Apple Watch Series 6 will measure blood oxygen levels

Apple’s new Series 6 watch has some exciting new health features. Thanks to a new health sensor, the Apple Watch Series 6 is able to measure your blood oxygen levels in 15 seconds, the company announced today.

The sensor uses green, red and infrared LEDs, in addition to the four photodiodes on the Apple Watch’s back crystal, to measure the light reflected back from your blood. Using an algorithm built into the Blood Oxygen app, the watch then measures your blood oxygen level between 70% to 100%.  The watch will also record background measurements while you sleep.

Source: Apple

Your blood oxygen level measures how much oxygen your red blood cells are carrying. These measurements are especially important for people with chronic conditions like asthma, heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In partnership with healthcare providers, Apple plans to conduct health studies around asthma, heart disease and COVID-19 using this new blood oxygen measurement capability.

Additionally, Watch OS 7 will be able to measure your full range of VO2 max, detect if you’re washing your hands and monitor your sleep.

This is the Apple Watch Series 6

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Fno8eT

The Apple Watch Series 6 arrives Friday, priced at $399

As expected, the centerpiece of today’s big hardware event is the latest version of the Series 6. Apple continues to utterly dominate the smartwatch category, with the company currently commanding around 30% of the wearables category. As such, it’s no surprise, really, that the company’s building on what’s worked so far, maintaining a health focus for the device.

Apple Watch Series 6 will measure blood oxygen levels

The biggest addition here is a new built-in sensor capable of measuring the color of one’s blood to determine the level of oxygen in under 15 seconds. The company was quick to tie the new oxygen-detecting feature to the current COVID situation — though obviously wouldn’t draw any conclusions beyond that. Like much of the watch’s features, the big news is the ability to alert the wearer to early symptoms of bigger issues, rather than a direct diagnosis.

Image Credits: Apple

The new watch features an energy-saving always-on display, designed to save on battery (for those new sleep features), dropping brightness down when you’re in daylight. There’s also an always-on altimeter to keep track of elevation while hiking. A number of new watch faces have been adding, including new live Memojis and Pride stripes.

The watch is powered by Apple’s new S6 silicon chip. The dual-core processor was based on its A13 chip. The new watch features “our most colorful lineup yet,” per the company. Here that means a new blue aluminum finish, graphite color and — for the first time — a Product Red edition. There’s a new take on the watch’s silicone band design, as well — the Solo Loop drops the standard band clasp. It comes in seven colors and a variety of sizes.

[gallery ids="2046666,2046660,2046659,2046658,2046647,2046642"]

The watch is up for pre-order now and will be available on Friday, starting at $399. It will be joined by the new lower-cost Apple Watch SE, which starts at $279. Apple is also launching yet another subscription service. Fitness+ is a new workout offering similar to what Fitbit offers currently, featuring workout videos via Apple TV and on-screen metrics for live workouts.

 

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/32CIDNv

Daily Crunch: Apple announces new iPads and Apple Watches

Apple unveils new hardware and new subscriptions, Spotify adds virtual event listings and Opendoor is going public via SPAC. This is your Daily Crunch for September 15, 2020.

The big story: Apple announces new iPads and Apple Watches

Apple had a big hardware event today. And while you should check out our full roundup if you want to see all the announcements, I’ll do my best to cover the big ones in a couple of paragraphs.

First up: The new Apple Watch Series 6, priced at $399, with Apple’s S6 silicon chip and a blood oxygen sensor. The company is also expanding the Watch lineup with a more affordable Apple Watch SE, which will cost $279.

Plus, there’s a new iPad Air with Touch ID built into the power button, the previously rumored Apple One subscription bundle (which starts at $14.99 per month), a new fitness subscription and a September 16 launch date for iOS 14 — in other words, tomorrow!

The tech giants

Spotify adds virtual event listings to its app — TechCrunch previously detailed Spotify’s plans in this area, but today the company made the news official.

Twitter debuts US election hub to help people navigate voting in 2020 — That tab will serve as Twitter’s central source for hand-picked election news in English and Spanish, debate live streams, state-specific resources and candidate information.

Waze gets smarter with trip suggestions, lane guidance, traffic notifications and more — Among the changes, Waze is gaining personalized recommendations based on a user’s trip history.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Opendoor to go public by way of Chamath Palihapitiya SPAC — The transaction comes during a wave of market interest in special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, often called blank-check companies.

Kleiner prints gold with Desktop Metal, netting a roughly 10x return — Yes, the startup’s technology is designed to “print metal.”

