watchOS 5 Brings Automatic Workout Detection, Walkie-Talkie Mode, Podcast App To Apple Watch (digitaltrends.com)
At WWDC 2018, Apple announced several new features in watchOS 5 that will be coming to the Apple Watch later this year. Digital Trends summarizes all the big new additions including more watch faces and improved health tracking features: Apple is putting a huge emphasis on ensuring fitness tracking data is accurate in WatchOS 5. The company studied more than seven terabytes of fitness data from more than 12,000 participants to make sure its tracking measurements are on point. You'll also find a new competition mode on WatchOS 5. The mode allows you to enter a seven-day competition with a friend. WatchOS 5 also features new fitness modes. The Yoga mode will track your activity via the heart rate monitor while the Hiking mode will use your pace and elevation to better determine the number of calories burned. The Running mode now offers a custom pace alert, tracks your cadence and will even provide time data on the previous mile run. Finally, you'll see new start and end workout alerts.
WatchOS 5 also brings several awesome communications improvements. First off is the new Walkie-Talkie mode. With Walkie-Talkie, you can add friends to your Apple Watch and communicate with them directly by tapping the Talk button within the Walkie-Talkie app. Your Siri watch face will also get a huge update as well. The new Siri watch face will provide more information on your favorite sports teams, offer commute and traffic information, as well as heart rate. Also available in watchOS 5 are Siri Shortcuts, an official Podcast app, and WebKit, which will let you view webpages from Messages or emails. You will also no longer need to say "Hey Siri" to activate Siri. Now you can simply raise your wrist to your mouth and Siri will automatically be listening.
Note: The original Apple Watch won't get watchOS 5's new features. You will need a Series 1 or newer timepiece.
WatchOS 5 also brings several awesome communications improvements. First off is the new Walkie-Talkie mode. With Walkie-Talkie, you can add friends to your Apple Watch and communicate with them directly by tapping the Talk button within the Walkie-Talkie app. Your Siri watch face will also get a huge update as well. The new Siri watch face will provide more information on your favorite sports teams, offer commute and traffic information, as well as heart rate. Also available in watchOS 5 are Siri Shortcuts, an official Podcast app, and WebKit, which will let you view webpages from Messages or emails. You will also no longer need to say "Hey Siri" to activate Siri. Now you can simply raise your wrist to your mouth and Siri will automatically be listening.
Note: The original Apple Watch won't get watchOS 5's new features. You will need a Series 1 or newer timepiece.
Well, first I know that's a wasted feature for the /. community, as climbing the stairs from the basement is enough exercise, thankyouverymuch... But this is a feature my Samsung Note 5 (and new Note 8) have had since the beginning. They're quite adept at determining when I'm walking versus sitting and rocking in a chair, or riding on my motorcycle. And it automatically counts your steps if you enable health tracking.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You know, for when pastors flail their arms around excitedly as they preach a sermon. #nicheaudience
Serious question.
I know some people bought the apple watches when they came out. But do people still have a use for them?
Other than to tell time, and pedometer.
Automatic listening? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG???
I guess we'll just have to pretend we have this thing called privacy. Apple Watch will join Alexa in recording all of your conversations.
Yeahrightsure.
Like it has the infinite battery power needed to remain awake and transmitting your every boring utterance to the mothership.
For a tech site, Slashdot has got some of the LEAST tech-savvy participants I have ever seen...
... to do stuff, not let closed spy jewlery do stuff to us.
It's actually funny: An iTard rock climber with an iWatch is less of a lifeform than even an AC blob who does nothing but comment and work with computers all day. ... /s
Because he has entirely given up being an individual, and has just folded and handed his body to the owner of the swam lifeform he joined. Because passive-thinking and passive-living is soo much "easier", and that is what being alive is all about!
Would you like to try that diatribe again, this time in some human language?
He likes to suck men's dicks, so automatic AIDS detection would be very beneficial to him.
Sounds like someone feels a little threatened.
Seriously, software development should be left to open source communities, so it changes when somebody actually has a need, not for pointess profit and growth's sake.
All those features are both ancient and only neede by a fringe group or are utterly cancer all the way down.
So, ignore them.
No, it will just be coded to trigger on a set of keywords. Things like 'demonstration' 'progressive' 'rally' 'liberty' and 'protest.' Also a list of drug culture words, in regions where that is required by the authorities. When the electronics is in place and operating to parse all sound, you're correct that not all sound will be flagged and uploaded.
Great for the NSA, FBI, DEA. The live mic, voice prints all over the USA and beyond. Its PRISM for the wrist.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Oh, you mean that feature my lowly Fitbit has literally had FOR YEARS?!? Good for Apple. Next they will add a stopwatch function and invent dual time, a breathtakingly revolutionary feature that allows an iWatch user to see a watchface display indicating an arbitrary time offset determined by the user. Wooooowwww.... feh. Apple. Did they... take this opportunity to update or refresh the archaic, obsolete waste-of-money that is the MacMini, that those assholes claim is still an important part of theMac lineup? Noooo.... of course not. But, you can now make your face into a cartoon emoticon. LIKE, I am sooo IMPRESSED. Dude, I am SOOO rushing out and buying two of everything Apple makes!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Google Fit, while not by any means an impressive fitness tracker, also has automatic workout detection. And it's "just" a free Android app that runs on most any phone!
I'm always starting a workout, walking around the lot for 15-20 minutes, forgetting to stop, and looking at the watch to see a "workout" of 80 minutes, 60 of which was sitting on my butt.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
It is nothing like the Fitbit if it is actually accurate. I guess you missed the memo that their fitness tracking is (or at least was) highly inaccurate
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No, it will just be coded to trigger on a set of keywords. Things like 'demonstration' 'progressive' 'rally' 'liberty' and 'protest.' Also a list of drug culture words, in regions where that is required by the authorities. When the electronics is in place and operating to parse all sound, you're correct that not all sound will be flagged and uploaded.
In order to do that, it has to be "awake" at some level, and if the "trigger" set gets too big, then it cannot do it on-chip.
This isn't "Echelon on your wrist", bozo. But boy did my message-score just go up for invoking that word.
So a $500+ watch is only supposed to last 2.5 years now? Sad they've cut us off so soon... the WatchOS updates have actually improved the original experience dramatically over time.
A dictionary of 500 words to scan for is completely feasible.
Wtf is the bozo shit about? The guy who threw slang like that around is long dead. Any amusing dogcow anecdotes to share with us?
No, the last whiff of that culture at Apple is gone. They're as lively a corporate culture as Panasonic or Mattel now.
A dictionary of 500 words to scan for is completely feasible.
Wtf is the bozo shit about? The guy who threw slang like that around is long dead. Any amusing dogcow anecdotes to share with us?
No, the last whiff of that culture at Apple is gone. They're as lively a corporate culture as Panasonic or Mattel now.
Still not buyin' it.