The era of the Apple Watch is over

If you have ever owned an Apple Watch or if you are sitting in front of someone who wears one, you are probably aware of the inescapable social faux pas which involves checking the time.

The first five generations of the Apple Watch, due to screen technology and battery constraints, could not display an active watch dial at any time, and the waking alarm clock was born. You raise your arm, the Apple Watch anime and you lower it to return to the rest position.

This process has remained the most heinous aspect of wearing the smartwatch Apple, not because it's really too bulky, but because it carries a lot of social baggage. There are few things that scream "I do not want to be here" or "You bored me to death", as does raising your arm slightly and looking at your computer at $ 400.

It's something that I actively avoid when talking with friends or at a meeting at work, and I strive to do my best to never make the mistake – an almost subconscious reflex I succumb to several times an hour at that time – when questioning a story.

Helping consumers avoid this socially sensitive situation is precisely why the Apple Watch, officially known as the Apple Watch Series 5, has garnered so much attention at Apple's annual iPhone event, Tuesday. Having a permanently smart display is an obvious addition, even if it is rather the only significant benefit offered by the Series 5 compared to the Series 4 of last year.

Apple is implementing this new feature based on what is known as low temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO), a type of OLED-based circuit technology that uses a mix of different thin-film transistors. This allows Apple to more finely control display features such as refresh rate. Interestingly, Series 4 delivered this type of display last year, but only Series 5 has a version of this LTPO technology that uses new components, as well as the new energy management software, not found in Series 4 to keep the screen on all the time. while preserving the battery life of the 18-hour device.

This is why the Apple Watch Series 5 seconds hand, which slides normally when the refresh rate of the display is at 60 Hz, disappears in sleep mode and remains low. The watch would need a higher refresh rate to display the changes that occur within a second, while the always-on mode without the second hand has fewer moving parts in the image and has only to illustrate the changes over a longer period.

Apple has therefore clearly appealed to a team of highly talented software and hardware engineers working on this feature for most of last year and probably much longer, all at the service of a team. functionality that, admittedly, is not an integral part of the use of your Apple Watch. . Just ask the suckers who bought the Apple Watch Series 4, really like yours. It was touted as the very first hardware remake of the Apple Watch, and I bought it as an upgrade to my slow 0 series, in the event that Apple would not come back to the table 12 months later with a feature that I thought was one in a few years.

I was unfortunately very wrong and for that I am slightly frustrated. (Apple no longer even sells the Series 4, having decided that it performs a useless function in its lineup while it may just as well sell a new customer, a Series 5.) But a permanent display is a appreciable advantage. , it's not a defining feature that will push me to sell my current Apple Watch to get the latest version. In 2015, the fact that the screen of the Apple Watch became completely black was presented almost as a feature. even today, it's always good to slide the palm of your hand over the display to put it to sleep manually.

Few people thought so much to lift the wrist to check the time, and I would have risked saying that the number of consumers who have returned or have stopped wearing their watch Apple Watch on waking is very small. But what we did not know at the launch of the Apple Watch was the kind of hazy and unpleasant effect it would have on social interactions.

We had not planned how well to check your watch in the middle of a conversation would become as rude as checking your phone, even and especially when it's not about reporting anything else other than A critical interest, at the time that it is at that time. . Apple had to find a solution to a problem she probably did not plan to create, when launching its first smartwatch, four years ago.

Of course, no one loses a good friend or his job by raising their Apple Watch to check the time. It's not the end of the world if you have to explain to someone that you're totally addicted to the screen in your pocket and on your wrist – that it's not them, really, it's you . But it often happens that technology is unexpectedly embedded in our lives. What might once seem to be a benign or perhaps even positive quality – a blackened watch display when you lower your wrist – has become significantly less true over the years.

Now, the Apple Watch stays on, at least a little, whatever happens. And we can all rest knowing that even a small fraction of this social clumsiness could disappear.