judgment : Apple 2024 WWDC tonic bring about scads of newfangled announcements for Apple fans to grayish brown to over , fromApple ’s own take on AItoiPhone mirroring on your Mac , but amongst the watchOS 11 presentation , there was a bit of news hidden in bare slew that has immense ramifications for Apple Watch lifecycles going forrader .
In shell you miss it , watchOS 11is set to bring a gross ton of new physical fitness - focused feature of speech includingTraining Loadand the all - newVitals app . It ’s all great stuff as it brings Apple ’s wearable that piece closer to extend a more elaborated looking at your health , like to machine from Whoop and Garmin , but there ’s a self-aggrandising catch – it ’s not coming to the Apple Watch 4 , Apple Watch 5 and the first - generation Apple Watch SE .
I will fully allow that the Apple Watch 4 being flatten from watchOS 11 is n’t the most shocking revelation here , specially give that the Apple Watch 3 was pass on out of the update cycle back in 2022 .
What is surprising however is to see the Watch 5 and original Watch SE cast off to the roadside , two smartwatches that previously would have been dependable wager to receive another yr of updates , at the very least .
For context , the Apple Watch Series 5 was released in recent 2019 , and thefirst - gen Apple Watch SEis even younger , having polish off storehouse ledge back in September 2020 . From a consumer point of view , that ’s tough to swallow , particularly in the case of the Watch SE which has now only receive three major watchOS update since release , and now no more .
The future of the Apple Watch
The length of service of these scout feels quite at betting odds with the level of service that Apple currently bestows to iPhones . Even the entering - leveliPhone XRis set to get the newiOS 18update and that earphone has been around since 2018 . This is all at a meter when longer lifespans are now a key selling spot with both Google and Samsung commit to seven years of updates for its late handsets .
For whatever reason however , that same amount of effort on part of these with child companies has not been afforded to their wearable division , although in Apple ’s lawsuit it does feel as though its approach to Apple Watch chipsets is partly to find fault .
TheApple Watch Series 9was the first Apple wearable in a long time to extend a actual speed swelling thanks to its immensely ameliorate S9 chip , but if history is anything to go by , it could be quite a while before we see the next bountiful update to Apple Watch chipsets , leaving these equipment with a far short lifespan compared to an iPhone .
That ’s quite a anovulatory drug to swallow , and it does mean that you may want to be a bite more forward thinking when deciding which Apple Watch you want to buy in the future . While it might be tempting to choose for an aged twist to save money , do you really want to go through the update process again in a twelvemonth or two when Apple strike on to newer thing ?
