Fast Company
Apple’s new watch software won’t run on some of its older models
Apple just wrapped up its annual round of WWDC announcements, and, as usual, there wasn’t any new hardware. That is not really the point of WWDC, which stands for Worldwide Developers Conference and—occasional curveball like the Vision Pro aside—tends to focus on Apple’s software platforms and how third-party developers can build apps for them.
As it does every year, Apple announced new versions of each of its operating systems, now all unified under the “27” banner; this fall will see the release of macOS 27, iOS 27, visionOS 27, and so on. But the most intriguing hardware-related news was learning exactly which of Apple’s gadgets will actually get the updates.
Watch upgrades
The most interesting case is watchOS 27. Apple’s next smartwatch operating system will only run on the Apple Watch SE 3, Series 9, Series 10, Series 11, Ultra 2 and Ultra 3. Anyone running an older model is out of luck, meaning it won’t even run on the original Apple Watch Ultra.
That’s a little surprising. The first Apple Watch Ultra came out in 2022, so it will have received only three operating system upgrades over the course of its entire life cycle. And this wasn’t a throwaway product—it was Apple’s first significant expansion of the Watch lineup, coming with an all-new design and a $799 price tag. Mine is still going strong; I wasn’t particularly tempted to upgrade to the Ultra 2 or 3.
But now Apple is rendering it obsolete. WatchOS 27 is a fairly significant update, bringing a redesigned app grid and the new version of Siri, and it won’t be coming to the Ultra.
The reason is almost certainly the chip. The original Ultra used Apple’s S8 system-in-package, which actually used the exact same CPU as the S7 and S6 before it. In other words, the Ultra launched with a two-year-old chip.
That wasn’t much of a problem at the time, and really, it hasn’t been much of a problem today. The Apple Watch has long moved past the pokey, sluggish performance of its earlier models—even on the original Ultra, apps load and operate about as smoothly as you’d want them to. The appeal of the Ultra was and is its durability, battery life, outdoor features, and so on.
A big jump
But when the Apple Watch Ultra 2 arrived in 2023 alongside the Series 9, the two new watches did bring a meaningful silicon jump. Their S9 chip included a faster GPU, a new Neural Engine, and support for features like on-device Siri processing and a system-level gesture invoked by double-tapping your thumb and finger together.
Given that the Apple Watch Series 9 is also receiving watchOS 27, it would seem that Apple is using that chip transition to mark a line in the sand and move forward with a new generation of hardware and software.
There’s something to be said for that. Apple Watch app development was infamously held back by Apple continuing to sell the Series 3 for five years, meaning apps had to be designed for the slower processor and the smaller screen until 2022.
But this is a different situation. The Series 3 was kept on as a budget model, whereas anyone buying the original Ultra could have reasonably expected it to be treated as the top of the line. Instead, it’s getting its software support cut off at the same time as the Series 6 from 2020.
That’s what’s likely to sting for original Ultra owners. The Apple Watch Ultra itself is not obsolete. It still has better battery life than the regular models while offering a large, bright screen and the same rugged design as the updated Ultra models. It should still perform as well as it ever did for the tasks it was originally designed for.
A surprising move
This is an unusual swerve from Apple, and it speaks to the company’s complacency in updating Apple Watch hardware over the years. Apple claimed that it was updating the Watch every year with the “S6”, “S7,” and “S8” chips, but in reality they all had identical performance. Apple then decided to launch a new premium product line based on the latest rebranding of that same chip, before updating it a year later with hardware that was actually future-proofed.
I think the Apple Watch Ultra is a great product and I’ve enjoyed wearing it over the past few years. But cutting off software support this quickly is uncharacteristic of the company. In the same WWDC presentation, Apple touted how iOS 27 would be coming to the iPhone 11—a device released all the way back in 2019, and priced at $100 less than the original Apple Watch Ultra.
It’s often the right call to cut off software support for outdated hardware. But in this case, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that Apple made the right trade-offs. The company launched a high-end product with outdated hardware, and the consequence is that its software will cease to be updated well before many of its owners likely expected.
16 hours ago
