AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Saturday posted a short commercial spot highlighting the health tracking functions of Apple Watch Series 2, urging users to keep fit by closing their Activity app rings.
Titled "Apple Watch Series 2 — Close Your Rings — Catch, Swim, Play," today's 15-second commercial is a continuation of Apple's new ad series dedicated to showing off Apple Watch's fitness features. The first "Close Your Rings" spot aired nearly a month ago.
Like last month's ad, the new commercial encourages Apple Watch users to close the Activity app's Stand, Exercise and Move rings. Introduced with the first Apple Watch, rings are graphical representations of movement data gathered by onboard sensors like accelerometers and Watch's custom heart rate sensor.
As users stand, walk, move and raise their heart rate by exercising over the course of a day, the rings fill up, or "close." How long it takes for a ring or rings to close depends on preset goals established during initial device configuration. Users can also change goals at a later date, for example shifting the hours they want to stand or the calories they want to burn.
Apple is placing an intense marketing focus on health and fitness with its latest Apple Watch Series 2, a device that launched last year with minor hardware improvements. The company also partnered with Nike to produce a Nike+ version of the device that comes with a special sports band and preloaded Nike software.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
William Gallagher
8 Comments
Seems like Apple decided, let's kill all the fitness band and wanna be fitness watch competitors early, before any one of them takes hold of some aspect of that market or grows strong enough to extend their offerings into other use cases, then we can get back to marketing all the other many uses of a smartwatch. Of which there are many, as any Apple Watch owner can tell you.
Meanwhile, Apple buys themselves time for the rest of the world to adapt to the true promise of a connected smartwatch; that being replacing your home and car keys, office access cards and fobs, hotel keys, your cash and credit cards, and eventually even your driver's license and passport. Basically everything else you carry. That and making your smartwatch the access point to control all aspects of your environment.
The Watch isn't about replacing a smartphone, which we'll continue to need for accessing dense sources of information; it's about quick interactions, like opening doors, switching things on and off and controlling levels (lighting, volume, etc), for making a payment, presenting credentials, tracking things like fitness, recording milestones (like job status tracking, etc). And getting reminders, directions, anything and everything that requires a quick interaction. The use cases are almost unlimited.
Unimpressive. Except for those that are already with the Apple Watch's capabilities, it won't convince anyone. Apple's marketing has been lackluster and boring as of late. It used to be phenomenal. It needs a new advertising agency. Whoever does the video for the intros has done a phenomenal job. I would suggest hiring whoever did those, although it does take a Jonathan Ives to make it special.
Would be nice if Apple would license the W1 chip to a manufacturer of bone conducting, swimming headphone.