Technologies
WatchOS 10: The Best New Apple Watch Features From the Public Beta
Here’s your preview of the most standout Apple Watch features coming later this year.

The Apple Watch gets a major software refresh every year, and the latest is WatchOS 10, which brings app redesigns, widgets and extra tools for cyclists and hikers. The WatchOS 10 public beta is now available for all Apple Watches starting with the Series 4 and later. The beta, along with iOS 17, gives us a preview of some of the new features ahead of its general release this fall.
I used WatchOS 10 over the past few days and tried out some of the best features.
If you want to try it out, you need to install the iOS 17 public beta on your iPhone first, then install the WatchOS 10 beta on the Apple Watch. As with all beta software, tread carefully. Features are subject to change between now and the final release, and I strongly advise you to back up your Apple Watch and iPhone before installing. And know that you can’t revert back to WatchOS 9 if you do install the public beta.
The Apple Watch gets widgets
Apple has brought widget Smart Stacks from the iPhone home screen to your Watch. Smart Stacks update dynamically based on context, such as the time of day and how you use your watch. From the watch face, you simply turn the digital crown to see the Stack. You can also swipe up from the watch face.
My Smart Stack usually shows upcoming calendar appointments, the weather and my activity rings. But like the iOS home screen, you can customize the Stack even further with a long press and either removing or pinning apps.
WatchOS 10 also changes how you bring up the control center. Instead of swiping up from the watch face, press the side button. This also works when you are in any app. With older versions of WatchOS, you either had to go back to the home screen, or long-press on the bottom edge of the screen when you were in another app. If you prefer the dock that comes up when you press the side button in WatchOS 9 and earlier, don’t worry. You can still access it by double-clicking the crown.

All the stock Apple apps look better
Pretty much all of the stock apps have been redesigned to fit more information on the screen. But they also look significantly different in some cases:
- Weather lets you tap through or turn the crown to see different views of air quality, wind speed, humidity and more.
- Activity still shows rings in the middle, but around the edge you get a weekly summary, awards and challenges. You can also swipe down to see the more granular time view of your rings’ progress.
- Messages can show pinned contact names and photos on first open, rather than the list of messages.
- Heart rate shows a new animation when reading your vitals.
One small change I really appreciate is how easy it is to switch between the Apple Watch list view and bubble app view. At the bottom of either list, you’ll see a prompt to switch to the other view. Previously you had to do a long press to switch views, or go into the Settings.

New Apple Watch faces: Snoopy and Palette
It wouldn’t be an Apple Watch update without new faces. Snoopy and Woodstock can hang out on your wrist all day, and they have different animations depending on what you’re doing or the time of day. My favorite part of the Snoopy face is what happens when you activate the always-on display. I won’t spoil the surprise, but Snoopy reflects how I feel every day after lunch.
The Snoopy watch face doesn’t allow for complications, but if you want a new look with extra flexibility, the new Palette face is available. There are three different color layers that change depending on where the hour and second hands are located, with four slots for complications around the edge of the watch face.

WatchOS 10 brings more tools for cyclists and hikers
Apple already added lots of useful cycling features to the Watch like e-bike calorie calculations and auto-detecting bike workouts. With WatchOS 10 your iPhone turns into a bike computer, sort of.
When you start a cycling workout on the Watch and your iPhone will automatically show a Live Activity on the lock screen. You can mount the phone to your handlebars and see all your activity metrics on the big screen, including HR zones, splits, elevation and speed. You can even mark segments, pause the workout and lock the screen controls to avoid accidental presses.
There is a live view which I find super helpful because I love to ride, but I’m not quite serious enough to need a dedicated cycling computer. This iPhone/Apple Watch combo is also much safer, because you’re not having to lift your wrist to see stats all the time. You can just quickly glance down at the phone.
I’m also excited about support for Bluetooth accessories like power meter pedals, which is big news for enthusiast and serious cyclists. To add one, go into the Settings app, tap Bluetooth and then scroll down to see a new category called Health Devices. Just like any other Bluetooth device, once the Apple Watch discovers the device you can connect. I tested this out with some power meter pedals on my stationary exercise bike and it worked seamlessly. Depending on what device you connect, your Watch will show metrics like cadence (displayed as RPM) or power (watts).

I have wanted topographic maps in Apple Maps ever since I reviewed the Apple Watch Ultra, rather than relying on a third-party app. Less than a year later, WatchOS 10 supports them, and not just for the Ultra. Any Apple Watch that can run WatchOS 10 will be able to view topo maps.
Zoom in with the digital crown to see contour lines, trails, rivers and valley details. For now it’s limited to the US. You’ll also be able to find trails nearby and see their difficulty levels. Plus if you start a hiking workout, the Apple Watch will give you elevation alerts on your wrist.
Offline maps will also be available on the watch for turn-by-turn navigation and ETA, but you will need to have the connected iPhone with you. The Compass app gets a new 3D view so you can see cellular connectivity waypoints that show the last place you had a signal and SOS waypoints where you can make an emergency call.

Optimized charging for more Apple Watches
WatchOS 10 also lets the Apple Watch learn about your usage and decide when it is a good time to get to a full charge. This is called Optimized Charge Limit, and it was already included on the Apple Watch Ultra, but WatchOS 10 adds it to the SE, and Series 6, 7 and 8.
When this feature is active you’ll see an open charge ring appear as the Apple Watch sits on its charger. If you want to charge beyond this optimized time, tap the circle with the green or yellow charge icon, then press «Charge to full now.» This might not appear immediately, as it takes some time to learn your charging habits and will only activate when you are in certain locations where you charge the Apple Watch often, like at home or work.
These are some of my favorite new features in the WatchOS 10 public beta, but there is more to explore, including logging moods in the Mindfulness app, measuring time in daylight with the ambient light sensor, and NameDrop, which lets you share contact details when someone else’s iPhone is brought close to the Apple Watch.
Technologies
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Technologies
Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color
Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.
Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.
Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.
«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.
Making the case for a caseless color iPhone
I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.
My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.
Pros can be bold, too
Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).
Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.
In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.
And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.
Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.
And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.
Apple never got ahead by being beige
I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.
But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.
Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.
If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.
Technologies
Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.
The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea.
According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»
The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»
Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.
Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»
K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.
More research to do on finding life on K2-18b
The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.
«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»
Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»
The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»
As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.
«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»
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