If you own an Apple Watch you’re probably already familiar with the relatively slow process of updating watchOS on an Apple Watch. Some simple updates may install in a reasonable amount of time, but some of the larger watchOS updates can take an hour or much more. As a result, many Apple Watch owners will either postpone software updates indefinitely or install software updates to watchOS overnight, or when they know they won’t need their watch anytime soon.
But there’s another option, and you can actually speed up the watchOS software update process quite a bit by using a little trick.
This is a fairly simple trick, and it involves simply turning off Bluetooth on your iPhone, which in turn forces your Apple Watch to download the watchOS software update over wi-fi (remember, your iPhone is paired via Bluetooth with the Apple Watch). Here’s how it works:
How to Speed Up WatchOS Updates on Apple Watch
Before beginning, make sure the iPhone and Apple Watch are joined on a wi-fi connection, and that the Apple Watch is on the charger, and with at least 50% battery. Then you’re ready to try this out:
Start updating watchOS as usual by going to the Apple “Watch” app on the iPhone, then to “My Watch” > Settings > General > Software Update
Tap on “Download & Install” when a watchOS software update appears
When you see the “time remaining…” estimate appear, return to the Home Screen of the iPhone and then open the normal “Settings” app
Tap on “Bluetooth” and toggle the Bluetooth setting to OFF to completely disable Bluetooth on the iPhone
Return again to the “Watch” app and a message will appear about reconnecting to the Apple Watch, tap on the “Cancel” button at that popup
When the watchOS download finishes, tap on on “Install” in the Watch app to start the installation process over wi-fi
Essentially you’re forcing the iPhone and Apple Watch to use the speedier wi-fi connection to transfer the watchOS package between devices, rather than the much slower Bluetooth.
Note you can’t just toggle Bluetooth in the Control Center because of how the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Control Center buttons function in modern iOS releases, which just disconnect devices rather than turning off the service – that’s why you have to go to the Settings app to turn off Bluetooth on the iPhone.
This nifty trick comes our way from iDownloadblog, so cheers to them for the helpful tip.
Let’s hope a future version of watchOS or the Apple Watch iPhone app allows users to install updates through wi-fi directly without this workaround, but until (or if ever) that happens, you can simply toggle Bluetooth off on the iPhone and you’ll find the updating process is much quicker.
The Spring collection includes Apple Watch bands for every occasion.
Apple debuts a Spring collection of bands with vibrant colors and unique designs. This season’s updates include Woven Nylon bands with a fresh stripe that alternates white with color for a crisp, clean look, exclusive Nike bands that color-match with the latest Nike running shoes and a striking new edge paint color for Apple Watch Hermès bands. Later this month, all new bands will be available to order from apple.com and for purchase at select Apple Stores, Apple Authorized Resellers and carriers.
Apple Watch
The Woven Nylon bands now include an updated stripe pattern.
Sport Band in Denim Blue, Lemonade and Red Raspberry
Woven Nylon in Black Stripe, Blue Stripe, Gray Stripe and Pink Stripe
Sport Loop in Flash Light, Hot Pink, Marine Green and Tahoe Blue
Classic Buckle in Spring Yellow, Electric Blue and Soft Pink
Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) will include new 38mm and 42mm Space Gray Aluminum Case with Black Sport Loop models.
Apple Watch Nike+
The Nike Sport Loop can be easily adjusted for the perfect fit.
The Nike Sport Loop will now be sold separately, joining new Nike Sport Band colors:
Nike Sport in Barely Rose/Pearl Pink, Black/White and Cargo Khaki/Black
Nike Sport Loop in Black/Pure Platinum, Bright Crimson/Black, Cargo Khaki, Midnight Fog and Pearl Pink
Apple Watch Nike+ (GPS + Cellular) will include new 38mm and 42mm Space Gray Aluminum Case with Midnight Fog Nike Sport Loop models.
Apple Watch Hermès
This season’s Apple Watch Hermès bands feature an accent color.
