- Okay, so here's the thing.
We already know that these two watches,
the Apple Watch Series 9 and the new Ultra 2,
are not for people who already have
any somewhat recent Apple Watch.
These are iterative updates for people
who don't have any Apple Watch yet,
or have like a really, really,
really, really old Apple Watch,
like a Series 3.
Something like that.
So you would really have to squint
and put it side by side with the previous version
to actually notice what's different
about it versus the previous gen.
But on top of that,
some of the stuff that's actually genuinely new
with these watches isn't even shipping right away.
It's coming later this year.
- Later this year.
- You'll see what I mean.
So I'll make this review really simple for you guys here:
it's just a spec bump.
The Apple Watch Series 9 is a spec bump
over the Series 8,
and the new Ultra 2 is the same spec bump
over the original Ultra.
Basically, there's one new color,
this pink on the Series 9 that I have.
And it's pretty similar to the new pink iPhone.
It's this kind of light, salmony-colored one.
Aside from that, honestly, you could never even tell
if someone is wearing the new watch.
Matter of fact, I've been wearing around this new Ultra 2
for more than a week now.
Nobody's asked about it.
Nobody can tell because it looks exactly the same.
There were some rumors floating around
of heavily speculating on a black Apple Watch too.
You might've seen these also.
And it seemed like something everybody agreed
was probably gonna happen.
And it made a lot of sense
because there's always something Apple does just
to visually distinguish the new one from the not-so-new one.
But what I think happened was Apple got to testing it,
and then they started to realize just what happens
to a coated titanium on a durable-focused item
like a watch.
So kind of similar to the new iPhone,
there's these new colors with PVD coating
on top of titanium for the iPhone 15 Pro.
But it's a phone, so people put it in a case,
and they're a little bit more careful with it.
But on an adventure watch,
where you expect people to run around outside
and beat it up and scrape it
and drag it through rocks and sand and stuff,
I think they realized
that might have a tough time wearing well.
So we just didn't get it.
Just looks exactly the same.
So either way, okay, what is the new spec bump?
It's the S9.
The new S9 chip inside this phone,
or the system-in-package, the SIP, as they call it,
literally everything that's new about these watches stems
from this S9.
So first of all, it's a faster chip,
which just means generally flying around the UI
and opening and closing apps and notifications
and stuff like that all is technically faster.
Honestly, not super noticeable just
because you really don't do a ton of that on the watch,
and the refresh rate is exactly the same.
But you know what? I'll still take it.
But then it's also a more power efficient chip,
which you'll always love to see
in a small battery gadget like a watch.
But Apple actually targets the same 18-hour battery life
that they always do and, instead,
cranks the maximum brightness
of the new Series 9 display up to 2,000 nits thanks
to new display driver silicon.
And on the Ultra 2,
that now goes from 2,000 up to 3,000 knits max brightness.
So unsurprisingly, they look great outdoors.
You don't necessarily look at it right away
and notice it's brighter.
It's really only when you put it side by side
with the last one that you can
at least appreciate how impressive this is.
3,000 nits is actually
the brightest display Apple has ever put
in any gadget they've ever made.
The S9 package also includes a new Ultra Wideband chip
that enables precision finding of your iPhone.
So basically Find My iPhone
before on the watch was just pinging a sound
to play from your iPhone.
But now, with the watch,
you can have it direct you to find exactly
where your phone is,
kind of like finding an AirTag.
Even more useful if your phone is like,
in between some couch cushions or something,
or if it's playing sound echoing in a weird way.
I think this is a great ecosystem feature.
I'm sure a lot of people will love it.
And the S9 package also has twice
as much memory built in now
and a double-the-speed neural engine,
which combined is able to give you faster serial requests,
and it's able to process all the Siri requests on-device,
without any connection to the internet.
So Siri's kind of famous at this point
for occasionally just grinding to a halt
and not answering questions,
or just taking forever
because you have a terrible internet connection.
So this actually does make a big difference.
Basically, asking it normal questions
is pretty consistently quick.
The on-device transformer model is also a bit more accurate.
Now, Apple wasn't actually specific about
which Siri requests are happening completely on-device,
but if we just use our inferencing here,
what I understand is happening
is basically all of the voice processing
is happening on-device from the S9,
and then anything that actually needs
to go to the internet to look something up,
that's when it goes and does the round trip.
So something like set a timer is always gonna be nice
and quick no matter what your internet connection is
because that's all on-device.
But if you ask it like,
how tall is the Empire State Building,
it'll process your voice quickly,
but then it still needs a decent internet connection
to do the rest of it fast.
It's also supposed to be able to access your health data
and be able to submit health data from just your voice,
'cause it's all on-device and local and secure,
but that's one of the few things
that's supposed to be later this year.
