When Apple announced watchOS 27 last week at WWDC, many were shocked to see support drop for so many Apple Watches. This included the Series 6, 7, 8, Watch SE 2, and the original Watch Ultra. This meant that Apple’s most expensive watch would stop receiving software support after 3 years, which definitely did not sit well with people who paid $800 for the Apple Watch Ultra.
Now, Apple’s Watch and Health product marketing manager, Cait Dooley, talking to TechRadar, has explained this cutoff to an extent:
“With every software release across every single one of our platforms, we always want to ensure that you have the best experience, so we make power and performance a priority. The great new features in watchOS, including the capabilities of Siri AI and the new tap gesture, work best with the processing power that is in Apple Watch Series 9 and later, Ultra 2 and later, and SE 3.“
Of course, a lot of that is just marketing speak, saying that they want users to have the best experience, and that the new Siri AI wouldn’t work very well on the processing power in those older watches. However, Dave Clark, a senior director of watchOS software engineering, also stated that one of the goals with watchOS 27 was to “expand the intelligence story on Apple Watch and make it a true co-partner to Apple Intelligence.”
It’s still bad news for Watch Ultra owners
Only three years of updates is pretty disheartening for Apple Watch Ultra owners, especially since it is such an expensive smartwatch and Apple has been lauded for supporting their devices for so long.
However, given Apple’s recent flop with AI a couple of years ago, it was likely hard for Apple to sort of plan for this future where the OS is so AI-heavy. Hopefully, no other watches will have support dropped after three years.
The post Apple Says It Has a Good Reason for Cutting Off So Many Apple Watches appeared first on Android Headlines.
