In early September 2024, we joined Apple in the Steve Jobs Theater to announce the 10th major release, the Apple Watch Series 10 (and iPhone 16). The latest and greatest smartwatch designed and manufactured by Apple has been the dominant player in the wristwatch market for several years now. For a company that prefers to look forward, there was little to suggest that this was the anniversary year for the Apple Watch. But look closely and you’ll see that Apple is doing much more than just offering incremental improvements to its tech products. 2024 is the year Apple will dominate the runway.
In 2014, I remember being asked to join Apple to make an announcement that was exciting to me. They didn’t tell me they were launching a watch, and news of the first Apple Watch sent a significant ripple through the traditional watch industry. What shocked me at the time was that the Apple Watch wasn’t positioned solely as a small computer, but rather as a new category of device that Apple called “its most personal product yet.” What made the Apple Watch “personal” was the fact that you wore it. Rather than trying to develop a smartwatch in a vacuum, Apple was directly influenced by the traditional watch industry and its iconic products. It was clear to me from the start that Apple was aiming to make more than just a smartwatch—it wanted to create a 21st-century version of the watch that followed in the cultural and emotional footsteps of the great tool watches that had come before it.
In creating the Apple Watch, Apple drew on the materials, features, design language, and terminology of the traditional watch industry. I didn’t know then whether Apple’s interest in traditional watches was simply a temporary jumping-off point for a new wearable product, or whether the design teams would continue on a path to create a cutting-edge technology device that was also beautiful and comfortable to wear.
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Now, 10 years into the Apple Watch’s life, it’s clear to me that despite the Apple Watch’s inherent futurism, it wants to take its place in the pantheon of the greatest watches ever made. The Apple Watch’s software capabilities are getting more impressive every year, but in this article, I’ll focus on the hardware and physical design of the latest Apple Watch Series 10 models, and how Apple is as focused on beauty and wearability as it is on modern functionality.
Apple’s press conferences are understandably dominated by tech journalists who spend their time musing about software compatibility and the performance of new integrated circuit chips. They are not fashion experts, nor are they experts in form. So I was a little dismayed that many of the journalists and thought leaders in attendance missed the core message of the Apple Watch Series 10, which is that it’s thinner, more beautiful, and more alive than ever before.
Most of them were understandably preoccupied with the upcoming “Apple Intelligence” features coming to the Apple Watch and iPhone (at the time of writing). What was a little harder for those in attendance to understand was why Apple was focusing on a thinner, often lighter, shinier Apple Watch product than before.
More than any other major tech company I know, Apple is obsessed with image. This, of course, started with Steve Jobs and continues in full force under Tim Cook. This attention to image manifests itself in the Apple Watch in a number of interesting ways. It started with Apple wanting the Apple Watch to be accepted by the fashion and luxury industries (like putting Apple watches on the covers of fashion magazines and collaborating with Hermes, which continues today), and this obsession with image means that Apple wants the Apple Watch to look its best.
People need to understand that the effort to make the Apple Watch look as good as possible is, in many ways, a very different investment and engineering task than simply making the Apple Watch work as well as possible. Anyone trying to understand the nature of the Apple Watch should not ignore the parallel, but ultimately different, types of engineering and development that go into a product like the Apple Watch.
If I could use one term to describe the character of the Apple Watch Series 10 products, it would be something like “shiny.” In addition to the more “tactilely cool” feel of the brushed titanium-finished Apple Watch Ultra models, the aluminum and titanium Series 10 watches are designed to appear as polished as possible. The subtle engineering story is that these polished surfaces are materials that are not typically found (especially at these price points) with a polished finish. It doesn’t take much research to find out that consumers associate highly reflective surfaces with quality and attractiveness of the product.
An example would be automobiles, where chrome surfaces are often used to cosmetically enhance the visual appeal of the car. Of course, the traditional watch and jewelry industry is all about shiny, shimmering, polished surfaces. People see polish (good polish) and associate it with something more prestigious or valuable. Accordingly, Apple has invested heavily in creating polished, yet practical products.
The most popular polished metal for watches is stainless steel . Steel can be polished to a high shine relatively easily, and it’s also a very durable and economical metal. Its only real downside is its weight. Steel has been used as a case material for many previous versions of the Apple Watch, but in 2024, the only new steel options will be some bands (like the mesh metal band shown in the photos in this article). There won’t be a new steel Apple Watch — and yet both the aluminum and titanium versions of the Apple Watch Series 10 look like polished, sometimes painted, steel. The innovation was to create an Apple Watch out of materials that are lighter than steel while still retaining the desired polished steel look.
Apple did this with the aluminum and titanium cases of the two main versions of the Apple Watch Series 10, respectively (each version comes in two sizes, as well as a variety of colors). The key was developing a series of manufacturing processes to make this possible. The technology Apple uses for aluminum and titanium is the same: anodizing followed by molecular bonding. What’s more, the company can do this with both polished aluminum and titanium. Polished aluminum is rare in watches because it’s prone to scratches, and titanium is much the same. So Apple first polishes the metals, then coats them using a process called electrodeposition, or physical vapor deposition.
