I was going to say Apple Christmas, but that actually starts on the 19th or a couple of days later when shipments of new iPhones start showing up.
Looks like this year I may update my Ultra. It’s got the O2 Sensing back online although it’s not on device like it was in the original Ultra. They’ve supposedly shifted the computations over to the iPhone to get around Massimo’s patent lawsuit.
Massimo has responded by filing suit against that too. But the sensors are still there, the appeals are still pending, and Massimo hasn’t figured out that they could make a hell of a statement by simply saying, “Hey, we’re a healthcare monitoring company. We make a ton of devices used in the medical industry and are interested in making everyone’s health better. To that end, Apple can use the disputed technology freely with the proviso that they make mention of our company’s technological innovations. Upon which the blood O2 sensing in the Apple Watch is based.”
It would be a hell of a PR move, save everyone time and money, end a bitter dispute, and put Massimo front and center, in a positive light. Yeah, Apple may have gotten away with something, but the larger win might be worth it and their case may have been enough to make Apple less likely to play around without paying patent royalities.
At this point the only people getting rich in this dispute are the legal firms anyway.
There are rumors that Massimo is spinning off their consumer monitoring device into a separate company or division, probably in an attempt to isolate their actual medical division from the legal conflict.
I’d bet Apple would go for it. America is the only country where they have to disable the onboard sensors. I’m not sure, but I think the EU courts told Massimo to go pound sand.
The new Ultra has other features that make it a decent upgrade to the Ultra v1.
Still deciding about it. And I’ve got plenty of time. Pre-Orders are reporting 8 – 12 weeks out for delivery. I’ll be interested to see what the initial reports are from people who get the first units.
The iPhone 17 Pro is also interesting. It seems that I’m only interested in iPhones when they have blue as an available color. The cameras (front & back) are vast improvements over what I’ve got in my current phone. The battery life and cooling system are also of interest. My phone gets a little toasty in some use conditions. Fortunately, I don’t encounter those conditions often enough to have it be a pain in my butt, however it would be nice to not have to concern myself with those situations at all.
I’ll give it some thought, maybe I’ll just wait for another “Blue” year.
Given the change back to an aluminum frame, maybe I’ll wait & see what the real world usage feedback is, before making a move. It’s a very expensive product and if mine is working fine, perhaps waiting another couple of years wouldn’t hurt.
Probably the most interesting thing is the AirPod Pro 3. I really like my AirPod Pro 2s. They’ve been out for a few years now. It’s likely the improvements will make me demand Apple take my money.
Better heart rate sensing during workouts would be welcome. I’m pretty confident I understand why my heart rate is all over the place when I’m walking or doing other activities in colder seasons just using my watch. Perhaps a secondary set of sensors would prevent the dropouts. But cold is cold and the human body is always going to divert blood flow away from the body surfaces to maintain core temperature.
It’s possible the ear canal works the same way. Equally possible is that heart rate measured at the ear canal would be less affected, since the body is going to keep the brain fed as a priority.
The improvements to sound quality is a win, and translation functions might be very interesting. I wonder if people will be less likely to be nasty if they realize everyone around them knows what they’re saying even if it’s in another language? Likewise, I wonder if Apple translation will be adapted to translate some of the urban speech that now sounds more like another language as well.
Rough math, if I updated everything. It’s the cost of a new laptop. Wow!
Then again, the power of the phones in our pockets has eclipsed the first few laptops I owned very significantly.
The question probably comes down to “So I need that kind of computing horsepower in my pocket, or on my wrist?” Better questions to ask might be in the arena of tracking, and privacy. Having a smart assistant in my pocket opens the door for having that assistant “rat me out” to someone who is not my friend.
I’m not sure I’ll update to the new OS immediately. Maybe I’ll wait for my devices to do it automatically. It’s likely that waiting for the automatic update to take place will take a week or so, that might allow me to avoid the inevitable first release bugs.
We’ll see.