance their productivity.

Popular productivity apps like Notes, Messages, Safari, and FaceTime could work exceptionally well in this new spatial interface. Users can easily arrange apps at the perfect size without taking space from existing apps.

Documents, notes, messages, and photos would stay up-to-date across Vision Pro, iPhone, iPad, and Mac through iCloud synchronization.

You can also wirelessly project the screen of your Mac into Vision Pro, giving you an enormous private 4K workspace to enhance your workflow.

FaceTime on Vision Pro takes advantage of its spatial abilities, allowing users to join group calls and see everyone life-size with Spatial Audio for more natural conversations. FaceTime also supports app sharing and Screen Share through SharePlay, enabling remote collaboration and reviews.

The seamless ecosystem between Vision Pro, iPhone, iPad, and Mac – coupled with Vision Pro’s performance, comfort, ease of use, and app capabilities – could make it ideal for professionals looking to maximize productivity and teamwork in the office or remotely.

The ability to expand workspaces and multitask freely could boost output and transform how work is done.

Apple’s new M2 Ultra chip could transform machine learning workflows with its unprecedented performance and massive memory.

The M2 Ultra is expected to be 20% faster than M1 Ultra, with a 30% faster GPU and a 40% faster Neural Engine.

But the most significant advantage of M2 Ultra for ML is its increased memory, which could allow the chip to train large neural networks and transformer models that previously required dedicated GPU servers.

In real-world examples, M2 Ultra trained ML models with massive memory requirements that other chips can’t handle due to memory constraints.

With its powerful CPU, large GPU, and enormous memory, the M2 Ultra offers Mac users access to ML processing power previously only available in data centers.

That could accelerate complex artificial intelligence (AI) tasks and open up new possibilities for ML on the desktop.

The M2 Ultra chip is available in the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

The new 15-inch MacBook Air promises a powerful combination of performance, design, and battery life to outpace similar PC laptops.

It has a thin and lightweight design at just 3 pounds, yet features a gorgeous 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, MagSafe charging, and all-day battery life of up to 18 hours.

The M2 chip helps ensure incredible performance, with the Air potentially up to twice as fast as the top-selling 15-inch i7 PC laptop.

Its display has twice the resolution and higher brightness, which will help those doing graphic design, video editing, and other creative tasks.

Even with increased performance, the Air should still provide up to 50% more battery life than comparable PC laptops. The thinner and lighter make working from anywhere much simpler.

For business professionals, the Universal Clipboard and Handoff offer a seamless experience from one device to another.

For example, users could copy a photo from their iPhone and paste it into a design on the Air. Or they could start work on a presentation on their Air and finish it on the iPhone.

The new 15-inch Air combines a large, high-res display with the performance of an M2 processor, a thin-and-light design, and an all-day battery – setting a new bar for what a 15-inch laptop can be.

Apple’s latest macOS update includes innovative new video conferencing features that can boost productivity and effectiveness for business professionals.

The Presenter Overlay feature elevates your presence on video calls by including you on top of any shared screen content. Professionals can remain prominent and easily seen while showcasing presentations, documents, and other work.

The overlay is available in small or large sizes, allowing flexible arrangements that frame shared content beautifully alongside the presenter – allowing users to move, talk and gesture naturally while presenting.

The new Reactions feature lets users add animated effects to provide nonverbal cues on calls. Combined with Presenter Overlay, they can be triggered with simple gestures, making them easy to use during hectic video conferences.

The new macOS features work with all major video conferencing apps, providing tools to engage audiences and provide feedback on any call. The innovative video effects can potentially improve communication, boost team morale, and increase the impact of virtual presentations.

Combined with Apple’s Silicon performance and macOS stability, the new video conferencing enhancements provide business users with helpful productivity aids to enrich their digital meetings and remote collaborations.

The new built-in PDF features on iPadOS make it a powerful tool for business professionals.

Thanks to machine learning, iPadOS can detect form fields and auto-fill them with contact information. You can also sign forms digitally with Apple Pencil.

The Notes app now offers better ways to work with PDFs for organization, annotation, and sharing. PDFs stay within notes, giving you extra capabilities alongside the entire document. You can flip pages, annotate directly on PDFs using Apple Pencil, and keep multiple related PDFs in one note for easy access.