The Single Tour Rallye and Double Tour bands now display contrasting paint details:
38mm Double Tour in Indigo with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
38mm Double Tour in Blanc with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
42mm Single Tour Rallye in Indigo with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
42mm Single Tour Rallye in Blanc with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
Pricing and Availability
Apple Watch is available in two different case sizes, 38mm and 42mm. Apple Watch Series 1 will be available in silver or space gray aluminum cases paired with a Sport Band and starts at just $249 (US). Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS) will be available in gold, silver or space gray aluminum cases with a Sport Band starting at $329 (US). Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) will be available in gold, silver or space gray aluminum, or silver or space black stainless steel paired with a variety of bands starting at $399 (US); and Apple Watch Edition in gray or white ceramic starts at $1299 (US) from apple.com, Apple Stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers and carriers. For local availability, visit locate.apple.com. Apple Watch Nike+ starts at $329 (US) and Apple Watch Hermès starts at $1149 (US).
New Apple Watch models will be available to order on apple.com later this month in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the US.
Apple Watch bands will be available to order on apple.com later this month in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the UK and the US. The Sport, Sport Loop and Woven Nylon bands are $49 (US) and the Classic Buckle is $149 (US).
New Apple Watch Nike+ models will be available to order on apple.com and nike.comlater this month in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and the US.
New Nike Sport Bands and Sport Loops will be available to order on apple.com and nike.com later this month in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the UK and the US. The Nike Sport Band and the Sport Loop are $49 (US).
New Apple Watch Hermès bands will be available to order on apple.com and Hermes.com later this month in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, the UK and the US. The Single Tour Rallye is $439 (US) and the Double Tour is $489 (US).
New Apple Watch, Apple Watch Nike+ and Apple Watch Hermès bands will be available at Apple Galaxy Macau later this month.
Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) requires an iPhone 6 or later with iOS 11 or later. Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS) requires an iPhone 5s or later with iOS 11 or later. Apple Watch Series 1 requires an iPhone 5s or later with iOS 11 or later. Some features are not available in all regions or all languages.
Customers who buy Apple Watch from Apple will be offered free Personal Setup, in-store or online,1 to help set up and personalize their new Apple Watch with calendars, notifications, apps and more.
Anyone who wants to learn the basics or go further with their new Apple Watch can sign up for free sessions at apple.com/today.
Even if the weather isn’t cooperating, Apple is ready for spring with a new slate of Watch bands in bright new colors and designs to chase away the winter blues. Some two dozen new bands will be available later this month either as part of a new Apple Watch purchase or as an add-on accessory.
Apple hasn’t said whether any colors will be retired as a result of the new models, but several of the new colors seem to be variations on ones that are already available. For example, there’s a new Lemonade Sport Band, which looks very much like the current Flash model. All said, there will be 22 new sport, woven nylon, classic buckle, and loop bands that will join the hundreds of band-case combinations that are already available, as well as standalone availability of the Nike Sport Loop and four new Hermes models that now display contrasting accent details.
The entire lineup of new accessories will be:
Sport Band ($49)
Denim Blue
Lemonade
Red Raspberry
Woven Nylon ($49)
Black Stripe
Blue Stripe
Gray Stripe
Pink Stripe
Sport Loop ($49)
Flash Light
Hot Pink
Marine Green
Tahoe Blue
Classic Buckle ($149)
Spring Yellow
Electric Blue
Soft Pink
Nike Sport ($49)
Barely Rose/Pearl Pink
Black/White
Cargo Khaki/Black
Nike Sport Loop ($49)
Black/Pure Platinum
Bright Crimson/Black
Cargo Khaki
Midnight Fog
Pearl Pink
Apple Watch Hermes ($1,299)
38mm Double Tour in Indigo with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
38mm Double Tour in Blanc with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
42mm Single Tour Rallye in Indigo with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
42mm Single Tour Rallye in Blanc with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
Customize your OleksyPrannyk Apple Watch Band with over 10 colors of thread for a one-of-a-kind look.
A wristwatch is so much more than a means to tell time these days. It’s also the opportunity to accessorize and bump up one’s style with a unique, wonderfully constructed strap.
Heeding the call to individual style is OleksynPrannyk’s made-to-order and ultra-sharp Double Tour Apple Watch Band — the reasonably priced alternative to the ridiculously priced Hermès band. The Double Tour and all of OleksynPrannyk’s bands are completely customizable with more than five adapter colors and 14 thread colors from which to choose.
