Apple held their Special Event on Wednesday, September 9th at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Apple CEO Tim Cook, promising “monster announcements across several product lines”, called on Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, Jeff Williams, to announce changes in the Apple Watch world.
There were several new options for watches and bands introduced. New to Apple Watch Sport are two models, gold aluminum and rose gold aluminum, pair with four Sport Bands — antique white, lavender, midnight blue and stone. In addition, there are four additional Sport Bands — fog, turquoise, vintage rose and walnut. Apple Watch Sport silver aluminum has two new bands, blue or orange. Apple Watch also has several new bands including a two-toned Classic Buckle in black or saddle brown. The Apple Watch space black stainless steel case can now be paired with a black Sport Band. For anyone with pricier tastes, a new option for the Apple Watch Edition is an 18-karat rose gold case with a midnight blue Classic Buckle. To support Apple’s commitment to (PRODUCT)RED, you can now purchase Apple Watch with a stainless steel case and a (PRODUCT)RED Sport Band, with portion of the proceeds going to the Global Fund to fight AIDS. These models and watch bands are now available.
Apple has partnered with Hermès for the Apple Watch® Hermès collection. This is a new collection of Apple Watch in stainless steel with three leather bands options — Single Tour, Double Tour and Cuff. while respecting the design and functionality of the Apple Watch. The Hermès collection, starting at $1,100, will be available October 5th in October 5 in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the US.
On the OS front, watchOS 2, the first major software update for Apple Watch, will be available on September 16. watchOS 2 will provide more options to customize with new watch faces including Photo, Photo Album and Time-Lapse. Watch faces will be able to integrate with some third-party apps to provide information such as news and flight times as part of the watch face. Scrolling the Digital Crown will allow users to look at events in the future via Time Travel. A watch running watchOS 2 must be paired with an iPhone running iOS 9, also available on September 16th, to take advantage of the new watchOS 2 features.