For teams, PDFs in Notes enable real-time collaboration where changes and annotations automatically update for collaborators. Live scribbles, stickers, and images inserted into PDFs are instantly visible to others, speeding workflows and decision-making.

Apple’s latest macOS updates include several enhancements to Safari that can improve productivity and security for business users.

Safari’s rendering engine, WebKit, appears to get faster with each update. The browser now provides increased speed for loading and interacting with complex websites. Professionals who rely on web apps for work should appreciate Safari’s improved performance.

Privacy enhancements in the new Safari build on its reputation as one of the most privacy-focused browsers.

Features like Private Browsing Lock keep sensitive work tasks separate from personal browsing.

Safari now lets users securely share passwords and passkeys with groups through iCloud Keychain, making it easier for teams to manage login credentials. All sharing is end-to-end encrypted to maintain security.

The new Profiles feature in Safari allows professionals to separate work and personal browsing into separate containers. Each profile has its cookies, history, extensions, tab groups, and favorites, allowing users to easily switch between work and personal accounts on the same websites.

These latest Safari updates offer business professionals improved performance, privacy tools, and the ability to separate work tasks, providing benefits that could enhance company productivity and data security.

iOS offers a new Live Voicemail feature to help professionals make better decisions about incoming calls.

When someone calls and leaves a voicemail, you’ll see a live transcription as they speak, allowing you to quickly determine if the call is important enough to take while busy.

If the voicemail indicates an urgent matter, you can pick up the call mid-voicemail.

Live Voicemail transcriptions are done on your device, preserving the privacy of your conversations. This new feature can help business owners and professionals stay on top of critical calls and communicate efficiently.

The latest AirDrop updates for iPhone provide more straightforward and secure ways for businesses to exchange contact information and content.

NameDrop allows users to swap contact details with a simple gesture, bringing their phones close together. Users can choose which phone numbers and emails to share from their contact cards.

This is a faster, more convenient way to exchange contacts with clients, partners, and colleagues instead of handing over phones or dictating information.

NameDrop also works between an iPhone and Apple Watch, further simplifying contact sharing.

The same gesture can now be used to instantly share photos, videos, and files with AirDrop recipients. Large files will still send securely in full quality even if users move out of AirDrop range, ensuring content is delivered.

These AirDrop updates make collaboration and communication easier for businesses, letting professionals quickly connect with new contacts and swap important content seamlessly.

The gesture-based sharing promotes an effortless, wireless workflow within and between organizations.

Apple’s new Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness features for AirPods Pro could significantly improve focus and productivity for business professionals.

Adaptive Audio dynamically blends Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency modes to match the acoustic conditions of the environment. This helps users stay present while filtering out distracting noises, allowing them to focus better on work tasks and calls.

Personalized Volume leverages machine learning to deliver optimal listening volume based on an individual’s preferences and ambient noise levels. This personalized audio experience can make concentrating and processing information easier for professionals in various work settings.

Conversation Awareness automatically lowers music volume and amplifies voices when it detects speech, helping users stay engaged in conversations while wearing their AirPods. This feature can improve interaction and collaboration with coworkers and clients.

The new listening modes also benefit professionals who take calls and confer with colleagues in public or noisy environments. Adaptive Audio helps reduce background noise to provide a clearer call experience, while the ability to mute and unmute AirPods quickly can simplify participation in calls.

The AirPod Pro’s new features have the potential to enhance work-related tasks for business users by improving audio quality, focus, collaboration, and call participation – ultimately benefitting productivity and performance. The seamless integration across Apple devices also makes the new features convenient for professionals with an ecosystem of Apple products.

Apple’s new mental health features in watchOS 10 and the Health app have the potential to benefit businesses by improving employees’ emotional well-being and resilience.

Logging emotions and moods discretely from the wrist can help professionals build self-awareness and identify factors impacting their state of mind. Insights into contributors like exercise, mindful minutes, and sleep can reveal lifestyle changes to improve mental health.

Improved emotional awareness, self-management techniques, and treatment of mental health issues can lead to benefits for businesses like increased focus, productivity, and employee performance. Workers with better mental well-being tend to be more engaged, collaborative, and satisfied.

A workplace culture that prioritizes and supports mental health can also boost employee morale, loyalty, and recruitment.

