With Apple’s WWDC 2023 now official, we’re beginning to get an inkling of what to expect on the software side across Apple’s platforms. The latest tip comes from none other than Mark Gurman, who believes that watchOS 10 should be getting a fairly extensive upgrade this year with notable changes to the user interface. Details are still scarce on what these changes might actually be, but we’re sure we’ll be getting more leaks over the next two months leading up to WWDC.
Gurman also goes on to state that we might not see any major hardware changes this year, considering Apple introduced a new model, the Apple Watch Ultra, just last year. However, big hardware changes are expected to come in 2024 where Apple might shift to a larger, custom-built display for its watches.
In a tweet, Gurman (@markgurman) expressed that he believes watchOS 10 might have much more notable changes as compared to what’s expected from iOS 17. watchOS 9 introduced a bunch of design changes and new features such as low-power mode, and continues to receive feature updates with subsequent iterations. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of big interface changes Apple is planning for watchOS 10.
Some expected changes could probably be new watch faces, workout modes, more native watch apps, etc. While we might not hear about new watch hardware at WWDC, some of the new features that Apple will talk about could point to what we could expect on the hardware side of things, come September. Gurman does mention in his tweet though that we probably won’t see any major hardware changes this year for the Apple Watch, as those are expected to happen in 2024.
Earlier rumours suggested that Apple might skip the Watch Series 9 naming scheme and jump directly to Watch Series X, just like it did with the iPhone.
This year, WWDC 2023 will take place from June 5 to 9 at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. Apple is expected to announce iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS 14, watchOS 10, and tvOS 17 at the event. It is also expected to unveil its Reality Pro AR headset, although we probably won’t see this in stores until much later as mass production is reportedly delayed to later Q3 2023.