Last year, Apple revamped the Apple Watch with a thinner chassis and larger, brighter OLED display. This year, the software that powers the wearable, watchOS, could be getting a much bigger makeover. While plenty have been assuming this would happen given the relatively minor changes to the Apple Watch over the last few years, the rumors are starting to feel very real thanks to a new report from Bloomberg.
The latest PowerOn newsletter, where we typically get a whopper of a factoid drop each week, focused on Apple readying a pair of headsets and more productivity features for iPadOS 19. But at the very bottom, in the questions and answers section, Gurman spills the latest details on the changes coming to watchOS later this year:
The watch doesn’t currently have Apple Intelligence, and that isn’t exactly changing with the upcoming watchOS 12 software. But the company is branding a new set of features as “powered by Apple Intelligence” (even though the device isn’t actually running the AI models directly). As for design changes, the Apple Watch is destined to get some of the new interface elements here and there, but without a major overhaul. In other words, the watch will provide a smaller taste of the big shifts underway at Apple.
The “smaller taste” of the “big shifts” that Gurman mentions in that last sentence likely references the new internally-named Solarium design that’s coming for the Apple ecosystem. For the unfamiliar, a solarium is a room with glass walls and a ceiling that allows natural light in for plants to grow and humans to recharge. It’s a popular fixture of brutalist balconies in post-Soviet states and fancy homes built into hillsides. In Apple’s case, Solarium refers to the glass-like appearance of the buttons and the rest of the interface, coming to iOS 19. It was mentioned in another edition of the same Bloomberg newsletter about two weeks ago.
As for Apple Intelligence, it’s no surprise to hear that it won’t run on the Apple Watch any time soon. Apple is still figuring out what is happening with Apple Intelligence on the iPhone. Also, more practically, AI is a heavy load on a smartwatch, especially running it locally, and with how far behind Apple is on Apple Intelligence, the Apple Watch is a secondary, maybe even tertiary, consideration over the rest of the ecosystem. The iPhone has to land it first.
But it seems like the Watch could still be getting some AI touches. We’ve been fielding news about how the Apple Watch could utilize AI for a while. The Apple Watch is rumored to someday have a camera inside it to do some digital seeing aided by—what else—artificial intelligence, which is almost believable if you consider the years of patent leaks preceding it. We also know from the same Bloomberg piece introducing Solarium that Apple has plans for an “AI Doctor,” which would likely use the stats collected by one of Apple’s most powerful accessories, the Apple Watch. The company is reportedly investing in a facility where it will invite doctors and other health experts to make videos about related topics such as sleep, nutrition, and mental health. The idea is that when the Apple Health app sees your stats trending downward—assuming it includes aggregate data from the Apple Watch—it can surface these videos and other content as part of what is being tentatively called “Health+” by those on the inside.
For now, we know nothing. We only know the dreams and fantasies of glassed-over interfaces and floating menu items. There are only fan-made renders so far to get an idea of what’s to come. Honestly, it’s giving skeuomorphism re-dubbed. We will hopefully know more about what Solarium is and what it looks like on watchOS and everywhere else once WWDC hits in June.