The Chainsmokers just closed their debut venture fund, Mantis, with $35 million — The musical duo has some major-league backers for their fund, including Mark Cuban, Keith Rabois, Jim Coulter and Ron Conway.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

If you care about remote employees, start tracking their performance — Remote work has been thrust upon us, but are business leaders ready for it?

What’s ahead in IPO land for JFrog, Snowflake, Sumo Logic and Unity — Alex Wilhelm reminds us that some losses are very bad and others are pretty OK.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

CBS All Access to rebrand to Paramount+, expand internationally in 2021 — The name change is designed to better reflect the expanded content lineup that has joined the service following the Viacom-CBS merger in 2019.

Watch the first official trailer for The Mandalorian Season 2, premiering October 30 on Disney+ — Baby Yoda time!

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/35J3ksP

Here’s everything Apple revealed at its September hardware event today

Apple announced a ton of new devices and features today at its September hardware event, but no word on its upcoming iPhones. That’s expected later in the month, maybe next.

In case you missed Apple’s hour-long keynote, here’s everything that was announced — including some things you might have missed.

Apple Watch

One of Apple’s big announcements is the new Apple Watch Series 6, priced at $399. The new wearable comes with a new Apple S6 silicon chip with an always-on energy-saving display. It also lands with a blood oxygen sensor.

Apple also announced a newer low-cost wearable, Apple Watch SE, which it priced at $279.

Family Setup: The new Family Setup option lets families stay connected, even when some members of the family don’t have an iPhone. It also comes with a family tracking feature, which lets parents make sure their kids have checked into school or sports practice, for example.

Fitness+: Apple is launching a new fitness subscription, landing at $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. The service is available from inside the Activity app, and takes aim at in-home fitness services, which have taken off in part because of the ongoing pandemic. But so far, the fitness market doesn’t seem too flustered by the move.

Solo Loop: You can now get a Solo Loop for your Apple Watch, a single band that drops the standard clasp in favor of stretchy silicon. It comes in seven colors and a range of sizes.

The new Apple Watch Series 6 arrives September 18.

Apple iPad

Next up, the iPad. Apple said it’s refreshing the iPad line-up with a new fourth-generation iPad Air. The new slimline iPad Air lands with a 10.9-inch 2360×1640 resolution Retina display and replaces the Lightning port with a USB-C cable. The new iPad Air comes with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button, and a new 12-megapixel, 4K-capable rear camera.

New A14 Bionic chip: Apple unveiled its new, super-fast five nanometer A14 Bionic chip, landing in the new iPad Air. It’s packed with close to 12 billion transistors, 40% up on the previous iteration of chips, and has a 16-core neural engine for apps that rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

New colors: Apple has two new colors on top of the existing silver, space gray and rose gold to now include green and sky blue.

New eighth-generation iPad: The new eighth-generation iPad got a refresh, too, packed with an earlier A12 Bionic chip, giving the iPad a much-needed performance boost.

Apple One

With an Apple subscription for TV, music, games, as well as iCloud storage charges, Apple is rolling its subscriptions into one place under its new Apple One plan. There are three tiers — one for individuals, another for families, and the top-tier includes the full package of Apple’s subscription services.

iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 14, and tvOS 14

Apple said its long-awaited software updates will arrive tomorrow — September 16. That includes iOS 14 for iPhones, iPadOS 14 for iPads, watchOS 14 for Apple Watch wearables and tvOS14 for Apple TV boxes.

And iOS 14 comes with new privacy and security features, a new and improved Maps, a redesigned Siri and a new in-built translator app.

No word yet on macOS Big Sur, Apple’s next desktop and laptop operating system. A release date is expected out in the next few weeks ahead of the holiday season.

Apple to release iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 14 and tvOS on September 16

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3kkh41d

Here’s everything Apple revealed at its September hardware event today

Apple announced a ton of new devices and features today at its September hardware event, but no word on its upcoming iPhones. That’s expected later in the month, maybe next.

In case you missed Apple’s hour-long keynote, here’s everything that was announced — including some things you might have missed.

Apple Watch

One of Apple’s big announcements is the new Apple Watch Series 6, priced at $399. The new wearable comes with a new Apple S6 silicon chip with an always-on energy-saving display. It also lands with a blood oxygen sensor.

Apple also announced a newer low-cost wearable, Apple Watch SE, which it priced at $279.

Family Setup: The new Family Setup option lets families stay connected, even when some members of the family don’t have an iPhone. It also comes with a family tracking feature, which lets parents make sure their kids have checked into school or sports practice, for example.

Fitness+: Apple is launching a new fitness subscription, landing at $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. The service is available from inside the Activity app, and takes aim at in-home fitness services, which have taken off in part because of the ongoing pandemic. But so far, the fitness market doesn’t seem too flustered by the move.

