Technologies

I Want Workout Buddy to Be More Boot Camp Trainer Than Cheerleader on the Apple Watch

Commentary: The Apple Watch’s new coaching feature in watchOS 26 taps your fitness data for live feedback, but don’t expect detailed training plans just yet.

I was expecting, and hoping, Apple would launch some kind of AI-powered health feature on the Apple Watch at WWDC 2025, but Workout Buddy wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

I’m the kind of person who spoils any and all surprises by reading the last page of a good mystery novel, or the finale synopsis of a Netflix whodunit before I’ve even gotten through the pilot. So I went into WWDC, Apple’s annual developers conference, having read all the rumors, feeling pretty confident that I knew most of what was coming to WatchOS 26: a smarter Health app with AI coaching that could finally turn all my fitness metrics into meaningful, personalized guidance.

What we actually got during Apple’s WWDC keynote was a bit different… and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Rather than unleashing a flood of generic coaching suggestions or unsolicited advice (like caffeine restriction windows, which should not exist in my vocabulary), Apple is being intentionally conservative with its approach to AI on the watch, testing the waters with Workout Buddy and laying the groundwork for more meaningful, context-aware insights.

What Is Workout Buddy?

Workout Buddy isn’t meant to be a coach (at least not in the traditional sense). It won’t train you for a marathon or map out a four-week plan to boost your VO2 max. What it will do is act as a voice in your ear, offering encouragement during a workout based on your past fitness data. Think: «That was your fastest mile ever,» or «You’ve just crossed 500 miles for the year.»

For some people, that kind of affirmation might be enough to keep pushing forward. But I’m the kind of runner who thrives on structure and tough love. I should note that I haven’t tested Workout Buddy, but from what Apple showed off, Workout Buddy won’t cut it for me — at least not yet. I already rely on pace and heart rate alerts to let me know when I’m slacking. What I really need is a drill-sergeant-style coach that handles the math for me, so I can focus on my stride, breathing and whatever podcast is carrying me through mile four.

What Workout Buddy means for the future

What Workout Buddy is doing is technically impressive, combining exercise and health information and turning that into a conversational voice that gives you a personalized pep talk. It proves that Apple has both the data and the processing power to analyze workouts in real time and turn that data into something meaningful. It’s the first step toward a more responsive, intelligent Apple Watch experience that doesn’t just track your fitness, but actively helps you improve it.

It also offers a window into Apple’s broader strategy for AI on the Watch. Whether due to hardware limitations (Workout Buddy relies on Apple Intelligence, which requires an iPhone 15 or newer model communicating with the watch) or just Apple being Apple (cautious, user-first and deliberate), the result is a feature that feels thoughtfully scoped rather than rushed and half baked. It’s not shouting unsolicited advice or drowning users in confusing metrics. It’s dipping a toe into coaching, not diving in headfirst.

Now that the groundwork is there, it feels like only a matter of time before we get a true AI-powered health coach.

And if this voice assistant really is the start of something smarter and more didactic, can it please expand to other areas of health too? I’ve never been a fan of sleep tracking. But maybe, if I had the right incentives or feedback, I’d get on board. The new Vitals app already does a decent job of flagging early signs of illness, but imagine a proactive sleep coach that tells me my room’s too hot to hit deep sleep. That’s the kind of data driven encouragement I’d actually listen to.

For now, Workout Buddy is limited to eight workout types: indoor and outdoor running and walking, outdoor cycling, HIIT, functional strength and traditional strength training. It’ll arrive in September with the watchOS 26 update — alongside a handful of other features you can read about here.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, June 17

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 17.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? The clues are kind of upper-crusty, with Boston Brahmins, the stock market and upscale magazines among the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Boston Brahmin types
Answer: WASPS

6A clue: Look forward to
Answer: AWAIT

7A clue: Stock market bounceback
Answer: RALLY

8A clue: Whimsically amusing
Answer: DROLL

9A clue: Hearing or sight
Answer: SENSE

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Voting districts
Answer: WARDS

2D clue: «Oh, I’m well ___!»
Answer: AWARE

3D clue: Establishment offering chemical treatments
Answer: SALON

4D clue: Contents of a box labeled SMTWTFS
Answer: PILLS

5D clue: Focus of Vogue and Elle
Answer: STYLE

Technologies

How Did ChatGPT Get ‘Absolutely Wrecked’ at Chess by an 1970s-Era Atari 2600?

