Apple Watch

Apple has set its latest Apple Watch Activity Challenge for August 25. This challenge is being held in celebration of the Grand Canyon National Park’s 100th anniversary.

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Dramatic growth in Apple’s wearables means that the product category — mostly comprising the Apple Watch and AirPods — will overtake both iPad and Mac by the end of next year, says a new analysis.

While the market is focused on growth in the Cupertino company’s Services revenue, it has largely missed the story when it comes to wearables, claims an analyst…

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Apple continues to expand its health efforts with another Apple Watch and iPhone study. CNBC reports that Apple has teamed up with Eli Lilly to study whether the Apple Watch and iPhone can be effectively used to spot early signs of dementia.

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Apple Watch continues to dominate the smartwatch industry, according to new data. During the second quarter of 2019, Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple shipped 5.7 million Apple Watches worldwide.

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If you’ve been holding out on a new Apple Watch, waiting for an always-on display, a new Fossil smartwatch available for pre-order today might make for an interesting alternative.

Fossil claims the watch can make it through a full day in this mode. Alternatively, you can opt for a lower-power mode which promises multi-day battery life…

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While I haven’t worn an Apple Watch 100% of the time since the release of the Series 0, I have owned every single one. There are benefits to wearing one for health reasons, and there are also reasons to wear one for connectivity purposes. I particularly love owning a cellular version so I can go running without my iPhone or make a quick trip to the store. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I could see future versions of the LTE Apple Watch as a great first cell phone for kids. There has been something that has frustrated me about the Apple Watch from the first day I owned it to today, that’s when Apple Watch doesn’t have a network connection. Is it time for Apple to release a version of Wi-Fi Assist for Apple Watch?
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The Apple Watch is again being credited with saving a user’s life. As reported by News Corp Australia, Kate Donald suffers from epilepsy, and her Apple Watch alerted family members when she suffered a seizure while home alone, triggering fall detection.

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Apple has set its next Apple Watch Activity for August 8th. This time around, the challenge will be exclusive to China, with Apple celebrating the country’s “National Fitness Day.”

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I am in the midst of training for a marathon in late October, so I’ve been inching my runs up ever so slightly. Last weekend, I did a nine-mile run. While you are reading this, I am probably in the middle of a ten-mile run. I plan to keep inching my weekend long runs up ever so slightly until I hit eighteen or so. Since I’ve been in training mode, I am realizing some of the edge cases where Activity Rings fall apart for people who train frequently. When I woke up last Sunday, the last thing I wanted to do was exercise again. My legs were sore from running fifteen miles in the previous two days. While I didn’t run early that morning, I did go out and run a 5k that evening in order to close my rings. And I’d be lying if I said my Activity Competition with Zac Hall wasn’t weighing on me in the back of my mind. During my run that Sunday evening, I brainstormed on some ways that Apple could tweak Activity Rings to make them better suited for people who do heavy weights or heavy cardio and need rest days to recover. Here’s what Activity Rings 2.0 in Apple Watch could look like (including ideas for tweaking Activity Competitions).

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We’ve grown accustom to new Apple Watches debuting alongside iPhones each fall since the Series 1 and Series 2 launch in 2016, but does Apple Watch need a ‘Series 5’ this year to stay competitive? Probably not, and Apple waiting until 2020 to introduce the next generation of Apple Watch doesn’t seem impossible.

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It’s easy to dismiss how reliant a modern lifestyle is on the ability to constantly charge batteries and consume large quantities of data over WiFi. Even minor interruptions to internet and electrical services can be frustrating inconveniences, but how do iPhones, Apple Watches, and Macs fare during an extended period off the grid? I unexpectedly found out this week.

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Last week, Apple revealed that it had disabled the Walkie-Talkie feature on Apple Watch due to an exploit that could have allowed someone to secretly eavesdrop. With the release of watchOS 5.3 and iOS 12.4 today, Apple has restored Walkie-Talkie functionality for Apple Watch.

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Apple is today launching the ECG app in two additional countries. With the release of watchOS 5.3, the ECG app and irregular heart rate notifications to Canada and Singapore.

The electrocardiagram sensor hardware is included in all Apple Watch Series 4 units, but is disabled through software in countries where it has not got approval. The good news is Apple Watch Series 4 owners in Canada and Singapore can now update to watchOS 5.3 to use the ECG app.

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In a profile of Apple SVP Jeff Williams, now widely expected to be next-in-line for the CEO job whenever Tim Cook decides to leave the company, Bloomberg cites employee sources that paint a picture of Williams as a Cook-doppelganger.

Williams now oversees all of Apple’s hardware development and design. The report says a weekly review meeting is formally called ‘New Product Review’, but some employees refer to it as the ‘Jeff Review’, as it is he who they need to impress.

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Apple is apparently in advanced talks with Taiwanese display manufacturers to introduce microLED displays into its products as soon as next year, via Economic Daily News.

The company is apparently readying an Apple Watch featuring a microLED screen, replacing the current OLED panel manufactured by LG Display.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my kids, and how we will approach technology as they get older. I recently wrote about our approach to social media, and that led me to thinking about how I will approach cell phone usage in their lives. My oldest son will turn nine this year, so it’s something I know is going to come up sooner rather than later. After thinking about the role of a cell phone in a child’s life, I’ve realized that an Apple Watch with a LTE connection will eventually become the perfect kid cell phone. We’re not quite there yet technology-wise, but I can see a day when all the stars will align.
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Apple Watch’s ECG functionality has saved a lot of lives, but the latest example shows how the low and high resting heart rate alerts are also uncovering unknown heart issues. After seeing multiple low resting heart rate warnings, a 48-year-old recently discovered he had ventricular bigeminy and was able to address the heart condition with surgery before it caused any issues.

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If you ever feel nostalgic for the classic iPod, you might enjoy the Elago W6, the Apple Watch stand that thinks it’s an iPod.

It’s not the first time Elago has done something like this. Back in 2017, it created the W3, based on the original Macintosh …

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