What you need to know
- Kevin Lynch and Deidre Caldbeck joined Rene Ritchie for an interview after WWDC21.
- The group discussed watchOS, digital keys, and Apple's work in the health sector.
As usual, Apple VP Kevin Lynch was "on stage" at WWDC21 this year to talk about the future of Apple Watch with watchOS 8.
To dive deeper into some of the features announced for the watch as well as other announcements around Apple's health features, Lynch and Deidre Caldbeck joined Rene Ritchie for a wide-ranging interview.
At one point, Caldbeck dove deep into the idea that Apple Watch has become more and more of an identity device and that the latest features, like state IDs and digital keys, only solidify that fact.
"And now we have this evolution of the watch where it's your identity. It allows you to control the things around you and access the places you love. And I mean, if you think about Apple watches, your identity we started with Apple Pay, when it's on your wrist, that's your identity. And we've recently used it as your identity for when you wanna unlock your iPhone and you're wearing a mask. And now with these watchOS 8 updates, with things like state ID and the home app redesign and these other wallet features, it's really starting to be more of this identity access, and control where it's the safety and security of a device that's always on you. So it's really perfect for all of these capabilities."
One of the new features announced at WWDC was the ability for the iPhone to detect if you may be at risk of falling in the near future. Lynch says that it is a feature that has taken years to develop and that the company's health studies were the catalyst to uncovering the data needed in order to predict this risk.
"We actually did this really deep work that has taken years of sensing these different attributes that Deidre was mentioning. And then doing studies where we partly use the Apple heart movement study for this was about a hundred thousand people in that. And so we were able to use the insights that we've gathered from people's movements in that study, to actually see what would be predictive of falls. And so that's what this walking study this metric came from, was the modeling of those metrics. And then seeing which ones indicated most clearly that you had potential to fall."
You can watch the entire interview below. If you want to pick up an Apple Watch and start tracking your health, check out our list of the Best Apple Watch in 2021.