Solo Loop: You can now get a Solo Loop for your Apple Watch, a single band that drops the standard clasp in favor of stretchy silicon. It comes in seven colors and a range of sizes.

The new Apple Watch Series 6 arrives September 18.

Apple iPad

Next up, the iPad. Apple said it’s refreshing the iPad line-up with a new fourth-generation iPad Air. The new slimline iPad Air lands with a 10.9-inch 2360×1640 resolution Retina display and replaces the Lightning port with a USB-C cable. The new iPad Air comes with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button, and a new 12-megapixel, 4K-capable rear camera.

New A14 Bionic chip: Apple unveiled its new, super-fast five nanometer A14 Bionic chip, landing in the new iPad Air. It’s packed with close to 12 billion transistors, 40% up on the previous iteration of chips, and has a 16-core neural engine for apps that rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

New colors: Apple has two new colors on top of the existing silver, space gray and rose gold to now include green and sky blue.

New eighth-generation iPad: The new eighth-generation iPad got a refresh, too, packed with an earlier A12 Bionic chip, giving the iPad a much-needed performance boost.

Apple One

With an Apple subscription for TV, music, games, as well as iCloud storage charges, Apple is rolling its subscriptions into one place under its new Apple One plan. There are three tiers — one for individuals, another for families, and the top-tier includes the full package of Apple’s subscription services.

iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 14, and tvOS 14

Apple said its long-awaited software updates will arrive tomorrow — September 16. That includes iOS 14 for iPhones, iPadOS 14 for iPads, watchOS 14 for Apple Watch wearables and tvOS14 for Apple TV boxes.

And iOS 14 comes with new privacy and security features, a new and improved Maps, a redesigned Siri and a new in-built translator app.

No word yet on macOS Big Sur, Apple’s next desktop and laptop operating system. A release date is expected out in the next few weeks ahead of the holiday season.

Apple to release iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 14 and tvOS on September 16

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3kkh41d

The fitness market doesn’t seem too scared by Apple Fitness+

Usually, Apple making a grand entrance to an entrenched market would spell doom for the players there, but when it comes to Apple’s latest digital workout service, it doesn’t look like investors are worried about Fitness+ killing the momentum.

Part of that may be that expectations were already priced-in to these stocks. The fitness play had been rumored by a report in Bloomberg last month, but few details were public of the service which was announced today and appears to echo offerings from Peloton and Fitbit, but fully leverage Apple’s Watch hardware.

Apple launches fitness subscription service for just under $80 a year

Peloton was already having a great day, currently up more than 5%, though it took a brief hit during Apple’s Fitness+ presentation before rebounding. The stock is currently up a staggering 191% in 2020.

Fitbit’s share price was relatively unchanged in intra-day trading. The company launched a Fitbit Premium service last month, but its stock is flat from the beginning of the year.

Things didn’t look much different for the more entrenched fitness companies. Weight Watchers International, which has seen its share price nearly halved since the beginning of the year, was down less than 1% by time of publication, and Planet Fitness, which has had a rough year but is showing signs of recovery, was up nearly 5% at the time of writing.

Why so little movement across the board? Well, Apple is pressing forward on entering a number of digital markets in its services business at the moment, and that spread can mean less focus on dominating an industry. With its Apple One subscription bundling fitness on the higher-end tier, there’s always the danger that consumers won’t leave another subscription to join Apple, but already belonging to the Apple One will prevent them from looking at rival fitness services.

Underestimating Apple is never a wise proposition, but the company is in an unprecedented position as it looks to kickstart several digital services and, out-of-the-gate at least, they haven’t all been slam dunks.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/32xD3M8

Apple to release iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 14 and tvOS on September 16

Apple said its latest iOS 14 software will be released on September 16, ahead of the company’s release of the next-generation iPhones.

We saw our first glimpse at iOS 14 earlier this year at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, which included home screen widgets and reply threading in Messages. It also comes with new Maps features, including adding cycling as a transportation option, and routing for electric vehicle owners so they can find charging points along the way.

iOS 14 also comes with an in-built translator, an improved and redesigned Siri, and better security and privacy features in the Safari browser.

But one privacy feature promised by Apple will be delayed. Apple said it would allow iPhone users to opt-out of in-app tracking, which the company said would not be immediately enforced when iOS 14 is released. It follows an uproar from ad giants — including Facebook — which lobbied against the proposal. Apple said it would give developers until next year to adjust to the changes.

iOS 14 will be supported on iPhone 6s and later, and lands as a free download.

Apple said it will also release its upcoming iPadOS 14, watchOS 14 and tvOS 14 on September 16.

Apple won’t force developers to let users opt out of tracking until next year

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3kqACkN