Having had an Apple Watch since the Series 0, I think Apple wants people to have a ~3-year upgrade cycle. They essentially update the internals one year, the next they come out with some interesting software features, then the next year they do some external design tweaks. Then they repeat.

There is no reason to upgrade every year, or even every two. It is around the 3-year mark where there tends to be enough new features or your battery life is getting bad enough that there is reason to check out the new watches. Even then my mom uses a Series 6 and is very happy with it and actually uses it a fair bit.

I dunno. Maybe there's a sense in which there's some untapped use cases out there that Apple needs to go figure out. But in a different sense, the idea that I buy a watch that lasts for years and I don't feel like I'm missing out in the meantime...sounds fine?

I got my first Apple Watch a year and a half ago. After coming to terms with the fact that the form factor has fundamental limitations, it's faded into the background and has been an excellent watch, fitness tracker, and occasional remote control and messaging device. I'm kinda glad that series 11 and 12 haven't given me fomo!

(I do wish they made more good watch faces though...)

> With fast charging, battery life hasn't been an issue

I sold my 10 last year and haven’t missed it. You don’t have reasonable access to a charger during a marathon or a long hike, the latter of which needed me to charge my Apple Watch 3 times over the course of 12 hours of hiking.

> ... and I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways

Will it? Because they kind of made it a point, like they typically do, to say features are only possible due to the new chip.

I'm still on a Series 6. Don't see a reason to buy the new one at all.

I was hoping we might get multi-day battery life this iteration. Fast charging is almost as good.

I think it might be time to upgrade from my series 8.

The way faster higher measurement rate is interesting and does open up entirely new use cases.

Not like Apple will let us do anything fun with their APIs, though.

> I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways.

Oh, I wouldn't count on it. The older hardware is capable, but Apple is running out of ideas how to make people upgrade.

And the Ultra series have been marginally incremental, emphasis on marginally. They announced that Ultra series 1 software support is ending this year, but I just cannot justify buying another one of these at $800.

I mean, there's only so much that a watch can do or that can be packed into it. Eventually all gadget categories fall into a lull of slow and steady progress, they can't all be absolute bangers year after year