- Later this year.
- So as of right now,
when I try the things that were in the keynote,
I just get non-responses and errors.
But then the one big feature,
the one genuinely interesting, new thing
that stands out to me in this generation of watches
as actually innovative is double tap.
This double tap feature is like the perfect symphony
of impressive processing power and clever computation
and high-quality sensors all combined
to give you something genuinely new
that honestly I don't actually expect other smart watches
to be able to copy, at least anytime soon.
So it's just this.
It's just double tapping your thumb
and your pointer finger on the same side
that you're wearing your watch
to select things on the watch.
Later this year.
So Apple actually had to ship me a separate watch running,
I guess, an early copy of watchOS 10.1.
All the new watches shipping right now have 10.0.
But the feature itself is simple.
You raise to wake,
and then you double tap your fingers together
to control what's happening on the screen of the watch.
This is basically most useful in instances
where your other hand is full.
Maybe you're carrying something,
or you're walking a dog,
or you're cooking and your hand is dirty.
Something like that, whatever.
But when you actually do it,
it's basically set up to either select the primary button
in whatever app you're in,
or advance through the stack of widgets
in a Siri Smart Stack.
So basically, if you're receiving an incoming call,
no matter what, when you double tap,
it will accept the call.
It's the primary button.
And then when you're in the call, another double tap,
that hits the end call button,
'cause now that's the primary button.
That's also strangely satisfying.
In the past, for me, I know if one hand is busy,
it's been like a nose tap.
I know I'm not the only one who's done that,
so you can't judge me.
But I'm welcoming of this sort of solution
to that problem.
And honestly, it's been very accurate.
Very few false triggers.
I know that I kind of have to give it a second
once I raise to wake and then double tap,
but it's consistent.
It's very good.
Now, the whole but actually thing
about this not being new here is there was
an accessibility setting called assistive touch added,
I think, all the way back with the Apple Watch Series 6,
which was designed for people
who don't have another hand to use their Apple Watch.
So they have to be able to control it
with just their one hand.
And so it had double pinch, it had single pinch,
it had clenching your fist and double clenching your fist.
From my limited experience,
'cause I turned it on and tried it on other watches,
it works pretty well when you're very deliberate about it.
But the official reason why this double tap is new,
and therefore only available
on these newest generations of watches
and not the older ones,
is the most Apple thing ever.
Okay, ready?
Basically, the algorithm that is doing all of the processing
from all the data from the sensors,
which is the same sensors on the old watches,
is so much more complicated and so much heavier now
that it couldn't possibly run on an S8
or an older piece of silicon.
Just the S9.
Yeah, convenient.
So this is coming. This is an in a month thing.
This is according to the keynote.
They're usually pretty good
about delivering on promises like that,
but as of right now, this is not shipping with the watch.
Either way, this is something both useful
and clearly foreshadowing to the upcoming Apple Vision Pro,
whose primary gesture will be selecting things
by putting your thumb and index finger together.
Honestly, it's one of the most fascinating things
about this watch.
But the other fascinating thing is that paired
with one of these sport bands, the Apple Watch
is Apple's first fully carbon-neutral product.
Like, full carbon neutral.
That might be the most impressive thing
about this entire watch.
That includes all of the materials,
energy, and emissions used to create it,
assemble it, package it,
ship it to your door.
And it accounts for all of the energy
that it actually takes to run the device
for the lifetime of you owning it.
That is absurd.
That is extremely impressive.
I'm kind of taking their word for it on their face.
I do wanna dig more into this later,
but it's also something
that I hope other companies start to copy.
So here's the thing.
You know the thing Apple's done in other product categories,
where they'll have a big silicon upgrade
and the same old design as before,
and then the next generation they'll actually update
the design of the product?
They've done this with the MacBook Air,
MacBook Pro, other stuff.
I'm thinking, and I'm hoping,
that to line up with rumors,
that that's exactly what's happening with the Apple Watch.
This is what we've been wanting for a while.
Look back at it.
This watch looks basically exactly the same as last year,
and that one looked just like the year before,
which looked just like the year before that
and the year before that.
Same shape, same buttons, same fundamentals.
And I get that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
That's pretty classic.
But there's been so many things
that we've kind of just been waiting for / hoping for
to maybe see from an Apple Watch someday.
Something like maybe a circular redesign,
maybe a little more classical shape.
Maybe a rotating bezel like we've seen on the Galaxy Watch,
which is sick.
Maybe an actual leap forward in battery life.
Like, literally any one of those features would be
the biggest update to the Apple Watch in years.
But this ain't it.
It's a spec bump. Now you know.
Thanks for watching.
Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
♪ 10, 24/7 ♪