Technology

Reviewing Apple Watch Series 5 is not hard. It is so largely similar to last yearSeries 4. It carries with it all the things that made its predecessor great — the large display, haptics-enhanced Digital Crown and fall detection — and marches forward with one defining feature: the always-on display. Back-to-back years of seminal moments for the Watch is an impressive feat.

From an accessibility perspective, everything that was (and remains) great about Series 4 is there in Series 5. It is the best Apple Watch to date, and it is certainly the most accessible smartwatch on the market, period. But there are a few caveats.

Always-on

The longer I wear Apple Watch Series 5, a 44mm space-gray aluminum review unit from Apple, the more torn I feel about the devicealways-on display.

On one hand, I readily acknowledge the significance of the new display as it relates to the watch as a whole. On the other hand, however, I find the always-on display to be somewhat of a letdown in practice. It isn&t that the always-on display is bad; itnot. Itthat the current implementation isn&t that conducive to my visual needs.

The issue is brightness. The always-on display right now isn&t bright enough for me to quickly glance down at my wrist to see the time. As someone who requires maximum brightness on all my devices in order to see well, this is problematic. Other reviewers have mentioned how nice it is to just casually look down at the watch to see the time, as you would on a mechanical watch. My peers must have substantially better eyesight than I do, because I literally cannot do that. In my usage, I have found I&m still flicking my wrist like I have any previous Apple Watch to see the time. When you do so, the Apple Watchscreen fully illuminates (to max brightness, per my display settings), and thathow I can tell time.

It makes no difference whether I&m using an analog or digital watch face. The exception is when using the new Numerals Duo face with the &filled& styling. The digits are so large that I have no trouble seeing the time. This face would be a good solution for my woes if not for the fact it doesn&t support complications. Otherwise, Numerals Duo is a great workaround for the always-on displaylack of light.

At a technical level, I understand why watchOS dims the display. Nonetheless, itunfortunate there is no way to adjust the brightness while in &always on& mode. Perhaps Apple will add such a feature in the future; it would make sense as an accessibility setting. As it stands today, as good as the always-on display is in general, I can&t say it makes much sense for me. I&m effectively using Series 5 the same way I use my Series 4. Because of this, Series 5 loses some of its appeal. The whole point of buying Series 5 is for the always-on display. I could turn it off, but that defeats the purpose, and I may as well stick with last yearmodel.

On the flip side, if and when the always-on display improves for me, another benefit is it will save me from having to raise my arm so often. I wear my watch on my right wrist, which is notable because the right side of my body is partially paralyzed due to cerebral palsy. As such, raising my wrist to tell time or check a notification can sometimes be painful and fatiguing. The always-on display mitigates this because, by virtue of its persistence, you don&t necessarily have to contort your arm to look at your watch — thereby alleviating pain and fatigue for me and others.

Problematic packaging

From the original Apple Watch (colloquially known as &Series 0&) through Series 3, Apple packaged the watch as an &all-in-one& product. Which is to say, the band was fastened to the watch. You could grab it and go — take the watch out of the box and immediately see how it looks on you, even before pairing it with your iPhone.

With last yearSeries 4, Apple changed how they package Apple Watch, whereby the band and watch were separate entities. In order to wear it, you first need to attach the band to the watch. In my review, I called out this change as regressive despite recognizing why it made sense operationally. The revised layout continues in Series 5, which is disappointing.

The issues this setup raises are the same ones I expounded upon last year. To wit, iteasy to see how some people could get flustered with the watch and band being piecemeal; it can be challenging in terms of cognitive load and fine-motor skills. Even as a seasoned product reviewer, I freely admit to again feeling a tad disjointed as I was piecing together my review unit.

Like the always-on displaydimmed state, I totally get why Apple chose to overhaul how they package Apple Watch. It makes complete sense in context of the new Apple Watch Studio, where you can mix and match finishes and bands. This is a prime example of why reporting on accessibility and assistive technology matters so much: esoteric details like how a product is packaged can really matter to a person with disabilities. Part of the reason Apple products are so revered is precisely because of the elegant simplicity of its packaging. The unboxing is supposed to be one of the best parts of a new Apple Watch or iPhone or iMac — especially for disabled people, the initial experience leaves a lasting impression if you have to fiddle as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. I can manage, but many cannot. And itimportant to bear in mind. Everything should be as accessible as possible.

