Apple is celebrating Pride Month this June with two new Apple Watch faces as well as new colorful straps, the company announced today. They will be going on sale later today through Apple’s web stores with a later launch in physical stores, while the Watch faces will be available immediately.
There are two watch bands being sold, the Pride Edition Sport Loop, and the Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop. Both come with the symbolic Pride rainbow, but Apple’s one is brighter and more vibrant than Nike’s, which is darker. The watch faces similarly are rainbow-themed, with the Pride Threads watch face built to mirror the loops of the Pride Edition Sport Loop band.
Aside from the new watches, Apple is also launching a new ‘Shot on iPhone’ social media campaign. Like all its other similar campaigns, this will focus on images captured using iPhones albeit centering on people and places relevant to the LGBTQ+ movement.
“Coming soon to @apple on Instagram, the series will feature works from photographers Ryan McGinley at Stonewall Inn in New York, Evan Benally Atwood at Window Rock in Arizona, Meinke Klein at The Homomonument in Amsterdam, Caia Ramalho at Paulista Avenue in São Paulo; Lydia Metral at Plaza de Chueca in Madrid, and Collier Schorr at Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco, featuring Baobei,” Apple said.
Alongside these new products, Apple also highlights its support for LGBTQ+ organizations including Encircle, the Trevor Project, Equality Federation Institute, Equality North Carolina, Equality Texas, Gender Spectrum, GLSEN, Human Rights Campaign, ILGA World, The National Center for Transgender Equality, PFLAG, and SMYAL.
Apple’s Pride Edition Sport Loop and Pride Edition Nike Sport Loops are available today for $49 and can be ordered both from the Apple web store and the Apple Store app. They won’t be in physical stores until May 26. As for the Pride Watch face, they are available today with the Apple Watch Series 4 forwards as long as you’re running watchOS 8.6 and paired with any suitably modern iPhone.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.