Ahead of Earth Day, Apple is debuting a new Activity Challenge for Apple Watch owners, which will become available in the Activity app on the iPhone when Thursday, April 20 rolls around.
Apple is challenging Apple Watch owners to complete a 30 minute outdoor exercise activity on Earth Day, which is Saturday, April 22. For finishing the challenge, Apple Watch owners will be rewarded with an exclusive Earth Day award and stickers that can be used in the Messages app.
Get outside and celebrate Earth Day on April 22 and earn this award. Go for a walk, run, cycle, wheelchair, or swim workout of 30 minutes or more in the Workout app or in any third party app that writes these workouts to Health. You will also earn special stickers for Messages.
This is the third public Apple Watch challenge Apple has debuted since the Apple Watch launched in 2015. On Thanksgiving, Apple challenged Apple Watch owners to run 3.1 miles as part of a Thanksgiving Day Challenge, and on New Year's, Apple encouraged Apple Watch owners to "Ring In The New Year" by closing all three Activity rings each day for a week in January.
Earth Day Challenge stickers in Messages
In honor of Earth Day, Apple employees are also transitioning to green shirts starting on April 20, and Apple will decorate its retail stores around the world with special logos that feature a green leaf accent.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
After I couldn't win the Jan 2017 one, I am so winning this! Wish badges and Activity data synced with iCloud, it will suck to lose all my data when iOS 11 is released and I wipe the phone entirely :c
My favorite earth day commemoration from Apple was when they decided that enabling a longer lifespan for these machines is important to reduce waste and additional resources used in the manufacturing process, so they started to build the computers and phones in a way that is easily maintained and upgraded by the user.
This showed they really, actually cared about the environment, and not just the bottom line.
Give it a rest. I have a 2006 model iMac in my home right now that still works perfectly well with no issues, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who can attest to the fact that their hardware outlives most of the competition easily.
Can't wait for my CrappleWATCH to somehow acknowledge only 29 minutes of my 30 minute outdoor exercise as "exercise" because of the terrible accuracy of the heart rate monitor ... resulting in not receiving yet another challenge medallion of absolutely zero value.
You're welcome to sell it and move to a Galaxy Gear if you hate it so much. The door's right there. [doublepost=1492631019][/doublepost]
Have you been to the internets? Fake points and gamification are all the rage.
I'd opine that it's more productive to those involved than sitting around mocking people who are trying to stay fit and enjoy their lives.
