Apple’s latest hardware and software updates signal a push to meet users at every stage of their fitness journey, from a morning walk to ultra-marathons. The tech giant is investing in AI workout tools, too
Apple is investing more in health and fitness with the launches of AirPods Pro 3, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Workout Buddy, a new AI-driven motivational tool.
In an exclusive conversation with Athletech News, Julz Arney, Apple’s senior director of fitness technologies and Fitness+, and Eric Charles, worldwide product marketing manager for Apple Watch and watchOS, outlined how these updates have expanded the company’s ecosystem and reshaped its fitness strategy.
For Apple, the recent announcements aren’t simply about hardware upgrades, but about broadening entry points into the tech giant’s fitness universe.
AirPods Make Fitness a Daily Practice
Arney described it to ATN as Apple’s “biggest expansion of the fitness ecosystem ever.” With AirPods Pro 3, she said, “for the first time, your AirPods don’t just bring that incredible sound quality to your playlist and your podcasts, they track your workouts too. AirPods Pro 3 unlocks something new: it’s the ability to see your effort, to quantify it and to feel motivated by it.”
By extending fitness tracking to headphones — one of Apple’s most widely used products — the company hopes to reach users who may not yet own a Watch.
“You’re wearing your AirPods anyway for so many other wonderful experiences because of the sound quality, and now you’re able to see how it can contribute to your credit as you try to live a more active day,” Arney noted.
“If you’re used to going on a walk to commute to work and you have your AirPods in and you’re listening to your favorite podcast, you might have been tracking your Move ring before, but now you can actually see that as a workout and see your calories and heart rate in real time, and know that you’re getting accurate credit,” she added.
Watch Adds Safety, Sleep Features
Still, Apple Watch remains the anchor of the ecosystem, particularly the new Ultra 3, which pushes deeper into endurance and adventure. Charles emphasized its role at the most premium end of Apple’s fitness spectrum.
“It is our hardest-hitting device, it is the device that we expect users to take out to go for an epic long run, to find the highest mountains, to go deep-sea diving,” he said.
Priorities included making sure Ultra 3 wearers “had a plethora of safety features around them to give them the comfort that when they’re exploring and pushing their fitness to the next levels that they have the ability to connect to satellite (and) get in touch with the people that care about them.”
Apple is also reinforcing its presence in health, with sleep as a major focus area. Sleep scores add another layer to the data picture, providing actionable insights alongside activity and recovery.
Apple’s sleep features are about “providing users with more information so that they can learn a bit more about their patterns, about how their bodies are reacting and then maybe (make) small changes in their own lives,” Charles explained.
Those changes include things like committing to a more consistent bedtime or wake time, and optimizing the sleep environment, Charles noted.
“All of these things empower the user to make their own decisions,” he said.
Apple Bets Big on the Promise of AI-Powered Fitness
Workout Buddy also adds a new dimension to Apple’s fitness strategy: personalized motivation powered by generative AI.
“Our users have invested so much sweat equity in our fitness ecosystem,” Arney noted. “So with Workout Buddy, the ability to take the workout you’re in and then quickly analyze all that sweat equity that we have in the ecosystem and then pull out the inspiring moments so that when you’ve just made that very important decision in your day to start a workout, Workout Buddy is there to tell you not only was that a great choice, but ‘this is your third workout this week,’ or ‘you’ve already closed your activity rings for the last three days in a row.’”
“Because it is generative, the feature offers variety that aims to feel fresh every time for extra motivation,” she noted.
Behind these consumer-facing fitness features is more than a decade of development. Charles pointed out that much of Apple’s innovation stems from its work on the Watch.
“Over ten years of fitness development has helped us so much now with AirPods Pro 3,” Charles said. “Even though we developed all those algorithms based off of Apple Watch and sensing at the wrist, we were able to take the same algorithms and then create a new model that could do sensing motion sensing from the ears or from the head, which was a different experience, but we were able to create (a) brand new model that could do just that in just one year’s time.”
For Arney, what unites AirPods, Watch and Workout Buddy is inclusivity.
“From the very beginning, we’ve cared deeply about creating experiences that are designed to be inclusive to everyone, when it comes to fitness, regardless of where they’re at on their fitness journey and also regardless of what hardware they have with Apple,” she said.
