Tag Archives: Apple Watch

What you can expect from the new Apple Watch Series 7

Riding the wave of the successful Series 6, Apple gives the gold standard software experience, streamlined design and useful fitness features a further boost with its new Apple Watch Series 7.

“Apple Watch Series 7 delivers significant improvements — from our largest and most advanced display, to enhanced durability and faster charging — making the world’s best smartwatch better than ever before,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer.

“Powered by watchOS 8, Apple Watch brings useful new capabilities to help customers stay connected, track activity and workouts, and better understand their overall health and wellness.”

BIGGER AND BETTER

Equipped with a bigger, more powerful screen, it not only provides onscreen buttons that are easier to tap, but also introduces a full QWERTY keyboard for the first time. The autocorrect function works well, and so is the QuickPath feature.

Having said that, we reckon it’s still best to use your phone for anything more than a short phrase like “I’m already outside your house,” or “Remember to buy toilet paper.” Buttons in apps such as Stopwatch, Activity, and Alarms also makes the screen even simpler to interact with.

Running the same watchOS 8 software as every Apple Watch since Series 3, Series 7 boasts new watch faces specially designed for the larger display. The Contour face extends the dial to the edge of the display, accentuating the Arabic numeral hour markers.

The Modular Duo face takes advantage of the extra space to provide more information via two complications whereas the World Time face keeps track of time in 24 time zones around a double dial. Apple has also finally added the Portraits face that allows you to customise your Series 7 with images taken in Portrait mode on your iPhone.

LONGER LIFE, FASTER CHARGE

In terms of battery life, although it is similar to Series 6 lasting up to around 18 hours – get this: it charges up to 33% faster in comparison. If you think about it, that makes a huge difference especially for those who have the tendency of only charging up watch in the morning before leaving home.

In continuing to adhere to its environmental mission, Series 7 is made with more recycled materials compared to all its predecessors, using 100% recycled aluminium, 100% recycled tungsten and 100% recycled rare earth elements. It is also made without harmful chemicals like mercury, PVC, beryllium, and BFRs.

FIT AND HEALTHY WITH APPLE

The comprehensive Series 7 health-tracking features include the ability to measure ECG for heart rhythm, monitor sleep respiratory rate, keep an eye on the Sp02 (the percentage of oxygen being carried by red blood cells from the lungs to the rest of the body), and track a wide range of different fitness workouts, including Tai Chi and Pilates.

In addition, it now boasts new cycling features. With WatchOS 8, it’s able to recognise the difference between the distinctive motion of falling off a bicycle and other workouts. Besides the Breathe app which I find to be a helpful reminder for me to take a break on a regular basis, it now also comes with a new Mindfulness app – which is the app I have been using first thing in the morning.

Exciting news: Fitness+, the first fitness service powered by Apple Watch, has reached our shores! The array of workouts, which include HIIT, Pilates, strength, yoga and even guided meditation and sessions on mindfulness with new workouts added to the list every week, provides more than enough variations to keep you motivated.

Available in 41mm and 45mm in five new colour cases, the Series 7 features a robust front crystal that is more crack-resistant sans sacrificing on optical clarity.

The watch is IP6X certified for dust resistance and WR50 certified for water-resistant, which means you can now wear your watch to the beach or during a hike.

 

Visit apple.com to find out more.

This article was originally published on www.lofficielmalaysia.com.

Is Apple Slowing Down Your Apple Watch?

In December 2017, Apple Inc. finally admitted to something which consumers and die hard fans had suspected all along –  Apple has been intentionally limiting the performance of older iPhone models. “Planned obsolescence” is an  industrial design and economics policy where product manufactures “plan” obsolescence or built-in obsolescence, that is to say, design a production with a limited life span so that it will become obsolete according to planned product cycles.

The rationale behind such a strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases. Thus, when Applegate or BatteryGate first struck, the market was ready to accuse Apple of indulging in the practice of planned obsolescence by slowing down iPhones near or after the launch of newer iPhone models.

When forced to admit that Apple was indeed intentionally slowing down iPhones after several independent reports developed the same conclusion, the Cupertino giant was released this statement: “Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.” Simply put, older model iPhones tried to draw more power than their batteries could handle and if the smartphones did not slow down, they would die eventually.

In short, the company was saying that the action is designed to keep older devices functional and prevent an issue with older batteries. According to Geek Bench, consumers who had previously replaced older batteries reported that their devices had recovered in terms of speed. In fact, Google searches for “iPhone slow” had a tendency to spike around the period where a new iPhone is slated for release. This got Luxuo thinking: Is Apple slowing down your Apple Watch?

According to a Google search “apple watch slowing down”, uncovers slightly under 100 posts (some of these posts allow other users to mark that they too suffer from this issue) across a variety of forums including reddit and discussions.apple.com and several blog posts on how to speed up a slow Apple Watch.

That said, whether of not Apple is intentionally slowing down your Apple Watch, your smartwatch is bound to lag over time as the device ages, usage increases and more applications are running; conspiracy theory or not, limited RAM alone will slow a device down.

Presently, there’s no conclusive evidence on whether Apple is slowing down your Apple Watch but there is evidence which suggests that updating the Apple Watch’s operating system before Cupertino developers have ironed out the bugs and kinks of the latest version does tend to slow the Apple watch down prematurely, especially with version WatchOS 4.x.

Fact is, independent firms like Futuremark, the company behind a popular benchmarking app called 3DMark, often run benchmarking tests on Apple products and since Apple’s admittance to slowing down iPhones, we have seen discovered that these benchmark tests are typically run on relatively fresh devices, thus not exactly representative of what happens on older models.

“The longevity of Apple’s devices is a key reason why their resale value is so high, which in turn is one reason why people keep buying them and handing them down to family members or selling them on when they get new ones,” says Jan Dawson, founder of Jackdaw Research.

That said, Futuremark tests concluded that Apple iPhone’s GPU and CPU don’t shrink over time, nor do they slow. The most powerful defence against the planned obsolescence theory  was offered by Jackdaw Research founder, Jan Dawon: “The longevity of Apple’s devices is a key reason why their resale value is so high, which in turn is one reason why people keep buying them and handing them down to family members or selling them on when they get new ones.”

Ultimately, the reasons for why Apple devices slow down are applicable to all computing device: any new hardware running with the latest operating system and the newest version of a popular app will run exactly the way it was programmed and intended to. But when newer versions with new functionality designed to take advantage of the latest hardware gets released, then the new operating system and new application might just become too strenuous for old hardware to run – the reality is that the app demands more functionality and power (feeding into Apple’s battery issue). Data and processing power creep grows each year – for example, Windows 95 required 35-40 mb space, today, Windows 10 requires 16 gb harddisk space, over 1000% leap in slightly over 20 years.

Analogously, you could fit more older model Samsonite luggages into the boot of a car but fewer new Rimowa aluminium luggages, doesn’t mean that the factory shrunk your car, it only means that as airplane cargo holds grew larger and carried more, you didn’t get the newest car to keep pace with the growth.

On a support page detailing the ‘feature’, Apple has confirmed that “This power management feature is specific to iPhone and does not apply to any other Apple products.” That is to say, Apple isn’t slowing your Apple Watch down.

Or, you could just get the new TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45,  designed in the purest Swiss watchmaking tradition, powered by Android Wear and created in collaboration with Intel, the hardware and software will eventually become obsolete but you can swap the components out for newer, improved hardware or simply switch to the Mechanical Calibre 5 instead.