The iPhone continues to be Apple’s most necessary product, and it’s not remotely shut. Don’t get distracted by all of the folks pining for a automotive, questioning what Apple’s AR headset may appear like, claiming the iPad is the pc of the longer term, or wishing Apple would go forward and construct a TV already. The iPhone nonetheless accounts for many of Apple’s income, and iPhone customers — who additionally pay for iCloud and Apple TV Plus and purchase circumstances and cables and headphones and smartwatches — account for much more. Apple has been The iPhone Firm for greater than a decade, and that’s not altering anytime quickly.

However the iPhone won’t be the star of the present on Wednesday, when Apple holds its annual fall product showcase. We’re anticipating new iPhones, sure — an iPhone 14, an iPhone 14 Professional, and an iPhone 14 Professional Max — however they appear prone to be the newest in an extended line of barely higher iPhones. The iPhone is a terrific however completely mature product, and its most whiz-bang improvements could have already occurred.

Regulate Apple’s smaller display as a substitute as a result of crucial gadget class Apple will speak about this week is the Apple Watch. Apple seems to be making ready to announce as many as three new smartwatch fashions, together with an Apple Watch Professional that’s greater (apparently a lot greater), extra highly effective, and extra helpful than any earlier watch variations. And within the course of, it may additionally lastly begin to make the case for the watch as the subsequent nice Apple gadget.

Seven years after its unique debut, Apple has turned the watch into a brilliant profitable iPhone accent. However the watch might be extra, and Apple must lastly make it occur — as a result of we’re not all getting Apple headsets anytime quickly, and good luck ready for that automotive to lastly ship. Because the smartphone market continues to settle and folks maintain their telephones longer and keep entrenched of their ecosystems, the watch provides Apple an opportunity to have the subsequent large factor that’s already right here. The smartwatch is outdated hat, however the wrist-computer period may be simply starting.

Apple’s unique ambitions for the Apple Watch have been large — most likely too large on the time. The corporate imagined it as, in essence, a extra human model of your iPhone. Because it’s in your wrist, you don’t need to fish it out of your pocket 100 instances a day. It has biometric sensors that assist the gadget — and also you — perceive the way you’re bodily doing at any given second. It makes use of Siri to perform simplest duties. Put these issues collectively, and also you’d have a tool that might be a digital associate that would assist make your life higher, not an enormous blinking display that tries to suck the life out of you.

Since then, the watch has become primarily a health and well being gadget. Nearly each different smartwatch has become that, too. And Apple’s is a wonderful one: the tales you hear about life-saving fall detection or coronary heart price notifications are actual, and the Health Plus ecosystem has become one of many greatest newbie exercise instruments available on the market.

Apple continues to lean into what it does greatest, too. The brand new smartwatches will reportedly have physique temperature sensors, and Apple’s rumored to be engaged on glucose monitoring as effectively. The Watch Professional is, by all accounts, going to be a strong multisport health gadget, taking over the likes of Garmin and Polar with a extra rugged physique and a extra refined construct. And from what we all know of watchOS 9, the brand new software program that can energy these new smartwatches, well being and health proceed to be the driving forces behind the gadgets. Apple’s including extra sleep monitoring, improved treatment and coronary heart price monitoring, and extra fine-grained controls and analytics for athletes. The watch stays a health gadget.

Picture: Apple

However cling on: there’s now going to be an Apple Watch with a much bigger display, reportedly extra buttons, probably higher battery life, and possibly even satellite tv for pc connectivity? Not solely may that make the watch a greater health gadget, nevertheless it may additionally open up among the issues Apple hasn’t been in a position to do earlier than. The watch’s small battery all the time meant you couldn’t ask it to do intense issues, and the small display made it powerful to kind or faucet round an excessive amount of. However even a small growth of each battery and show may make a few of these issues go away. (The Watch Professional can be rumored to have yet another button on the case, and one button could make an enormous distinction in what a tool can do.)

The Apple Watch won’t ever be a very good TikTok gadget or a passable solution to watch Home of the Dragon. Nevertheless it doesn’t need to be. To dwell as much as its promise, the Apple Watch simply must be a greater device for managing the short, fixed interactions all of us have with expertise each day. In that world, your telephone turns into a factor you employ once you wish to — to observe one thing, play a sport, take some photos, learn the information — somewhat than the jack-of-all-trades gadget that it presently is. There’s simply no means that one of the best ways to show in your lights is to fish your telephone out of your pocket, flip it on, unlock it, open an app, and toggle a button. There are 1,000,000 issues like that in each iPhone consumer’s life, and the watch needs to be the reply for many of them.

These are difficult issues to unravel, in fact, particularly on a small display, and Apple’s been plugging alongside at it for a while. Checking notifications is probably the most important one, and Apple says watchOS 9 redesigns them to be “much less interruptive whereas nonetheless being impactful.” Apple additionally redesigned the Reminders and Calendar apps, each issues you should test typically however not often want a full display of knowledge from. watchOS 9 provides extra entry to voice name apps, which might make watch and AirPods a potent communication combo.

The watch is already serving a few of that goal — some mother and father are shopping for their youngsters cellular-connected watches as a substitute of smartphones, as an example, to allow them to monitor and join with their youngsters with out worrying about display time and web habit. Apple has leaned into this pattern, including extra parental controls and Household Sharing options to the watch. However a saner, extra useful relationship with expertise is the factor Apple hoped the watch would supply for everybody.

Essentially the most highly effective model of the watch is one which’s completely untethered from the iPhone. Till you’ll be able to set it up, obtain and set up all of your apps, and use the watch totally by itself, it is going to proceed to really feel like a telephone accent. Apple’s made a few strikes in that course, together with with the Household Setup provisioning, however a completely self-sufficient smartwatch may nonetheless be too difficult and too power-hungry to drag off. To not point out, Apple has exactly no motive to make that occur as a result of it could nonetheless actually want you purchase an iPhone. A superb center floor may be to require an iPhone for infrequent setup and upkeep however let the watch function by itself in any other case.

The opposite factor that has lengthy held the watch again is that Siri isn’t superb. It really works effective for setting timers and executing actually primary duties, nevertheless it nonetheless makes easy and unacceptable errors on a regular basis. I shout “Hey Siri, remind me to” at my telephone a few hundred instances a day, and it spells the duty proper solely about half the time. I’ve formally given up attempting to get it to play the music I’m considering of or utilizing it to interchange net searches. In a means, although, a completely featured watch can fulfill the promise of Siri by making all of the little issues simpler to entry and attain. It’ll simply use buttons as a substitute of voice instructions.

If Apple doesn’t work out flip smartwatches into greater than health gadgets, there’s an more and more good likelihood that another person will. Google is reinvesting within the area, and the Pixel Watch is probably going coming within the subsequent few weeks. Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatches proceed to enhance as effectively. Apple completely dominates the market, however there are actual and highly effective rivals lastly beginning to seem within the smartwatch area.

When Tim Prepare dinner and Co. announce the brand new watch fashions, they’ll virtually actually proceed to speak about them as well being and health gadgets. It’s a very good pitch, and it’s working! However maintain a watch out for indicators that Apple is aware of it’s constructing not only a health tracker however a wrist laptop that is aware of who you might be and the way you’re doing — and that Apple is beginning to determine what to do with that. Perhaps there received’t be any, and possibly Apple is joyful simply constructing a terrific health tracker. However possibly, as expertise improves, screens get greater, and batteries last more, Apple is able to get again to constructing the much less intrusive, extra useful computing device we’ve been ready for.