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New Apple Watch Ultra 3 ?
- Thread starter Zapdoc
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Yeah and even just the smallest new health features would mean they sell an inferior Ultra product more expensive than the normal watch - wouldn't make sense.
Wishlist:
- Offline maps and offline routing (just like Garmin have had for many years)
- Significantly longer battery life (either with new battery tech or display tech)
- Satellite messaging (just like iPhone)
- Better bluetooth headphone pairing (currently takes up to a minute and may even require restart on Ultra 1 + AirPods Pro 2)
- Improved local AI features (running a tiny local LLM offline would be perfect to make Siri smarter)
- Blood glucose measurement
- No changes to form factor (it is perfect)
That seems significantly more difficult than these other asks.
Macrumors does not know much about the Ultra 3 yet:
www.macrumors.com
Apple Watch Ultra 3: Everything We Know So Far
Apple was expected to announce the Apple Watch Ultra 3 in September 9 at the company's "It's Glowtime" event alongside the iPhone 16,...
www.macrumors.com
as usual, rumors about new AWs are sparse, and some "leaked" have lost their credibility over false AW rumors.Macrumors does not know much about the Ultra 3 yet:
Apple Watch Ultra 3: Everything We Know So Far
Apple was expected to announce the Apple Watch Ultra 3 in September 9 at the company's "It's Glowtime" event alongside the iPhone 16,...
Edit: that should read “leakers”
Last edited:
True. We will see the best leaks one day before the presentation.
There's a precedent for that though. The Mac Pro is clearly the top end of Apple's desktops, but it's still on a M2-era processor. The lowly iMac however, is on M3 processors, and an iPad of all things is on M4. 🤯 And even if you account for processor variants (the Mac Pro's high end M2 Ultra vs the iPad Pro's base M4), the iPad still destroys it on single core benchmarks.
I would say as long as the Ultra still retains enough exclusive key features, it would still be "the Ultra" even if it was temporarily leapfrogged in a processor generation by a lower tier Apple Watch. 👍
Overall, I find AWU2 HW to be almost perfect. The remaining improvement opportunities are battery life (with low power display or higher density battery) and additional sensors. These are not critical — even without them Apple is way ahead of the competition.
Unfortunately software is a vastly different story. Apple Watch Ultra is not fit for the advertised use-cases. Maybe Apple could just ask the advertised target group (athletes and hikers) what are the critical (non HW) features that got them to choose Garmin over Apple. The list is clear and not worth repeating. I am sure Apple product team knows it.
Fundamental problem is that Apple is choosing to not implement features their advertised target group need as they believe that those features are confusing for the actual target group (larger public with disposable income).
This is the exact same problem they have with iPad Pro -line.
Unfortunately software is a vastly different story. Apple Watch Ultra is not fit for the advertised use-cases. Maybe Apple could just ask the advertised target group (athletes and hikers) what are the critical (non HW) features that got them to choose Garmin over Apple. The list is clear and not worth repeating. I am sure Apple product team knows it.
Fundamental problem is that Apple is choosing to not implement features their advertised target group need as they believe that those features are confusing for the actual target group (larger public with disposable income).
This is the exact same problem they have with iPad Pro -line.
Unfortunately there are no 3rd party apps that would provide even close to what Garmin watches give out of the box.
For hiking navigation, WorkOutDoors is still the unparalleled. But they are not able to allow you store full-continent maps that you can rely to always be there (like Garmin) and have not yet implemented on device routing (like Garmin).
For sports analytics there are many apps that claim to do it (like Athlytic), but their measurements are simply too unreliable to be usable (Garmin is pretty good there).
This is a combination of system limitations (managing battery budget is hard, so things simply cannot be done in app; apple does not want to allow apps hijack the central UX of the watch), and lack of investment from app vendors (Garmin R&D budget >> than the apps what often have just a single developer).
Situation remains frustrating — Apple HW and smart features are heads and shoulders above Garmin. Yet, I know people who are immersed in Apple ecosystem switching from Ultra 2 to some Garmin watch due to this lacking core functionality.
