The Apple Watch Ought to Be Getting a Glassy Makeover Later This 12 months

Final 12 months, Apple revamped the Apple Watch with a thinner chassis and bigger, brighter OLED show. This 12 months, the software program that powers the wearable, watchOS, could possibly be getting a a lot larger makeover. Whereas loads have been assuming this is able to occur given the comparatively minor modifications to the Apple Watch over the previous few years, the rumors are beginning to really feel very actual because of a new report from Bloomberg.

The newest PowerOn publication, the place we sometimes get a whopper of a factoid drop every week, centered on Apple readying a pair of headsets and extra productiveness options for iPadOS 19. However on the very backside, within the questions and solutions part, Gurman spills the most recent particulars on the modifications coming to watchOS later this 12 months:

The watch doesn’t presently have Apple Intelligence, and that isn’t precisely altering with the upcoming watchOS 12 software program. However the firm is branding a brand new set of options as “powered by Apple Intelligence” (though the system isn’t really operating the AI fashions immediately). As for design modifications, the Apple Watch is destined to get among the new interface components right here and there, however with no main overhaul. In different phrases, the watch will present a smaller style of the massive shifts underway at Apple.

The “smaller style” of the “huge shifts” that Gurman mentions in that final sentence probably references the brand new internally-named Solarium design that’s coming for the Apple ecosystem. For the unfamiliar, a solarium is a room with glass partitions and a ceiling that permits pure mild in for vegetation to develop and people to recharge. It’s a preferred fixture of brutalist balconies in post-Soviet states and fancy houses constructed into hillsides. In Apple’s case, Solarium refers back to the glass-like look of the buttons and the remainder of the interface, coming to iOS 19. It was talked about in one other version of the identical Bloomberg publication about two weeks in the past.

As for Apple Intelligence, it’s no shock to listen to that it gained’t run on the Apple Watch any time quickly. Apple is still figuring out what is happening with Apple Intelligence on the iPhone. Additionally, extra virtually, AI is a heavy load on a smartwatch, particularly operating it domestically, and with how far behind Apple is on Apple Intelligence, the Apple Watch is a secondary, perhaps even tertiary, consideration over the remainder of the ecosystem. The iPhone has to land it first.

Nevertheless it looks like the Watch might nonetheless be getting some AI touches. We’ve been fielding information about how the Apple Watch might make the most of AI for some time. The Apple Watch is rumored to someday have a camera inside it to do some digital seeing aided by—what else—synthetic intelligence, which is sort of plausible for those who contemplate the years of patent leaks previous it. We additionally know from the same Bloomberg piece introducing Solarium that Apple has plans for an “AI Physician,” which might probably use the stats collected by one in all Apple’s strongest equipment, the Apple Watch. The corporate is reportedly investing in a facility the place it should invite docs and different well being consultants to make movies about associated subjects comparable to sleep, diet, and psychological well being. The thought is that when the Apple Well being app sees your stats trending downward—assuming it consists of combination knowledge from the Apple Watch—it will probably floor these movies and different content material as half of what’s being tentatively referred to as “Well being+” by these on the within.

For now, we all know nothing. We solely know the desires and fantasies of glassed-over interfaces and floating menu objects. There are solely fan-made renders thus far to get an thought of what’s to come back. Truthfully, it’s giving skeuomorphism re-dubbed. We’ll hopefully know extra about what Solarium is and what it appears like on watchOS and all over the place else as soon as WWDC hits in June.