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TECH & AI

Apple Is Leaving Its First Apple Watch Ultra in the Dust

jackminion Jun 15, 2026 0

In the age of AI, more and more gadgets are being left dead in the desert of discarded tech. Even the four-year-old $800 Apple Watch Ultra won’t receive the watchOS 27 update this fall, and we’re now learning about other features beyond AI-enhanced Siri that older wearables will miss out on.

Relatively few Apple Watches will receive the new updates that Apple announced at WWDC. The Apple Watch Series 9 and later have access to the upcoming software enhancements. But the Series 6 through 8, the Apple Watch SE 2, and the 2022 Apple Watch Ultra aren’t compatible with watchOS 27. None of the chips in these watches include neural processing cores capable of running Siri and its new contextual awareness features. Starting with the S9 SiP, all watches have at least a four-core Neural Engine that’s supposedly capable of running some minute backend AI tasks. In his latest newsletter, Bloomberg’s Apple leaker-in-chief Mark Gurman reported Sunday that there are a few features Apple didn’t reveal during its WWDC 2026 keynote that we can expect to see in the fall. Older watches won’t receive the supposed “Modular” watch face that Gurman claimed would include a larger clock with three customizable “elements” pasted below the time. All three Apple Watch Ultra models have access to a more complicated version of that watch face. Older watches will miss out on the new Dynamic App Grid, which features five Siri-suggested apps. © Apple Despite that, the original $800 Apple Watch Ultra won’t receive any other benefits. Apple has promised that watchOS 27 will enhance all facets of the wearable experience. That includes a better battery life, faster initial Wi-Fi connections, more accurate sleep tracking, and faster media playback and app extensions. The current dev beta update also removed the Walkie Talkie app, which has been around since 2018, though it remains unclear whether Apple will put it back in for the official update.

Apple has a strong track record of supporting products long after they’ve been ostensibly left behind. Even an iPhone 11 from 2019 will support the upcoming iOS 27. MacRumors’ Aaron Perris claims to have confirmed that the original HomePod from 2018—running on an ancient A8 chip—will run HomePod Software 27. Of Apple’s massive hardware stack, the first Ultra appears to be only the Apple Watch being sacrificed on the altar of AI. The Apple Watch SE 3 will be the only budget Apple wearable supporting watchOS 27. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo You’d be justified in feeling a little miffed that your $400 Apple Watch is suddenly hitting the end of its life; owners of the similarly lacking $800 Apple Watch Ultra are very unhappy. One redditor wrote, “There’s nothing Apple is doing that can’t be tweaked or down-clocked that would prevent (older watches) from running a new OS. We’re not simulating particle collisions on the new OS.”

Apple’s first Ultra wearable already missed out on major watchOS 26 features, such as hypertension notifications for high blood pressure (which were only available on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Series 9 or later). It also lacked live translation for incoming texts. Now, it’s an outmoded model that Apple seems all too happy to toss aside. Of course, it could also entice users to upgrade to the next $800 smartwatch, like the Apple Watch Ultra 3, or to the rumored Series 12 watch, which may not offer many real hardware updates.

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TECH & AI

Apple bets cheaper AI will woo small developers

jackminion Jun 9, 2026 0

Apple is hoping to draw in newer developers with lower AI infrastructure costs, the company announced during its developer keynote at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. The tech giant said that developers with fewer than 2 million first-time App Store downloads will be able to use its Foundation Models running in Private Cloud Compute, with no cloud API cost.

“It’s access to frontier-tier level intelligence with unparalleled privacy protections, because getting started exploring ideas shouldn’t be held back by infrastructure costs,” the presenter noted.

The “under 2 million” figure is another means of capturing the indie developer audience, similar to Apple’s efforts with the Small Business Program, where the company offers lower commission rates to smaller developers who are just starting to build their applications and aren’t yet earning millions.

Apple also noted that the Foundation Models framework is expanding this year to include image input and support for server models. That means the API can now integrate with the cloud model provider of developers’ choice, to ensure getting started with a large cloud model is as “accessible as possible,” as needed for more complex tasks, said Apple.