Best yet, the entire collection is available now in Cult of Mac’s Watch Store. Trust me, you will love this band.
The Double Tour in Chestnut with turquoise stitching.
The Double Tour wraps twice around the wrist, offering a totally unique take on the average Apple Watch strap. The band is handcrafted from fine, vegetable-tanned Dublin leather sourced from the Horween Leather Company in Chicago, which has been tanning leathers by hand for more than 100 years. Marked by a high oil content, Dublin leather ages beautifully over time and has a beautiful sheen. Two pieces of this premium leather are held together with meticulous stitching, which makes the strap pop.
OleksynPrannyk is the combined endeavor of Viktor Oleksyn and Pavlo Prannyk, originally from Ukraine. Viktor is the master tailer and has a penchant for creating the perfect, straight seem. He began by crafting a simple pocket wallet — with a straight seam — and sold it the very next day. Selling out at crafts fairs and the like, Viktor found his calling: creating high-quality, handmade leather goods.
Every band is carefully designed and handmade for strength and comfort.
The demand for OleksynPrannyk products was so high, Viktor and his small, close-knit group moved to the U.S., setting up shop in the historic Mooresville Cotton Mills in South Carolina. The team of artisans take pride in creating beautiful leather straps for Apple Watch that are completely made to order and customizable for each wearer.
Choose from 14 different thread colors: black, navy, light brown, gray, light gray, blue, green, lime green, orange, pink, red, sky blue, turquoise and white smoky to complement your strap choice. Then pick your adapter in aluminum, black, stainless steel, gold or rose gold to best match the fittings of your Apple Watch.
The Double Tour Band by OleksynPrannyk also comes in Black, Cream, Brown Nut and Natural, as do its single-tour counterparts.
The made-to-order Double Tour in Black.
Available in short, regular and long wrist sizes for either the 38 mm or 42 mm Apple Watch.
The Double Tour is a gorgeous, modern, fine-leather strap we love and recommend. You won’t be disappointed!
On September 22, Apple Watch Series 3 with built-in cellular and Apple Watch Series 3 with GPS went on sale around the world at 8 a.m. local time. The new Watches add powerful health and fitness enhancements, a faster dual-core processor, a new wireless chip and watchOS 4.
Apple Union Square, San Francisco
A customer uses Apple Watch Series 3 to call his mother from Apple Union Square in San Francisco.
Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, presenting features of the new Apple Watch at a company event last week. Cellular connectivity with the smartwatches is likely a luxury that most people probably will not need.Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
To understand why you might want the new cellular Apple Watch, put yourself in the shoes of a wealthy person who drives a weekend car.
In this situation, your iPhone is like your everyday workhorse vehicle, with the muscle to speed through emails, calendar invitations and social media posts. But when it comes time to unwind, you can leave the house with just a cellular Apple Watch — the equivalent of the weekend car — and still have access to a lightweight phone that can handle calls and text messages.
In other words, wearing the Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular connectivity, which Apple will release Friday, is like owning a leisure phone that is excessive but situationally useful. Apple’s first wearable to include cellular may come in handy when you are at the gym and want to leave your phone in the locker, or when you go out for a run and want to remain reachable.
After testing the cellular watch for a week, I found it to be an excellent smart watch that is a significant improvement over the first Apple Watch, which was slow, confusing to use and deeply flawed.
But the cellular version is a luxury that most people probably will not need. The price you pay for those brief moments of respite from your iPhone is steep: at least $399 for the hardware, plus $10 a month for access on your cellphone plan for some carriers. And I seldom found reasons to use the watch without my iPhone to justify the extra cost.
There may also be some early kinks for Apple to work out with the new cellular Watch. Some reviewers discovered that the device occasionally lost its cellular connection, for example. Apple said on Wednesday that the issue was related to the watch inadvertently connecting to open Wi-Fi networks that lacked internet connectivity, and that it was investigating a software fix.
In the end, some people who want a wearable device for things like fitness tracking and a quick glance at mobile notifications will probably be happy with the Series 3 without cellular, which costs $329.
An Overview
Like its predecessors, the Apple Watch Series 3 is a computer worn around the wrist, with a miniature touch screen.