The console Gen Xers used to play Pac-Man and Pitfall on apparently was better than anyone knew.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has some major AI chatbot competitors in the market: Gemini, Copilot, Claude. Now add to that list the Atari 2600. The OG video game console, which was first released in 1977, was used in an engineer’s experiment to see how it would fare playing chess against the AI chatbot.

By using a software emulator to run Atari’s 1979 game Video Chess, Citrix engineer Robert Caruso said he was able to set up a match between ChatGPT and the 46-year-old game. The matchup did not go well for ChatGPT.

«ChatGPT confused rooks for bishops, missed pawn forks and repeatedly lost track of where pieces were — first blaming the Atari icons as too abstract, then faring no better even after switching to standard chess notations,» Caruso wrote in a LinkedIn post.

«It made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd-grade chess club,» Caruso said. «ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked at the beginner level.»

Caruso wrote that the 90-minute match continued badly and that the AI chatbot repeatedly requested that the match start over.

For decades, the ability for computers to defeat humans at chess has been a measure of their power. In 1997, IBM made headlines when its Deep Blue technology defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a series of matches.

Caruso’s experiment doesn’t mean ChatGPT is useless for chess, but because it’s more of a language model than a supercomputer, it’s less likely to serve that purpose well. A few years ago, a developer created a ChatGPT plugin called ChessGPT. But it may be better to discuss chess with OpenAI’s chatbot than to try to play against it.

A representative for OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Technologies

Your 2018 iPhone XS Is Now a ‘Vintage’ Device: Here’s What That Means

The device will still get updates for the rest of the year, but Apple is otherwise ceasing support for the 2018 iPhone.

Things don’t last forever, and in the tech world, they rarely even last five years. Apple lists older products on what it calls the vintage list, which consists of products the company stopped selling five to seven years ago. And if you bought your iPhone in 2018, the iPhone XS, your phone is now officially vintage.

The iPhone XS launched in 2018 and was officially discontinued in 2020 once all of its stock ran out. The phone joins the iPhone 7 Plus, two iPhone 8 models, the iPhone XS Max, and the iPhone 6S Plus, all of which have been added to the list since the calendar flipped to 2025.

Now that it’s there, the iPhone XS, along with the other iPhones listed above, will spend the next two years as a vintage device on Apple’s roster. Once they hit the seven-year mark, these phones will be moved to the obsolete list. The most recent device to be rendered obsolete by Apple is the 5th-generation iPad.

You have a vintage phone, so what now?

The good news is that having a vintage phone doesn’t mean much in the immediate short term, but it will before the end of the year.

Apple products continue to have repair support for up to five years after they leave store shelves, but can still be repaired after the five-year mark, provided that there are still parts available. That means that the iPhone XS and the other models listed are no longer officially supported, but repair techs can still order parts as long as Apple has them.

Such parts are likely in abundance since the phone just entered the vintage list. However, over the next two years, it’ll become harder and harder for repair shops to find official parts for the iPhone XS. So, if your phone breaks next year, there is no guarantee that a repair shop will be able to find official parts to fix it.

In terms of software, it’s much the same story. Apple is still releasing iOS 18 updates and will continue to do so until iOS 26 comes out. After that, Apple tends to stop supporting the prior generation of iOS. Since the iPhone XS is not included on the list of iOS 26-compatible devices, software support will mostly end later this year once the new version comes out.

Apple did this last year as well, with the final iOS 17 update releasing on Nov. 19, 2024. Apple typically guarantees support for devices for up to five years, and since the iPhone XS came out in 2018, it has long since surpassed the mark.

Being put on the vintage list can be construed as a light warning from Apple that your phone will no longer be supported very soon. If you own an iPhone XS, you’ll have software support until November when iOS 26 launches, and you’ll have repair support as long as the parts hold out. You don’t need a new phone today, but it’s something you may want to look into sooner rather than later.