Apple’s new health features aimed at reflecting on emotions, monitoring mental state, and assessing risks for conditions like depression and anxiety could benefit businesses by helping professionals improve their mental health, resilience, and job performance.

Apple’s announcements during the WWDC 2023 keynote showcase a variety of new hardware and software features with the potential to improve how business professionals work meaningfully.

Improvements across multiple platforms indicate Apple’s desire to provide business users and enterprises with productivity tools, performance upgrades, and solutions that embrace a more human-centric approach to work.

From augmented reality workflows with Apple Vision Pro to the performance gains of the M2 Ultra chip, Apple’s latest innovations aim to optimize workflows, enhance security and privacy, and boost productivity.

The possibilities showcased at WWDC 2023 reflect Apple’s vision for the future of work – one where technology empowers humans to spend less time on mundane tasks and more time on meaningful work that leverages their unique talents, expertise, and creativity.

With continued progress and refinement, Apple’s latest hardware and software could set a new standard for business in the years ahead.

Featured image: rafapress/Shutterstock

Apple, Defying The Times, Stays Quiet On AI

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Resisting the hype, Apple defied most predictions this week and made no mention of artificial intelligence when it unveiled its latest slate of new products, including its Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

Generative AI has become the tech world's biggest buzzword ever since Microsoft-backed OpenAI released ChatGPT late last year, revealing the capabilities of the emerging technology.

ChatGPT opened the world's eyes to the idea that computers can churn out complex, human-level content using simple prompts, giving amateurs the talents of tech geeks, artists or speechwriters.

Apple has laid low as Microsoft and Google raced out announcements on how generative AI will revolutionize its products, from online search to word processing and retouching images.

During the recent earnings season, tech CEOs peppered mentions of AI into their every phrase, eager to reassure investors that they wouldn't miss Silicon Valley's next big chapter.

Apple has chosen to be much more discreet and, in its closely watched keynote address to the World Developers conference in California, never once mentioned AI specifically.

"Apple ghosts the generative AI revolution," said a headline in Wired Magazine after the event.

Arguments vary on why Apple has chosen a more subtle approach.

For one, Apple follows other critics who have long been wary of the catchall "AI" term believing that it is too vague and unhelpfully evokes dystopian nightmares of killer robots and human subjugation to machines.

For this reason, some companies –- including TikTok or  Facebook's Meta –- roll out AI innovations, but without necessarily touting them as such.

"We do integrate it into our products [but] people don't necessarily think about it as AI," Apple CEO Tim Cook told ABC News this week.

Indeed, AI was actually very much part of Apple's annual jamboree on Monday, but it required a level of technical know-how to notice.

In one instance, Apple's head of software said "on-device machine learning" would enhance autocorrect for iPhone messaging when he could have just as well said AI.

Apple's autocorrect innovation drew giggles with the promise of iPhones no longer correcting common expletives.

"In those moments where you just want to type a 'ducking' word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too," said Craig Federighi.

Autocorrect will also learn from your writing style, helping it guide suggestions, using AI technology similar to what powers ChatGPT.

In another example, a new iPhone app called Journal, an interactive diary, would use "on-device machine learning... to inspire your writing," Apple said, again not referring to AI when other companies would have.

But AI will also play a major role in the Vision Pro headset when it is released next year, helping, for example, generate a user's digital persona for video-conferencing.

For some analysts, the non-mention of AI is an acknowledgement by Apple that it lost ground against rivals.

"They haven't put much effort into it," independent tech analyst Rob Enderle told AFP.

"I think they just kind of felt that AI was off into the future and it wasn't anything surprising," he added.

The glitchy performance of Apple's chatbot Siri, which was launched a decade ago, has also fed the feeling that the smartphone giant doesn't get AI.

"I think most people would agree that Apple lost its edge with Siri. That's probably the most obvious way they fell behind," said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Yory Wurmser.

But Wurmser also insisted that Apple is primarily a device company and that AI, which is software, will always be "the means rather than the ends for a great user experience" on its premium devices.

In this vein, for analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, the release of Apple's Vision Pro headset was in itself an AI play, even if it wasn't explicitly spelled out that way.

"We continue to strongly believe this is the first step in a broader strategy for Apple to build out a generative AI driven app ecosystem" on the Vision Pro, he said.