By Jason Snell

April 24, 2025 11:59 AM PT

Apple Watch turns 10

Thursday marks the tenth anniversary of the original Apple Watch’s ship date. (It was announced in September 2014 but didn’t ship until April the following year.)

As I wrote on Wednesday, I’ve integrated the Apple Watch into my life just as so many Six Colors readers have. While I might not be completely sold on wearing it when I sleep, I do rely on it to monitor my workouts (yes, including when I’m curling!), send me notifications, and to play podcasts or stream live shows when I’m out and about with my AirPods.

And Apple Pay! Almost all of my Apple Pay transactions are done via my watch. If I could pay for absolutely everything with a tap of my watch, I would be quite happy—and frankly, we’re pretty close to getting there now. I also use Apple Watch and Home Key to unlock my front door. It’s the best.

My Apple Watch dream was to be able to run unencumbered by an iPhone, and that dream was realized about six years ago. The cellular Apple Watch isn’t for everyone, but I love being able to leave home and know that I’m still connected if there’s an emergency. When I tripped on a curb and fell while running a few years back, I didn’t need to take advantage of the watch’s Fall Detection feature, but it offered! I still used it to call my wife and tell her I was walking home and driving myself to the ER.

What’s striking about reading my initial impressions of the first Apple watch as well as Dan’s first is how so much of the watch is pretty much the same as it was ten years ago. While the Apple Watch Ultra adds a new styling, I’m on a Series 10, and it’s just a differently-proportioned (thinner, bigger face, much larger screen) version of the original. Not that I’m complaining—I like the way the Apple Watch looks. I am a little surprised that, ten years later, all the bands I bought for the original model still fit my Series 10. (Surely that ride can’t last forever?)

In hindsight, the original watch was woefully underpowered and basically tethered to its iPhone, which it relied on for almost everything. But over the years, as it’s become more powerful and independent, it’s remained familiar. I think there are some advantages to that, but it’s also arguably a sign that the Apple Watch might need a more aggressive rethink. There are so many ways that it hasn’t changed in a decade.

Back in 2015, I complained that there weren’t enough watch face choices, and while there are many more now, it still feels like Apple has underperformed on this important aspect of the watch. Face development is slow, older faces rarely, if ever, get updated—leading to the embarrassing fact that older faces can’t use the second-by-second tick feature enabled by the most modern watch display—and many faces are severely limited in the placement of complications.

When the Apple Watch was announced, the fluoroelastomer Sport Band looked to be a weirdly cheap option when compared to a real leather watch band. I have bought a few leather watch bands over the years, but the truth is that I love the Sport Band, it doesn’t feel cheap, and only the more recently introduced Braided Loop comes close to matching it in my affections. (I love the Braided Loop, but they’re expensive and tend to stretch, and it’s a bummer to have to stop wearing a well-loved band because it’s gotten too loose.)

And oh yeah, remember the weird Friends interface (long since dispatched) and Digital Touch (which still exists)? New Apple products often come with some wild feature ideas that fall apart the moment they come into contact with customers. I’m glad they tried—but I’m also glad that they showed the grace to course correct when needed.

Back in 2014, a lot of pundits wrote silly stories about how Apple had to have a new hit product that could match the iPhone. It was a lot of pressure on the Apple Watch, which was never going to be anything but an iPhone accessory. But the truth is, from the perspective of a decade, the Apple Watch has been a successful addition to Apple’s product line. Nothing was going to be the “next iPhone.” But the Apple Watch has been quite good at being its own thing.

By Jason Snell

April 23, 2025 8:53 AM PT

Sleeping with the Apple Watch

I never reviewed the Apple Watch Series 10 when it came out, but I got one on day one and have been wearing it faithfully since then. After lingering on a previous model for a few years, the thinner design of the Series 10 appealed to me, and after wearing it for seven months, I can say that I’m glad I made the purchase, and it’s a great update.

My biggest criticism of the Series 10 is the failure of watchOS to live up to the Apple Watch hardware. (Apple’s software development not keeping pace with its hardware development has sadly become a “dog bites man”-style commonplace event.) Most notably, the Series 10 display is capable of a once-per-second refresh during always-on mode that enables two watch faces to show a ticking second hand. An always-on second hand seems like a small thing, but it makes the Apple Watch that much closer to analog watches. It’s a bit of a milestone.

