What is a wearable?

More on that below—and the three things I now want from any wearable in 2026. Then, how to keep your kids’ music out of your Spotify recommendations and an Old Thing that goes… well, beep me again. If you know, you know.

I’ve been testing the new Apple Watch Series 12, and I will admit it has provided one crucial piece of information: I do, in fact, have a heart.

My wife had her concerns, but thankfully, the Series 12 reads my heartbeat every five seconds, all day long. In fact, Apple says it has the “most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable.”

This year, Apple doubled down on its view that the Watch’s most important job is being a health companion. But it also added new Siri AI features that start to hint at what Apple’s wearable could become in the AI age.

I’ve covered the Apple Watch for more than a decade, and lately I’ve spent a lot of time testing the new crop of AI wearables. All of it has made me rethink a pretty basic question: What should a computer we wear on our bodies actually do for us?

So I made a list.

1. Know my body.

This is where wearables like the Apple Watch have unquestionably found their purpose. Heart rate, ECG, sleep, workouts, temperature—the list goes on. And Apple is leaning into this even more with the new Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, plus a revamped Health app for iOS with Apple Intelligence.

But the AI opportunity here gets at what has long been my biggest issue with these devices: I don’t want more metrics, I want them to make sense of the metrics. Don’t give me 14 charts. Tell me if there’s something I can improve.   

2. Help me leave my phone behind.

The whole promise of the smart watch was that we could be less tethered to our smartphones. We could get important notifications and see important info, like the weather and, you know, the time. The Meta glasses take that idea even further: I can take a photo without reaching for my distracting rectangle computer and immediately getting sucked into whatever else is on the screen.

Yet the No. 1 use of my Apple Watch is actually the Find My feature to find my phone.

That’s why I think the next generation of wearables needs a much higher bar: Make me need my phone less—not just save me from pulling it out for 30 seconds. Give me more moments when I can actually leave it behind. That’s where AI comes in. 

3. Be my personal AI interface. 

I’ve tested a lot of AI wearables. Some, like the Meta glasses, give me quick access to AI via voice. Others, like the Bee bracelet, can record what’s happening around me and turn those conversations into AI-generated summaries and action items.

Apple’s starting to play in that area with two upcoming features for the Watch. Live Rewind will let you see a transcript of what was said in the last 15 seconds. Siri Recap will listen during conversations and use Apple Intelligence to create a summary to review later. I plan to test those features when they arrive later this year. 

The more I test this stuff, the more the idea makes sense: A device we wear on our bodies can experience the world alongside us, then use AI to turn what it sees and hears into something useful. There are, of course, huge privacy implications, especially when our wearables are listening to the people around us.

I’ll have much more on AI wearables next week. Stay tuned!

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Earlier this week, Spotify released a feature that restores sanity to my entire life: I can finally keep my kids’ music out of my recommendations, including Discover Weekly. Here’s how:

This means I can finally listen to my music without KPop Demon Hunters creeping to the top of my recommendations—or my Spotify Wrapped chart. 

It’s been only a week and a half since Apple’s big fall event, and we have not one, not two, but THREE new videos. I hear it’s going to be a beautiful weekend to stay inside and binge-watch all of them.

▶️ I Tested Apple’s New FOLDABLE iPhone Duo - I got my hands on Apple’s new foldable—and compared it to some highly scientific items from my iFannyPack.

▶️ iOS 27 Just Dropped. Here’s What’s ACTUALLY New - Our 27 best iOS 27 tips, including the new AI features worth knowing about.

▶️ iPhone 18 Pro Review: Is the Battery Upgrade Worth It? - I built a website, bought some “lab equipment” and tested Apple’s big battery-life claims.

Name: Matthew Fusfield

What’s your old thing? Motorola Bravo Pager, Vista-United Telecommunications  

What year is your old thing from? 1990s 

Why do you love your old thing? This is a Motorola pager—sometimes called beeper. But this one is from Vista-United Telecommunications, which was Disney’s in-house phone company back when the company built out the property in Florida for Walt Disney World. I enjoy Disney history as much as tech history so this was a nice crossover item to add to my collection. This didn’t belong to me but I found it at a reseller down in Florida.

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.