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The video demo is so strange. A waitress spoke too fast - just act like a normal person and politely ask them to repeat themselves, instead of reading a transcription on your watch. My goodness.

Apple Watches have had an audio recorder app for years and no-one cares. Sometimes people are just looking for a reason to be offended.

You'd be shocked what the suite of sensors in the smartphone 99% of the population has in their pocket can do.

My first thought was 2-party state violations, 24/7? However, any legally-minded people want to explain how they threaded the needle on this?

I have real respect for Apple's "Private Cloud Compute" architecture [0], I am not a hater, just trying to understand.

Are these the dividends Apple is getting from doing this truly impressive work?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427928 - https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/

There's some more details on privacy at the bottom of the page:

> Audio Intelligence features are private by design

> a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it

> Users are in control and [...] can decide exactly where and when Siri Recap takes notes, and can turn Siri Recap on or off at any time

> Siri Recap produces a brief, high-level summary of conversations — not a transcript — and is designed to exclude sensitive information like financial information or government-assigned identifiers

Why is it off putting? Someone could be using a phone or a concealed omnidirectional microphone for this and you wouldn't know. You never know who's recording you anyway.

Yeah, even more weird was when they highlighted the privacy aspect of it. Sure, it maintains the wearer's privacy, just not that of anyone around them.

While I instinctively dislike any "secretly spying" devices, phones could do that for a while now. I wouldn’t have much use for my watch doing it, but my nephew swears by taking notes on an ipad with an app that has a sort of a playback: essentially a play bar that recreates the note as it is written, with audio included. Being able to playback the lecture afterwards that way is a huge benefit over pure notes and I wish I had something like that when I was in school.

> It's made even worse by the fact that [...] their external designs are unchanged from past ones, so there's no way to tell who's always listening to everything

Yeah, I just decided the entire Apple Watch brand is suddenly a creeper device, so I'm not going to wear mine out, nor otherwise around other people.

I don't want to endorse creeper devices by appearing to wear one, and I don't want to be insensitive to people who might wonder whether I'm "note taking" everything we say.

Also, I got an iPhone specifically to use the Apple Watch awhile, so I'm probably switching back to GrapheneOS sooner than expected.

It's the first iteration of what will eventually be an on-device Siri/openclaw that not only has full access to your messages/docs/emails/life, but also has live audio access to what's going on around you.

Remember, this is all running via local models on-device.

This is how Siri/openclaw can hear you make plans for lunch, then add it to the calendar before you open your phone.

I just assume everything in public is audio/video recorded. In most places that's perfectly legal (with some exceptions). I don't think people should expect privacy in public. We faced the same panic about photographs when mobile phones started getting cameras. With some notable problems, everyone accepted it and moved on. The utility we get from cameras in phones is worth far more than the privacy violations which occur. The same thing is going to happen with this technology (and smart glasses).

More detail/discussion on the passive audio recording and transcription/summarization features:

Apple details how Apple Watch’s new Audio Intelligence features work in privacy paper https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635185

Apple Doesn’t Want You to Worry About the New Apple Watch’s Listening Features https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49634947

Yeah very creepy, I'm afraid it'll be normalised in a few years, together with the cameras in our glasses.

I always knew this was coming eventually, with storage and compute getting so cheap, eventually every record can and then will be saved for security / convenience reasons. Every word uttered, every emotion shown on your face, every URL visited, every view you laid your eyes on.

I will miss the days that things could happen and be forgotten.

No doubt this stuff is all very useful, but I'd rather we skip this line of technology.

I wonder if this feature will make people wary of Apple watch wearers.

You would be aghast to spend any time in tech these days. I would wager more than 20% of the people in this field right now are wearing devices which record everything they say in every conversation and ship it directly to a transcription LLM and into some other tools. Go to SV and I bet this number jumps to nearer to 30-40%

You should need to come up with a derogatory name for people wearing apple watches like Glasshole for people with google glass

Apple Watch Spy

Apple Watch Tattletale

Apple Informer

Watchholes

iSnitches

It will stop arguments between partners "you said this week ago, now you say this" okay honey, let's compare our transcripts.

It's so creepy. So their watch is now always recording audio, and the rumors say that their next generation of AirPods Pro will gain cameras.

I don't want an always-listening watch. I don't want earbuds with cameras. I don't want people around me to have those things either. I hate it.

“These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. This is because the S11 chip on Apple Watch Series 12 includes Secure Exclave, a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it.”

People love to get worked up over technology that is actually private and secure.

Meanwhile they’ll use Google and Facebook without a second thought.

It’s great for exposing people abusing their authority by making off the record demands that they know are not kosher.

You can simply not talk if you don't want people to listen?