How sad, then, that it’s only those two watch faces that support per-second ticks. None of the older watch faces—including the ones I use—support the feature. I don’t know what Apple’s investing in building watchOS watch faces, but it’s not enough—a major new hardware feature should be supported by every watch face, not just the two new ones introduced at the same time as the feature. In a year full of embarrassing Apple moves, this is low-key one of the most embarrassing.

There you go: 250 words about the Apple Watch Series 10. But what I really want to discuss here is Apple’s insistence that we all sleep wearing our Apple Watches. Apple’s sleep tracking features have been pushing in this direction for a while, and the addition of sleep apnea detection last fall really pushed it over the edge. You don’t have to wear your Apple Watch overnight, but Apple really wants you to.

I have never, ever worn my Apple Watch overnight. To me, the end of the day means that I take off my watch, attach it to a charger, and get into bed. I use my watch in Night Stand mode as a clock, and if I set an alarm, it chimes on my bedside table at the appointed hour. Nice and easy.

But since September, I have been wearing my Apple Watch on my wrist most nights. I wanted to test out sleep apnea detection and use the sleep tracking features I’d almost never used before, so I committed to the lifestyle change.

I miss having a consistent charging time. I try to remember to charge first thing in the morning, and when I take a shower (as a work-from-home type, those aren’t always close to one another), but sometimes I forget and run out of battery at an inopportune moment. I don’t love that Apple still thinks the Apple Watch should automatically update its software overnight when on a charger, since we’re not supposed to wear it that way, which means I’ve needed to update watchOS manually during the day.

Surprisingly, having the watch on my wrist while I sleep has not been an issue. I was worried it would be bulky and distracting, but I got used to it almost immediately. And to my surprise and delight, I’ve found that I vastly prefer being tapped on my wrist as an alarm in the morning over being played a noisy chime.

But beyond subtle alarms, what have I gotten out of shifting my schedule and wearing the watch to bed? In the morning, I get a special “Good Morning Jason” screen that shows some facts about my day that I can’t quite remember because I am still waking up when I see it. I have months of sleep tracking data that tell me that I mostly sleep well, and if I’m curious about when I woke up in the night that information is there—last night I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep for a while, and thank goodness that’s been logged. But I struggle to find anything actionable to do with this data.

Similarly, the new Vitals app is interesting but generally just says that everything’s more or less normal every single night. That’s great, and I guess I’m fortunate, but I’m not sure much is being added here.

Sleep apnea detection and elevated breathing irregularities were the areas I was most interested in, because I am a snorer with seasonal allergies. The good news: Apple told me I probably didn’t have sleep apnea! Beyond that, though, the breathing data has just felt meaningless to me—at least, until this spring, which has shown an increase in breathing irregularities. So at least I have a chart that shows my seasonal allergies kicking into gear.

In the end, I’m not sure if sleeping with my Apple Watch has really been worth it for me. The silent alarm taps are great, but the loss of a consistent charging cue has made me need to worry about my watch’s current charge state way more than I used to. The health data is nice, but not particularly actionable. In general, Apple’s Health app needs to be less of a data soup and provide more actionable analysis.

In the end, I appreciate the Apple Watch platform mostly for relaying messages, tracking my workouts, and playing podcasts to my AirPods when I’m walking or running with my dog (without bringing my iPhone along). Maybe there are lots of people for whom sleeping with the Apple Watch makes sense, but as for me, I think my experiment may be at an end.

By Joe Rosensteel

April 18, 2025 7:30 AM PT

Apple really needs that Services revenue now

The incredibly unpredictable nature of the United States’s trade policy is going to have a profound effect on Apple hardware, not just in the U.S., but globally. Whether or not Apple absorbs the costs from their margins, hikes prices, or starts to move physical production and supply chains around the globe is all up in the air when the trade policy of the United States can vacillate so wildly in the span of days. I withdrew and resubmitted this column with these wild swings. If a new deal is on the table by the time you’re reading this, then just wait a little bit and I’m sure things will fall apart.

As Dan Moren pointed out, software isn’t subject to these tariffs, and could present a path forward. That’s the power of positive thinking. You know what’s easier than trying harder though? Squeezing your customers.

Services, including advertising, are not subject to these tariffs, and they already provide Apple with the growth on Jason Snell’s charts that so enamors investors. That could well be the stabilizing force to offset whatever the hell is going on with trade: dependable, digitally-delivered dollars. At least while the dollar is worth anything.

To that end: We should mentally prepare ourselves for ways that Apple might squeeze more out of its customers in each of its service while everything else is on fire.

Continue reading “Apple really needs that Services revenue now”…