Apple typically adds new health-oriented features to the Apple Watch. Temperature sensing arrived with last year’s Apple Watch Series 8, for instance, and blood oxygen measurements debuted on the 2020-era Series 6.
But in 2023, Apple is taking a different approach. Instead of adding more sensors, it’s aiming to make finding and logging health data easier on the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2. A new update launching on Monday will bring the ability to ask Siri for health data points from the watch for the first time, a seemingly minor change but one that could make Apple’s smartwatch a more capable health tracker.
The update was announced in September and was previously available in beta, but it’s now officially rolling out to the Series 9 and Ultra 2. It’s exclusive to these two watches because they’re both powered by Apple’s new S9 chip, which enables them to process certain Siri requests locally rather than the requests being sent to the cloud.
The update shows that Siri is evolving at a time when there’s been unprecedented attention on AI and virtual assistants thanks to the rise of generative AI, or AI that can create conversational (though not always accurate) answers in response to prompts. Siri has been criticized for falling behind competitors like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant over the past decade, but the update indicates Apple is thinking about new uses for its digital helper. Above all else, Siri’s new health smarts could solve a big problem. Even in 2023, the myriad health statistics our wearables gather can still be difficult to parse.
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“A big part of our focus is making health data accessible,” said Deidre Caldbeck, Apple’s senior director of product marketing for its Apple Watch and Health divisions. “And so we think this feature certainly brings us more and more closer to that goal.”
Siri will initially be able to answer requests for 20 different health data types on the Apple Watch Series 9 and…
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