Having had an Apple Watch since the Series 0, I think Apple wants people to have a ~3-year upgrade cycle. They essentially update the internals one year, the next they come out with some interesting software features, then the next year they do some external design tweaks. Then they repeat.

There is no reason to upgrade every year, or even every two. It is around the 3-year mark where there tends to be enough new features or your battery life is getting bad enough that there is reason to check out the new watches. Even then my mom uses a Series 6 and is very happy with it and actually uses it a fair bit.

I dunno. Maybe there's a sense in which there's some untapped use cases out there that Apple needs to go figure out. But in a different sense, the idea that I buy a watch that lasts for years and I don't feel like I'm missing out in the meantime...sounds fine?

I got my first Apple Watch a year and a half ago. After coming to terms with the fact that the form factor has fundamental limitations, it's faded into the background and has been an excellent watch, fitness tracker, and occasional remote control and messaging device. I'm kinda glad that series 11 and 12 haven't given me fomo!

(I do wish they made more good watch faces though...)

> With fast charging, battery life hasn't been an issue

I sold my 10 last year and haven’t missed it. You don’t have reasonable access to a charger during a marathon or a long hike, the latter of which needed me to charge my Apple Watch 3 times over the course of 12 hours of hiking.

> ... and I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways

Will it? Because they kind of made it a point, like they typically do, to say features are only possible due to the new chip.

I'm still on a Series 6. Don't see a reason to buy the new one at all.

I was hoping we might get multi-day battery life this iteration. Fast charging is almost as good.

I think it might be time to upgrade from my series 8.

The way faster higher measurement rate is interesting and does open up entirely new use cases.

Not like Apple will let us do anything fun with their APIs, though.

> I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways.

Oh, I wouldn't count on it. The older hardware is capable, but Apple is running out of ideas how to make people upgrade.

And the Ultra series have been marginally incremental, emphasis on marginally. They announced that Ultra series 1 software support is ending this year, but I just cannot justify buying another one of these at $800.

I mean, there's only so much that a watch can do or that can be packed into it. Eventually all gadget categories fall into a lull of slow and steady progress, they can't all be absolute bangers year after year

> In fairly certain there are a non-zero amount of laws prohibiting audio recording without consent

But it's not audio recording. It's a text (which is obtained from an audio by a not so accurate system and thus not admissible in court).

> On what legal footing does this recap feature stand?

It's not a crime if you do it with AI.

Instant in-memory transcription likely isn't legally considered the same as storing the actual audio. It probably couldn't be used as proof in a court like audio could (for now...).

It produces "high level summaries" so it's perhaps legally akin to note-taking rather than audio recording?

It isn't recording or storing audio, so laws against audio recording don't apply.

I am not sure who and why came up with this looks like a mass surveillance to me.

I imagine it was ran past their likely large legal department.

I was saying the same to my friend.

PA has very strict two party consent wiretap laws I'm not sure this feature would clear.

IANAL but my guess is that they're leaning heavily into the fact that the feature just generates transcripts and does not persist any audio recordings.

Yes, many states in the U.S. have recording laws that prohibit only one party giving consent to record. Aka: I give consent but the other party may not in which case it could be illegal.

Counterintutively, that didn't work out well for me. When the watch has ample power to make it through one day, but not two, I just put it on my schedule of daily rituals. Usually just throw it on the charger while I take a shower. But when the battery life is measured in weeks, I don't build any sort of habit like that and I end up finding out about it the hard way. My ideal watch never runs out in a single day and charges fast enough that during my shower it will get me through the next day. Based on the stats of the Series 12, it would probably fit the bill.

Same.

I just wish Garmin would get their act together with filtering notifications on iOS. No, I'm sorry, not every app on my phone should be important enough to buzz my wrist. Filtering works fine for Garmin on Android, and apparently for other watch brands on iOS (Coros, Pebble, etc).

The sad thing is all I really need is app-level granularity (slack, you're banned from my wrist!).

If this isn't fixed by the time my 5 year old Fenix fails, I'll move to a different brand that enables filtering.

I was on the Ultra for 18 months or so and came away from it feeling like a much less powerful and capable Garmin is much nicer as a daily watch. I found myself wanting to find reasons/excuses to justify the Ultra. Ultimately I couldn't, and it wasn't worth its cost, charging schedule, and lack of battery life.

I can see why others like them (they want WatchOS and Apple-specific capabilities). That stuff is useful, but not often enough for me to care.

Really, the watch was a regular reminder of how functional life was before the watch existed, if that makes sense. It's a genuine marvel, and yet... I got by (and get by) great without it.

