When the Apple Watch Series 12 launched in September, it came with a new health-sensing system that can help wearers keep track of their sleep, heart rate, and exercise readiness, among other things. But of course, that data is only complete if you wear the watch 24/7—which meant the design team needed to make sure it was an object that people would never want to take off.
“Apple Watch is designed to support you all day and throughout the night,” says Molly Anderson, Apple’s VP of Industrial Design. “We designed the watch to be as thin as possible, to make it comfortable to sleep with, wear during your workout, and to fit easily under a sleeve, if you’re dressing up for the evening.” But the weight and feel are only part of what helps a wearable bridge the gap between jewelry and tech. The design team worked closely with the health, hardware sensing, and engineering teams to update the watch in a way that feels, as Anderson puts it, “as beautiful as it is functional.”
Part of the challenge was technical. The Series 12 measures heart rate every five seconds—60 times more frequently than older models. It also measures heart rate variability (HRV), which can help indicate whether you’re sick or stressed, 24 times as often. In order to accommodate these sensors, the team had to reengineer the back of the watch with a wider surface area for measuring heartbeats, as well as a ring of photodiodes around the edges to pick up light more efficiently.
The material they chose for this task was ceramic. “It’s an incredibly hard material that we finish to a very high polish,” Anderson explains. “The color and surface finish make it recognizably ceramic.”
Each ceramic watch case is made of a single piece, molded in a new process that Apple developed for this express purpose—one that’s so elaborate, it sounds like the labors of Hercules. The watch is baked at a temperature hotter than lava, condensed in a chamber with more pressure than the bottom of the ocean, and then buffed by literal diamonds. “The material recipe and firing process enable the zirconia to change color to opaque black for the dome, and transparent just where the LEDs and photodiodes of the sensor transmit and receive light,” says Anderson.
The team also cooked up new finishes, a process that begins with accumulating inspiration. “We use physical objects, images, and material samples to define the essence of each color in a palette,” Anderson says. “To find the best match for the original inspiration, the design team develops the colors over many iterations with our anodizing experts to create a custom recipe.”
They landed on several new shades, including a handsome dark bronze aluminum inspired by classic mechanical watches. There’s also a new “radiant gold” finish that comes with matching Milanese Loop and Link Bracelet bands, which were designed to “sit beautifully alongside other bracelets and jewelry,” Anderson explains. The Hermès Apple Watch is also available in this new gold for the first time. Should you be in the market for a watch for an international superspy, the Hermès option includes a sexy chain-link wristband that unsnaps to strap over a wetsuit—useful if you need to leave an elegant dinner by way of scuba.
Anderson explains that the bands are designed for quick changes, so that you can snap them on and off depending on your whim. It’s all inspired by traditional watchmaking, tweaked just enough to accommodate the tech—“so it feels familiar and is easy to wear, while seamlessly integrating technologies that can help you sleep better and support your health.”
This story has been updated since publication to include quotes from Anderson.