The anodizing process prepares the metal for molecular bonding, and the materials that are then bonded give the metal surfaces color and scratch resistance. The result is lightweight, durable cases that are also beautifully polished and hard-wearing. None of this helps the tech device track your activity or health any better, but it does go a long way toward making people feel like their Apple Watch is more attractive (and thus makes the wearer feel more attractive). It’s easy to dismiss these efforts as superficial, but I’d argue that superficiality is what separates an interesting watch from a boring one.
Before we get into the big screen upgrades in the Apple Watch Series 10, I want to talk about the significant effort Apple has put into making the Apple Watch 10% thinner. That doesn’t sound like much, but anyone familiar with watches knows that a millimeter can equal a mile when it comes to how much it changes the look and feel of a watch on the wrist. In addition to the titanium version of the Apple Watch being about 20% lighter than the steel version, the new Series 10 is sleeker and required Apple to significantly redesign the Apple Watch’s already compact interior (without sacrificing battery life). While techies might not immediately understand the appeal of a thinner device, casual Apple Watch users will appreciate it.
In the traditional watch industry, case thickness also has great historical significance. In the 1960s, the watch industry was obsessed with making mechanical movements thinner and thinner, and ironically, it still is today. In the last few years alone, the record for “the world’s thinnest watch” has been broken and re-broken several times.
It’s not that most people want the thinnest watch possible, but the reality is that the thinner the watch, the more comfortable it tends to be. Apple has been very clear that it wants people to wear the Apple Watch while they’re awake, while they’re sleeping, while they’re sitting, and while they’re actively doing something. The easier (and more enjoyable) it is to wear the Apple Watch, the more popular the device will be. That way, Apple can introduce more features, and users can take advantage of an ever-expanding set of data and personalized recommendations.
2024 also marks the first time I can remember Apple releasing new watch faces that are purely for fun and style. My favorite Apple Watch faces may feature “complications” that show you different information, but Apple also has a few purely cosmetic watch faces that typically just show the time. Users are divided between those who want a fun or attractive Apple Watch face and those who want as much information as possible at any given time. Apple has options for both types of consumers, but given the “glitter” theme of 2024, the new watch faces emphasize that the Apple Watch is a beautiful object rather than a tech tool. The Reflections watch face is a great example.
Users can choose from a range of colors on an animated graphic that looks like sunbeams on a piece of guilloche-engraved metal. Using the accelerometer built into Apple Watch, the lighting effects on the Reflections watch face change with subtle movements of the wrist. The goal is to mimic natural light reflecting off a surface. It’s a tricky feature for tech writers to discuss, as it touches on an element of consumer psychology they’re not usually used to writing about, but it nonetheless shows how technology can be used to make things more appealing (as opposed to more useful).
I get the feeling that if Apple could ever get a physical surface for the Apple Watch face, it would. Of course, a screen is an infinite opportunity to display any information, so Apple can’t give up on the idea. That being said, I fully believe that Apple may be experimenting with future methods of creating a 3D watch face that is also infinitely variable. Perhaps something like 3D e-ink could do something like that, but I don’t know. All I know is that Apple is looking to make the Apple Watch face feel more and more alive – like a traditional watch face as opposed to a screen. In 2024, we see some major steps in that direction: a completely new screen that improves the simple act of looking at the face of your Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch Series 10 has the largest display the company has ever made, which means a very thin bezel and a display that wraps around the case elegantly. In fact, the Apple Watch Series 10 case is more rounded and pebble-like than ever before. This makes it feel great to the touch and more visually appealing than ever before. The display is also improved by a wider viewing area for the individual OLED displays. Apple didn’t make the OLEDs brighter per se, but it did design them to spread their light over a wider area. The practical effect of this is that you can read the Apple Watch screen from a wider angle. Essentially, you can read the watch face from the side, rather than straight on (like a real physical watch face). Again, Apple isn’t looking at its competitors in this space, but at the features of traditional watches that it really wants to see in the Apple Watch.
Another additional improvement to the Apple Watch display in Series 10 is the increase in the refresh rate of the always-on display. The always-on display allows the Apple Watch to look more like a traditional watch, as the screen doesn’t stay black when you’re not looking at it. For several years, though, the always-on display only refreshed once per minute. This prevented the always-on display from appearing animated like a traditional watch face. In 2024, Apple increased the display refresh rate to once per second (1 hertz, for you watch and frequency lovers). This will finally allow the Apple Watch face to feature a ticking second hand (or other animation), which will make the watch face feel more alive and realistic. One funny thing we noticed on the Reflections watch face is that when the watch is normally on, the second hand shoots, but when it’s always on, it switches to a ticking motion. It’s a very interesting and subtle nod to how the Apple Watch is trying to pay homage to a wide range of watch lovers and culture.
From thinner cases to an “I can’t believe it’s not steel” finish, the Apple Watch Series 10 is better than ever before. The updated display makes interacting with Apple Watch more interesting and engaging, and new integrations with AI and health tracking tools mean people will likely use their Apple Watch more often than ever. While Apple hasn’t made a big deal about the Apple Watch’s 10th anniversary, they’ve definitely picked 2024 to release an impressive new model. Look for more Apple Watch 2024 coverage on Onewatch soon, including a review of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in black DLC titanium . The Apple Watch Series 10 is available in either a 42mm or 46mm case. Apple offers an affordable aluminum case, priced between $399 and $429 USD , and a more expensive titanium case with sapphire crystal, priced between $699 and $749 USD. Various case and strap/bracelet color options are also available.
