Apple May be Planning a Lower-Key Celebration for the Apple Watch’s Tenth Anniversary
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The Apple Watch Series 10 arrived in September with relatively little fanfare, considering its announcement was held on the tenth anniversary of Apple’s unveiling of the original Apple Watch in 2014.
When Apple announced the date of its September Glowtime event, many folks (including us) believed the company was planning something special to mark the anniversary of the Apple Watch. After all, Apple made the unprecedented move of scheduling a September iPhone event on a Monday, seemingly just to ensure it would land on September 9, 2024 — ten years to the day from the debut of the original Apple Watch on September 9, 2014.
Apple had never held a fall iPhone or even an iPod event on a Monday. In fact, Apple’s September event schedule had been downright predictable since the first September iPhone event was held in 2012. They were always held on a Tuesday around the second week of September, except when that Tuesday immediately followed Labor Day or landed on 9/11. In that case, the event would be shifted to a Wednesday.
Needless to say, a Monday event was unusual enough, but it was uncanny that it was scheduled precisely ten years after Apple surprised us with the original Apple Watch.
Although an August 2023 report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested a significantly redesigned “Apple Watch X,” he tempered those expectations by the spring, saying that while this year’s Apple Watch would still be “the biggest overhaul yet,” the design changes would be focused solely on a larger screen and a slimmer and lighter design. What we ended up with was nice but certainly not revolutionary.
Still, some have pointed out that although the Apple Watch was announced on September 9, 2014, it didn’t go on sale until April 2015. That still gives Apple time to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and it looks like it may have at least one thing planned to mark the occasion.
Code found in the latest iOS 18.2 beta by MacRumors points to a “Ten Year Celebration” that appears to be an activity achievement. This would likely be something similar to the Limited Edition Challenges that Apple runs for other notable dates, such as Earth Day, New Year’s Day, Heart Month, and Veteran’s Day (which is coming up next week).
Little else is known about it from the code snippets, so there’s no word on when the challenge will be held or the requirements. It could be a single-day challenge to mark the day the Apple Watch went on sale — April 24, 2015 — or it may play out over a week, a month, or longer.
Apple’s achievements are also sometimes tied to broader celebrations. For example, Apple’s 2021 Unity Challenge was part of a multifaceted Black History Month commemoration that featured Apple’s first-ever Limited Edition Apple Watch: the “Black Unity” Series 6 and a series of special events and content on Apple’s services.
Apple’s “Ten Year Celebration” achievement could be a similar part of a bigger plan, or it might be as simple as a whimsical way to mark the occasion, with nothing more than a press release by Apple, similar to what it recently did to mark ten years of Apple Pay.
Apple could also include some aspects of the significant redesign Gurman spoke of in the next Apple Watch in 2025; while the typical September release frame would make it a little late as a commemorative edition, Apple could instead use it to mark “the next ten years” of the Apple Watch.
