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This week in Kevin Lynch, Apple's global leader, has announced several updates to WatchOS, the company's smartwatch operating system. (Voice memos, a calculator, streaming audio, oh my god!) But the most telling features were the new additions as a result of the watch's health monitoring tools.
Beginning this fall, Apple Watch will monitor the evolution of your business over time, protect your hearing by alerting you of harmful ambient noise levels, and allow users to track their menstrual cycles. Individually, these improvements may seem small or trivial. But given the health and fitness features of the watch, this new feature set underscores Apple's efforts to turn its smartwatch into a control center for your personal health. Of course, calculating one end of your wrist is neat. But a personal companion who monitors your well-being wherever you go? Apple is betting that's the future.
Apple
Today, the Apple Watch is one of the best health and fitness trackers you can buy. This has not always been the case. At its launch in 2015, Apple marketed its notebook as a less intrusive extension of the iPhone – a cure for the vampiric relationship between phones and human attention. Health and fitness were taken into account afterwards: The first models lacked GPS, which made the watch unattractive to runners. Submerging it in the water could drown the speaker and the microphone, which prevented it from touching the wrists of serious swimmers. The built-in heart rate sensor reads your pulse only a handful of times per minute and the lean battery life has forced most Apple watches to spend the night charging on their bedside table, instead of collecting data on the wrists of the users. Companies such as Garmin and Fitbit have long been offering portable devices with these features, and many health-conscious consumers remain loyal to them.
But over the last four years, Apple has consistently solved almost all of these problems (with the exception of the battery life of the watch, which is still rated at less than 18 hours' worth of time). typical use). It has also added features that distinguish it from other portable devices: the most notable of them is the ability to record an electrocardiogram, or ECG, directly from the wearer's wrist, a feature that, according to the experts in cardiology, has the power to transform heart health.
Now, the watch is presented as an essential wellness tool – or, as CEO Tim Cook told WWDC this week, "a smart guardian for your health".
This description is a little out of breath for my taste, but it is clear that the Apple Watch is a smartwatch of unusual capacity. Unlike Garmin and FitBit, which distribute features across a wide range of devices (the first one sells no less than five unique fitness trackers, the last over a dozen), Apple packs its few products with as much functionality as possible. Of course, you can choose your choice of colors and tapes, and you can pay extra for LTE connectivity, but functionally, every new generation of Apple Watch is the same. Like the iPhone before, the Apple notebook is designed to appeal to as many people as possible, by being what these people want or need.
With these latest updates, opting for the most versatile approach of Apple no longer means sacrificing specialized features. Fitbit had been an obvious choice for consumers who wanted to follow their menstrual cycles. To monitor the long term trends of their fitness, Garmin was the obvious option. But later this year, when a software update will allow the Apple Watch to do both, this decision will become more difficult.
Apple
This is how Apple eats the lunch of its competitors: one bite at a time. Personal health, as the expression suggests, means different things to different people. The most effective individualized devices will have to meet users wherever they are, no matter where they are. By covering as many bases as possible, Apple is positioned exactly in this way.
"Apple is going in the same direction on several fronts simultaneously," says Mitesh Patel, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, who studies whether and how wearable devices can facilitate improved health. "It's clear that they're trying to democratize access to managing your own health, whether by monitoring your biometric data, your activity, your menstrual cycle, your hearing health or whatever." These are all things that you have already had to actively follow or consult a doctor to evaluate. Now you can monitor them anytime, anywhere, passively, just by wearing a device on your wrist.
Take the new Apple Watch Noise Monitoring feature, which will alert users when sound levels in their immediate vicinity will reach levels that may impair their hearing. This feature may sound like a gadget, but noise-induced hearing loss is a common and pernicious threat that affects tens of millions of people in the United States alone. "It's done so slowly and gradually that people do not notice it until it's gone," said Chuck Kardous, a researcher at the National Institute for Safety and Health at Work. "And once it's gone, it's gone."
I asked Kardous when he was surprised that Apple was introducing a feature intended for hearing health. "No, actually, I'm not," he replied. In fact, he was waiting for it.
Apple
In recent years, the World Health Organization has invited experts from around the world to discuss noise-induced hearing loss as part of its Make Listening Safe initiative. "What was interesting for us was that there were Apple engineers at every meeting we attended," says Kardous. They wanted to be informed of the latest research and recommendations from organizations around the world. "There was no other manufacturer participating in these meetings," Kardous said.
It is safe to assume that Apple engineers attend many other health related meetings. The company is apparently trying to integrate an optical glucose sensor with its portable equipment to help diabetic patients monitor their blood glucose levels. The company has even filed patents for "odor recognition capabilities" that can be used to detect air pollution or analyze body odors – capabilities that are not as far-fetched as you think.
However, adding features to the watch is only part of Apple's strategy. It's not enough to give people tools to monitor their health; they also need ways to make sense of these data and act accordingly. That's where apps come in. It's no coincidence that Apple Watch users will soon be able to download applications directly from their wrists: no smartphone is required. And just as the App Store was unleashing the full potential of the iPhone, apps developed to leverage the data collected by the Apple Watch could turn it into a smart and indispensable health gadget in Tim Cook's dreams.
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