The bottom line

There is no doubt Apple Watch Series 5 is great. It retains the title of Best, Most Accessible Apple Watch Yet, but with an asterisk. I don&t have a burning desire to upgrade — although admittedly, the titaniumsiren song has been calling me ever since last monthevent. The problem I have with the display can be easily remedied with a software update; if Apple shipped a brightness slider tomorrow, I&d order one pronto. Today, though, always-on isn&t always bright — and that sucks.

In the end, I still heartily recommend Apple Watch Series 5 to everyone. My low vision makes the always-on display difficult to see as-is, and I surely can&t be the only one. But that doesn&t take away from the fact that the watch is still the best, most accessible smartwatch by a country mile. I&m confident the always-on display will be iterated and refined over time. In the meantime, Series 4 and watchOS 6 is a pretty bad-ass combination for me.

Amazon Music is now available on the Apple TV, including both the Apple TV 4K and the Apple TV HD running tvOS 12.0 or later, Amazon announced this morning. The launch is yet another example of the eased tensions between the two rivals, who finally came to an agreement to support each otherstreaming media services on their respective platforms.

With the new Amazon Music app for Fire TV, customers will gain access to millions of songs and thousands of playlists and stations, including Amazon Musicversion of Spotify&Rap Caviar,& which it calls &Rap Rotation.& Users will also be able to browse and search music from their favorite artists, as well as access all their purchased and imported music available in their &My Music& library, says Amazon.

This latest launch follows the debut of Apple Music on Fire TV back in March, and is now one of several examples of the two companies playing nice with one another.

Last year, for example, Amazon expanded its assortment of Apple inventory to include other devices besides Apple TV — like iPads, iPhones, Apple Watch and Beats headphones. It also brought its FreeTime Unlimited app to iOS. Meanwhile, Apple Music arrived on Echo devices last year.

Plus, you&ve been able to watch Amazon Prime Video on Apple TV since December 2017. And with the upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service, Apple promises a cross-platform experience, which includes Fire TV.

But the new applaunch is notable for another reason, as well.

Apple today is in the crosshairs of several antitrust investigations worldwide, including in the E.U., Russia, and the U.S.

Spotify, in particular, has been calling out Apple for its alleged anti-competitive behavior, like charging the so-called &Apple tax& on Spotifyin-app subscriptions when it sells a rival service with Apple Music, or for having too much control over if and when Spotify can release app updates. As a part of Appledefense, itbeen showcasing how it allows competitors on its platform.

The addition of Amazon Music to Apple TV will be another example it can now point to, alongside the arrival of Spotify to Apple TV just a few days ago.

The new Amazon Music app is live in the Apple TV App Store in the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Japan, and India.

Nexkey, a company that provides a mobile access control solution for commercial buildings and workspaces, today announced that it has raised a $6 million Series A round led by Upfront Ventures. K9 Ventures, Mark IV Capital and Anand Chandrasekaran, the former Head of Platform for Messenger at Facebook, also participated in the round. Upfront also led Nexkey$4.8 million seed round.

The company can turn your smartphone into your door key and replaces the badge you probably use at work to get in and out of buildings. Nexkey offers an end-to-end solution that includes the app, as well as hardware controllers and lock cylinders for your doors that can replace There is also an API to allow its solutions to connect to other applications and devices inside a workspace.

In many ways, Nexkey is similar to Openpath, which raised $7 million in a seed round that was also led by Upfront Ventures.

&We launched our platform into the market a little over 9 months ago and brought over 8,500 active users on the platform the first 6 months after launch,& Nexkey CEO Eric Trabold told me. &We wanted to continue this great momentum and therefore felt that the time is right to raise more capital to enable us to do so.&

Trabold says the company will use the new funding to expand its overall sales efforts from its current focus on California to the rest of the United States. He noted that the company wanted to better understand its users& needs before expanding to other geographies.

The company also realized that it sat on a lot of data that was valuable to its customers. &We currently expose this via an audit trail right in our App and are going to build out other, more visual ways to expose this data to our customers,& Trabold said. &We&re going to have advanced reports that can be accessed or downloaded through our Web Portal. Those will help our customers to optimize how they operate their spaces, which means that they can now properly staff during peak times, analyze overall space utilization or look for anomalies that can trigger security events.&

The new funding, the company says, will also allow it to apply more resources to help it provide more value to its users based on this data.

Among the other things it learned from its early customers is that many of its users don&t always want to have their doors locked at all times and instead often want to keep them open for anybody during business hours. The companyusers that run co-working spaces and gyms also asked the company for an easier onboarding process and the ability to apply access rules to different user types, something it is currently beta testing in its iOS app.