The Apple Watch Series 4

Apple's main moneymaker is the iPhone, but analysts and the press can't help but speculate about the trillion-dollar company's next big thing. Is it a car? Maybe a pair of smart computer glasses?

But the future of Apple is already on the market, and it's selling about 18 million units per year, according to estimates. You might already have one on your wrist. It's the Apple Watch, the wearable computing device that the company first released in 2015.


Nowhere was this more clear this past week at the company's annual iPhone launch event at its Apple Park campus. Yes, Apple revealed new iPhones. But it spent about an hour on the new Apple Watch, which got a much bigger reaction from the crowd of 1,000 Apple reporters and analysts attending the launch event than any iPhone.


The Apple Watch Series 4, as Apple calls the new models, represent the first new update to its industrial design since the device was first introduced in 2014. They're thinner, they have a bigger screen, and sport improved speakers and microphones. (At a starting price of $399, they also are slightly more expensive than previous models, it should be noted.)


They also come with a ton of new watch faces, including moving images of fire and water filmed with a high-speed camera, alongside some new looks for the operating system. There are a lot of big changes.
The new watches make old Apple Watches look clunky and obsolete. Basically, the Apple Watch just had its coming-out party, all over again — a clear sign of where Apple's technical ambitions lie, as the iPhone faces diminishing returns, with each model representing only an incremental step over the ones previous.