I was recently looking for a new running watch but couldn't for the life of me figure out what Garmin's higher end watches do to justify being over $1000. Like, ok, better battery life... but besides that?

> Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.

I've been using Garmin watches for years, wife always had Apple Watches. This year she got envious enough of the battery life that she also switched to Garmin now. Her watches sometimes barely lasted a day, requiring daily charges. Meanwhile, you get a week of battery easily with most Garmins.

I had one of the first really cheap Xiaomi Smart Watches for 6 years and by the end a single charge lasted 2 weeks. Switched to an Apple Watch and 1 year in it lasts a single day, stopped wearing smart watches a few weeks ago, mainly due to this and just the fact that none of them look good imo.

Moved to Suunto, and I couldn't be happier.

I had an Apple Watch series 7, which I had to charge twice a day now. I was on a fence between buying a new AW or switching to another brand, but Apple dropping the software support for my model have made the choice for me. I

Assuming you’re using the Garmin for fitness related reasons — are you really carrying your phone around with you for music? I guess it works if you bike?

Am super salty about them killing support for the original Apple Watch Ultra. I, along with many others, bought it on launch day as both an Apple tragic / early adopter and to support what I thought was going to be an exciting new platform.

Instead we barely got a new feature over the 4 years since it launched, and now its been killed (from a software support pov) way ahead of schedule of the vast majority of other Apple devices.

For shame.

Why sent to the bin? The devices still work. I recently used my series 3 for a couple of weeks and it worked surprisingly well.

I thought it was understood that Apple gives hardware 5 years.

If the watch still works with the current OS on it, what's the issue?

Over the years I have had Garmin Fenix 3HR, 6, Instinct, 7 Pro, Apple Watch 8, SE3 and now I have S11. The last one I must admit was an impulse buy. I realized that marketing works really well selling people the idea that all that collected data is actually important and may improve your life in a meaningful way. In fact, the formula is simple: eat clean, move, sleep well, do blood tests twice a year to ensure you don’t have deficiencies. It’s that simple. You don’t need your every heart beat to be recorded or your sleep tracked. You wake up and you already know if you slept well. I even consider health tracking wearables doing more harm as they distract people from what is important giving them a false sense of comfort if they managed to close all the rings.

One a side note, I tried CGM out of curiosity and seeing how your body (and this is quite individual) reacts on various food, how high glucose spikes you can get from only a handful of blueberries has had a tremendous effect on my diet. Controlling glucose levels has helped sleep better, recover faster, lose some weight and overall have more energy. Wearing CGM for only one month has had more impact on my life than years of wearing various health trackers.

I ditched the screen and got a band with health metrics on it. Its tiny and comfy, no screens, only a wakeup buzz in the morning when I'm most able to wake apparently. Battery lasts maybe a week? Been great. Best of all no advertisements pinging me every few hours.

Agree. Was really hoping for a Fitbit style band this year that just has a Siri button and Apple Pay. An iPod for your wrist perhaps.

I don't know. Apple marketing has been really effective at this health thing. Whereas, studies of continuous monitoring of eg heart with even better sensors and higher risk populations have shown conclusively no improvement in health outcomes.

Don’t forget Japan! There’s some great Japanese mechanical watches. I’m a fan of the Seiko spring drive movement.

I went from an EV to my first manual car earlier this year for similar reasons I think

Or Japan? Having digital accuracy and 10 year battery life is pretty nice.

This is true of most objects that are constantly worn on your skin - my engineering ring has created a near-permanent indent in my pinky finger. It fades over time when it's not worn. It's an odd thing to hold against a wearable.

Do you wear it to sleep as well?

Did it return to normal after you stopped wearing it? How long did it take?

You can remove all notifications.

I have done so with all my devices since ~15 years ago. It's incredibly refreshing. When I see others reacting monkey-style to any notification or vibration from their phone or watch, I secretly smile inside.

I have a $20 smart fitness watch from Amazon which I use for sleep tracking, though it's a pretty capable watch. Much smaller than an Apple Watch and the battery lasts like 10 days on a charge. It connects to Apple Health and puts the heart rate / fitness / steps / sleep data in there.

If it could do the "make my phone beep" feature I'd probably switch to it as my main watch. But of course that's Apple exclusive proprietary :(

I think they really need a separate product that can have no screen or a minimal screen and ditches the need for app compatibility. Just selling the Apple Fitness features without the screen for apps would provide a lot of value and let them play with form factors and lower price points.

It'd be more accurate to make claims compared to the smartwatches listed in the study, than claiming it's the most accurate on the market.

