Apple’s Next Wearable Should Kill the Apple Watch As We Know It ⭐

When Microsoft was riding high atop the personal computing market with nary a viable competitor in sight, it was an easy target for complaints. Most were likely valid, but in Microsoft’s defense, the one thing I could say about them was that the company did democratize technology and bring it to the masses. This isn’t exactly innovation, of course. But it is, in its own way, right?

Looking at Apple today, its abuses are, if anything, worse than anything Microsoft inflicted on the world, in part because of its need for control and in part because the audience is so much bigger. But if there’s one thing I can say about this company that anyone should agree with, it’s that it has a history of picking its battles and entering established markets with new offerings that deliver major advantages over whatever was there to begin with. It did this most famously with MP3 players (iPod), phones (iPhone), and tablets (iPad), but there are other examples, like wired and then wireless headphones (Earbuds, AirPods) too.

This is not what happened when Apple announced and released the first Apple Watch. This first and maybe only successful major new product release under Tim Cook was all over the map and was marketed as an expensive accessory for the crowd that was still, at that time, buying a new iPhone every year or two. But it fell short of Fitbit wearables and smartwatches in health and fitness tracking, while being more expensive. It even fell short of the Microsoft Band that everyone forgets existed.

In time, Apple delivered a Watch experience that started to play off its historic strengths. Version 2 course-corrected with a major focus on health and fitness. And Apple corralled its popularity with consumers, celebrities, and sports stars to attract interest from the medical community. It began working with health and fitness organizations to improve and expand the tracking capabilities of Apple Watch. It introduced a Fitness+ service, and so on. Today, Apple Watch exceeds the competition in many ways, and not just through the valuable ecosystem benefits Apple always offers.

But it’s still a watch, a complex and somewhat large device with a battery-hungry screen and processor, something any dedicated user will charge at least once every day. As with the iPhone, one might sarcastically and yet accurately claim that the biggest success of this device was that it replaced devices that lasted much longer on a charge, often days, and consumers just ate it up regardless.

But the world is changing, as it will. Apple’s most successful wearable may be its AirPods line of wireless earbuds. And competitors have brought all kinds of health and fitness wearables to market that are not watches or, even more surprisingly, do not have displays. Oura and other smart rings, for example. And more recently, screenless fitness bands like Google’s Fitbit Air.

I like the idea of whatever device just sitting there on my wrist or finger, and maybe someday just implanted in my body, tracking key health metrics silently and without intervention. The idea being that if something goes wrong, if there is some weekly or monthly trend downward I need to know about it, then I will get that information so I can act on it but be unbothered otherwise.

Those screenless devices do that today, and others will in the future. And now there is some call for Apple to come out with an “Apple Watch Neo,” just as there is for Apple to “Neo all the things” because Apple fans are maybe too taken with the success of the regretful MacBook Neo, a reasonably affordable laptop that’s given them and Apple the bragging rights to a part of the market they both ignored for decades. But there are some bad ideas out there.

One I just saw is that “a screenless ‘Apple Watch Neo’ is exactly what Apple needs. This is incorrect. Anything that is just something others do is not right for Apple. And that would be true of an Apple fitness band like a Fitbit tracker, though I would personally be interested in such a thing. The Apple Watch is many things, but one of them is that it’s too complex. A simpler device with better battery life and fewer features and distractions is of interest.

But this is Apple. And if Apple is going to expand on Apple Watch with something else that is like Apple Watch, or is like whatever fitness trackers you care to name, it needs to approach this the right way. It needs to bring its historical strengths to bear.

And this isn’t rocket science, even though all our needs and wants are different.

Based on my experiences with multiple device types, including Windows 11 PCs, I’ve learned that I glance at the time frequently. Before Microsoft worked to fix the “pain points” in Windows 11, for example, I experimented for many months with hiding the too-big Taskbar to save on screen real estate, but I found that I missed seeing the clock a lot. Likewise, while I can’t stand the many interruptions, Siri talking out of nowhere, burbles on my wrist when I get a spam call that my iPhone actually hides from me, and whatever other nonsense, the one thing I do use on my Apple Watch all the time is, wait for it, the clock. I like to see the time, I guess.

So much so that the watch face I’ve been using all year, called Flow, is just the time. There’s no other stuff on screen, no three circles display, no date, no weather, no nothing. Just the time. And it’s the thing I’d miss if I didn’t have the Watch. Or any wrist-based wearable with a display.

Apple shouldn’t release something new because I want it. Nor should it release something because the guy who came up with the “Apple Watch Neo” is what he wants, a Fitbit Air with an Apple logo on it. No, what Apple should do is meet many needs all at once and do it better than the competition. It should enter the market with an Apple version of things that already exist but are done right. Done better.

When Google announced the Fitbit Air, I was curious about the module that contains all the sensors it uses, and how it was attached to the removable bands that customers will select from. And in looking at that, I saw what I had hoped to see: It would be easy for Google or some third party to release a band that included a small display too. I’m kind of surprised this didn’t happen at launch, but since then, Google has released blueprints for hardware makers that wish to create their own bands with not just unique designs but unique features. This is the Google way, more passive aggressive than overt, the belief being that if they build it, others will come.

Apple is not Google. What Apple should do, then, is what I describe above. Create a fitness band that can be used without a screen or with a screen of various types, and with different levels of customer-specified functionality. This would meet my needs, it would meet the “Apple Watch Neo” guy’s needs, and it would meet the needs of a much larger audience than just going in one of those directions. It could and should be an Apple Watch that costs less, is more versatile, and can potentially get days of battery life. The key there being making the interactive bits less sophisticated, which is often just pointless complexity, while keeping the tracking prowess that Apple Watch is known for.

Taken to the next level, this represents what could be considered a new modular take on the Apple Watch itself. This could be a single product line that extends all the way from a screenless band to a band with all kinds of screens, the biggest and most capable of which would be the modern replacement for today’s Apple Watch models. It could be all things for all customers, not just one more thing for a small group of customers.

And with no offense to Steve Jobs intended, one more thing is not what Apple or its customers need here. They need Apple to be the Apple we can admire, the Apple that really does improve on something familiar and creates what is essentially something new. It’s the legacy Tim Cook’s only successful major product release deserves. And something that would attract Apple Watch upgraders and a new swath of users too.