The move reflects a growing reality in the AI industry that experimentation is no longer cheap. By waiving infrastructure fees for smaller developers, Apple is positioning its models as a lower-cost alternative for those developers who don’t want to take on additional cloud bills.

Small developers aren’t the only ones tightening their belts these days. Tech giants like Meta and Amazon have discontinued their internal AI token usage leaderboards, where developers once competed to burn cash by experimenting with AI tools. Uber, meanwhile, recently said it had run through its 2026 AI budget in just four months, news that some have taken as a need for more fiscal responsibility when it comes to AI.

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TECH & AI

Apple Is Officially Coming for Meta’s Privacy-Invading Lunch With Its Own Smart Glasses in Late 2027

jackminion Jun 1, 2026 0

While checking out of a recent medical appointment, I was suddenly horrified to realize the front desk receptionist I was speaking with had on a pair of Meta x Ray Ban smart glasses.“Those aren’t filming, right” I asked, mentally pre-filing my HIPAA violation suit. She seemed surprised to even receive such a question, taking a moment to clock that I was referring to the recording device on her face that has been embroiled in controversies. No, she assured me, once it clicked, the camera wasn’t on. She was only using them to listen to music. Resisting the urge to suggest that the AirPods lying on her desk might better serve that purpose, I opted to leave the convo there, further surrendering myself to the idea that I am part of a dying breed who actually cares about the existential privacy invasions presented by a population paying to be walking panopticons.

Despite complaints from women recorded without their knowledge and consent by creeps sporting them—who are then extorted for money when they ask for the published video to be taken down—wearing smart glasses in public is not (yet) being treated like the breach of social contract it inherently is, in or out of doctors offices. In fact, the number of units sold just keeps going up. A Q4 earnings report from Ray-Ban’s parent company, EssilorLuxottica, showed that sales for the wearables had tripled in 2025 over the previous year. It will come as no surprise to anyone that one of the biggest names in consumer tech is planning to carve out a big slice of that market for themselves.Recent reporting by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman confirms what we all knew was coming—Apple’s got their own smart glasses in the works and hopes to disrupt that wearable market similarly to how they did with smartwatches, which now generate an estimated $17 billion annually for the company.Rumors have been swirling about the tech giant’s inevitable foray into the smart glasses space for years, the most recent of those suggesting their first-gen specs, internally code-named “N50,” would be revealed to customers by the end of 2026 and sold early the next year. But developmental delays, a perennial hindrance for Apple, have officially pushed their planned release date back to later in 2027, presumably just in time for the holiday gift season.Sources told Gurman that current CEO Tim Apple (a.k.a. Tim Cook) is making development of these wearables his “top priority” before passing the company reins over to his successor John Ternus on September 1st. Fittingly, Ternus has been leading Apple’s Vision Products Group (VPG) for the past two years while they’ve been developing the product. However, this is the same group who’ve also been working on the forthcoming AirPod Pros with built-in infrared cameras, the announcement of which generated dread from segments of the internet wondering why such an upgrade was necessary, even if they won’t enable full-on scumbag behavior.The proposed glasses, on the other hand, explicitly seek to compete with Meta’s wearables and everything they’re used for. Priced in the $200 to $500 range, Apple’s glasses will come in a number of popular styles, have built-in cameras, speakers, and mics for taking videos, pics, and calls or playing music, podcasts, and Siri announcements. The main aesthetic difference between these and Meta’s current glasses roster is that Apple’s cameras will be ovular rather than circles. Gurman also believes that Apple’s glasses won’t have in-screen AR display capabilities like the latest Ray-Bans for at least a few years.It remains to be seen if these products are on track to become their next ubiquitous hit à la AirPods or will flop like the prohibitively expensive Vision Pro. But if those price points and society’s increasing indifference to the surveillance state are any indicators, it might be prudent to start polishing your Computer Vision Dazzle makeup skills just in case.

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