> Participants wore an Apple Watch on one wrist, and a comparative wrist-based device on the other, while using a Polar H10 ECG based chest strap as reference. Wrist assignment was randomized such that Apple Watch was worn on the dominant hand approximately 50% of the time. Wrist-based devices studied included Apple Watch Series 12, Garmin Forerunner 970, Google Pixel Watch 4, Huawei Watch 5, Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, and WHOOP 5. Oura Ring 5 was also worn on an index finger, per the manufacturer's stated best practices3

source, via the footnote: https://www.apple.com/HRAccuracy/

I have had many fitbits, but for my mom I purchased an Apple watch because it had sleep apnea notifications. I think that's essential for almost everyone.

I can't imagine why google would skip such a critical feature in Health Tracking.

> Coros blows everyone out of the water from a user experience standpoint, and they offer excellent value.

Why? How?

Coros cannot reply to imessages, cannot add to reminders, cannot add to calendar, cannot place a call from the watch

Yeah, sounds amazing /s

This thread is becoming low level ragebait

That’s where you just get the SE on the cheap and don’t use the health stuff.

The battery life isn’t an issue, especially for the kind of light use you describe. Charge it when you sleep.

As much as I hate to say it, the most accurate GPS in a watch is the new Pixel Watch from Google, and its accuracy comes from uploading the GPS signal to Google to do building-aware post processing using Google’s database of worldwide buildings to solve the multi-path issue, plus DGNSS. Simply having dual frequency isn’t enough when you run on the streets of New York City. With Google’s solution, it can even detect which side of the sidewalk you are on while running.

I’m just not aware of any method that can do this without uploading your data to the cloud.

The watch gets worse battery life without a phone - it offloads a ton of stuff to your phone via low power Bluetooth when the phone is nearby…

> The problem with these kind of wearables today is this is just not very actionable.

I got the ultra 2 from Costco in the window of time where it still had the active o2 sensor.

It told me I probably had sleep apnea and to bring a print out of its chart to my primary care physician. That became a referral to an ENT and that became a referral for a sleep study. Turns out I had sleep apnea.

What was really surprising to me -- I was the first person both my primary doctor and the ENT saw who showed up with "my apple watch said I might have sleep apnea."

I've had a CPAP for about 10 months now and it's dramatically improved my sleep.

Funny, because literally every single apple product page gets posted as "news" to HN and every time I see one I think it's just apple marketing astroturfing. Especially since most of the product updates the last few years seem to fall into the, "BUT SHE'S GOT A NEW HAT" territory.

I'm not a pull request person for Garmin myself. I switched because of battery life.

The watches I wear are mechanical, and most of them are older than I am, made by companies that no longer exist!

I can see the appeal of smart-watches for some things, but I'm too attached to my (small) watch collection to ever consider buying one.

That was my same thought! Brands I have never heard of that can't make a call, send messages or add a reminder popping up like they invented sliced bread.

We get it, some people don't want to charge a watch even though they have to regularly charge their phone, headphones, laptop and maybe car. Such a weird flex that a watch lasts an extra few days, who cares?! Charge it while you shower and you're good to go

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

Do you wear your watch in the shower?

Perhaps you don't take daily showers, but I just put my watch on the charger when I shower and that's all I ever need to charge it 99% of the time.

It works fine now.

Series 12 may finally fix that for you. They mention that the new heart rate sensors handle motion better.

Casio WSB1000 is probably the cheapest with phone pinging ability, but it's about $40.

the best thing I ever did was get rid of my collection of 41 watches and stop wearing one. my phone already has the time. I don't need a watch

Even if they’re just matching battery life while adding frequent HRV readings, they’ve made a big advancement. Frequent HRV is a requirement to be a WHOOP/Garmin competitor.

Previous Apple Watch can do it if you tell it you have afib, but that hurts battery life.

FWIW I have told it I have afib. I used to have problems with battery life, but I find the Series 11 can finally last all day and overnight with always on display+afib/HRV monitoring; and it charges fast enough I can get close to 100% in the shower, meaning it effectively does not have battery issues.

As someone that has had heart issues, their continued improvements there will keep me a loyal customer for a very long time to come.

Its position as a health device is underrated in tech circles. As we tech savvy generations age there’s a big market there.

It puts the AI on its wrist or it gets the hose again.

Battery life is better.

> Longer Workout Battery Life and Faster Charging

Apple Watch Series 12 continues to offer up to 24 hours of everyday battery life9 and now offers up to 10 hours of battery life during an outdoor workout — 25 percent more than the previous model.10

—

An increase to 10 hours of workout tells me battery life is better, but maybe not “better enough” to give the 24 hour number an increase (or the higher HRV checking frequency is eating the rest of the gains)

The iPhone 18 Pro and the Airpods are equally dissapointing. Even the folding iPhone is nothing special.