Take a look at the upcoming special-edition Apple Watch before it arrives
The apparent designs of a new Apple Watch band and face for this year’s Pride Month have been leaked online. They seem to mirror the ‘sprinkles’ theme first seen on the Apple Pay Later artwork seen last month, albeit (in the case of the watch face) with colors that match those of the Progress Pride Flag.
One commenter has speculated that the second hand may change color depending on the area it’s currently pointing to. The leaked image doesn’t rule out this appealing idea, since it’s pointing to a yellow area of the background and is yellow, but doesn’t confirm it either.
The designs were posted to Twitter Wednesday by the leaker @aaronp613, who credits @nicolas09F9 for helping with the discovery but doesn’t otherwise reveal much about its origins. The images are likely, however, to have been unearthed in the code from the latest iOS 16.5 beta.
As regards the reliability of the images, we can at least confirm that @aaronp613 is a prolific leaker with some notable wins, such as the discovery in April of code pointing to the launch of the Apple Card Savings account, which was followed four days later by precisely that. The leaker has also spotted code snippets that led to correct predictions about the launch of the 2022 Apple TV, and Apple Music Classical.
It’s a near certainty, meanwhile, that Apple will launch a face and band for Pride Month this June. The company did the same thing last year and has done so every year since 2017. (The year before that, commemorative Pride bands were made, but only for employees.) It generally makes those announcements in May, so the plans would be in place by late April; on the whole, we’d say that these images are probably legit.
Apple
While the band seems less obviously Pride-affiliated that those released in previous years, it’s worth bearing in mind that we’re only seeing a small section of it, and a stylised version of that. Based on 2022 there could be a logo or phrase on the reverse.