The main difference with the cellular Apple Watch is that some important features, like placing calls, texting and streaming music, will work when you are not near your phone.Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The device requires an iPhone to set up and work properly. Notifications like text messages or social media alerts that come to your iPhone appear on the watch first if you are not actively using the phone. The watch runs apps, including some built-in software for fitness tracking as well as third-party widgets you can download from the App Store.
The main difference with the cellular Apple Watch is that some important features, like placing calls, texting and streaming music, will work when you are not near your phone; the watch shares the same phone number and cellular plan with your iPhone.
To help determine whether the cellular watch is right for you, I abandoned my iPhone to test the watch in a number of common situations. Here’s how that went.
Date Night
Over the weekend, my partner and I made plans to go to dinner at a sushi restaurant. I used the Apple Watch to summon a Lyft car to pick us up at home.
At the sushi bar, I liked that I didn’t have a smartphone constantly buzzing in my pocket, though I got a text that I quickly responded to on the watch using an emoji. My partner and I enjoyed 90 minutes of intimate conversation over omakase with minimal distraction, though I was a bit envious that she could Instagram our gorgeous nigiri.
Verdict: I could have had roughly the same experience with just an iPhone put on Do Not Disturb mode — and a bit of self-discipline.
Dog Walks
For several days, I wore just the watch while walking my dogs. Not having a phone freed up valuable space in my pockets for other items, like my keys, my wallet, dog treats and bags. I liked that the Apple Watch tracked my steps and walking distance to make dog walking feel more like exercise than a chore. I placed a call to my partner with the watch to tell her where to meet me at a park; she said the call sounded crystal clear.
It was also nice that with just the watch, I could still be reachable via phone or text by my colleagues during morning walks — but emails took several minutes to show up after they were sent. It turns out that while texts and calls are done directly on the cellular watch, emails still rely on the iPhone’s pushing emails to the cloud, which then transmits the message to your watch.
Verdict: The watch is good for staying reachable via phone or texts. But in those brief moments when you need to step away from a computer during work hours, a smartphone is still necessary if you rely heavily on email, as I do.
Gym Workouts
I wore the watch and took a pair of AirPods, Apple’s wireless earbuds, to a rock-climbing gym. Again, I left my iPhone behind.
At the gym, I opened the Workout app to track my heart rate and calories burned throughout the workout. During breaks, I used Siri to write a few quick texts to some friends to make plans for the week. I put on the AirPods in the hope of streaming songs on the watch from Apple Music, only to realize that this capability has not yet been released. Apple said music streaming for the cellular watch will come out next month.
Verdict: It was nice being able to stay in touch with people at the gym without a phone bulging in my pocket, but I’d be happy unplugging for a while and tracking my workout with a noncellular Apple Watch. As for whether streaming music makes a cellular watch worth owning, I unfortunately can’t tell you yet.
Grocery Shopping
Here’s where leaving my phone behind and relying only on the watch did not make sense: during grocery shopping. The watch doesn’t have a web browser, let alone a big enough screen, for looking up recipes. But when it came time to check out, I hit the side button to activate Apple Pay and quickly paid for the groceries.
Verdict: A smartphone is a better shopping companion than a watch.
The Bottom Line
The value of the cellular capabilities on the Apple Watch is questionable considering the price you pay each month.
AT&T and Verizon Wireless, for example, charge a network access fee of $10 a month to share your phone plan’s texts, minutes and data with an Apple Watch. That’s about the same as a Spotify subscription, but with the exception of avid joggers and gym rats, people may not use the cellular features frequently enough. Hopefully, over time, Apple will negotiate with carriers to bring the monthly rate down.
Although I think most people can skip buying the cellular model, the Apple Watch Series 3 is the first smart watch I can confidently recommend that people buy. While I don’t personally find it attractive enough to replace my wristwatch, the new Apple Watch is a well-designed, durable and easy-to-use fitness tracker for people who want analytics on their workouts and general health.
Important features like the stopwatch, calendar and Siri work quickly and reliably. And unlike its predecessors, the watch has impressive battery life — on average, I had more than 40 percent battery remaining after a full day of use.
So the final verdict? The Apple Watch Series 3 is the first sign that wearable computers are maturing and may eventually become a staple in consumer electronics.
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