Here's everything you need to know about WatchOS 10 - including all the new features for sports and fitness!
Apple has just announced a slate of new features and products at their annual WWDC event (World Wide Developer Conference). This event is where the company announces new updates to their software platforms (and some new hardware). Generally speaking, they only cover a fraction of the updates in the keynote, and then over the coming days and weeks, we find the rest of the new features in the developer betas, followed by public betas.
1) Adding NameDrop to iOS 17 and watchOS 10: This is the new ability to quickly share contact info via NameDrop, so you aren’t doing the ‘text someone your name in a message’ thing (something I ironically did just minutes before the keynote) – this is just so much cleaner, and includes the new contact card format you see above.
2) Newly redesigned native apps across watchOS: These better use the new UI, as well as new fullscreen views that can be iterated using the Digital Crown (with access for developers)
Adding two new watch faces: Palette, and Snoopy & Woodstock.
3) New Widgets from watch face: You can use Digital Crown to access widgets directly from the watch face; this can be things like the calendar, timers, workouts, or 3rd party apps.
4) New Bluetooth Cycling Sensor support: Added cycling speed sensors, cadence sensors, and power meter support (Bluetooth), natively into the Workouts app. This also supports smart trainers that transmit Bluetooth Smart as well. This will record the data to Apple Health at the rate of the sensor (e.g 1-second). Additionally, this live sensor data is now accessible to other 3rd party apps via API, so apps don’t have to write their own sensor connectivity if they don’t want to. For example, Strava could expand their HR sensor support to power/cadence/speed super easily by leveraging Apple’s native support for it now. Note, the external running power meters are not supported here within the running profiles, only the bike profiles.
Will estimate cycling power FTP: When using a power meter sensor and heart rate from the watch. At this point this is only for cycling power, not yet running power zones. Additionally, % of FTP can be used within the structured workouts and data fields as noted down below.
5) Will automatically determine cycling power zones: This also requires a power meter (and HR from your watch). These zones are customizable and specific to power, both in the ranges each zone, but also the number of zones you use.
6) iOS will have full-screen companion watch view: Sorta like a companion to your watch – useful for putting your phone on your bike handlebars, but then leverages your watch data. This will mirror your exact Apple Watch data pages, and there’s no configuration options around that – it’s basically all or nothing. So if you’ve got power on your Apple Watch page, you’ll also have it for the phone app.
7) Shows last known cellular location: In the Hiking sport profile, watchOS will automatically create new waypoints for the last known cellular location, for both your carrier and other carriers (for emergencies)
8) Adding new dynamic 3D elevation view to WatchOS: In this view you can see your previously added waypoints, with relative elevation shown as well.
9) Adding new topographic map view to WatchOS: This map view is an offline map using your phone’s offline map view. Interestingly though, there isn’t yet true offline maps on the watch itself, just the phone that the watch can leverage. Further, there’s no pre-planned routing atop this at this point.
10) Adding the ability to see trails around you, and the specific trail route data: This will show you the nearby trails and specifically the trailheads. It will not route atop those trails, but rather, is via the Apple Maps app to show you how far away it is.
11) Adding new WatchOS high-frequency motion data for developers: This new data is at a higher frequency than previous data, and also supports greater ranges of motion data. Further, it allows for batch access to the data, versus apps previously had to ingest it all in real-time, which added more real-time processing overhead. Now they can do it in set intervals.
12) New Workouts API: TrainingPeaks is already onboard, and shown in the keynote. This will enable 3rd party apps to push workouts to the Apple Watch natively. This is supported in all workout types except Multisport, Pool Swim, and Openwater Swim. The workout API supports power and cadence targets, using the new sensor data as well – for both running and cycling.
13) New Scheduled Workouts: With the Workouts API, companies can send the next 7 days of workouts, as well as the previous 7 days of workouts. This allows for calendaring of workouts and scheduling of those.
#WWDC #AppleWatch #WatchOS10
