The Apple Watch Solo Loop sizing effectively maps to the holes of the Sport Loop, according to John Gruber. The distance between the holes in every Apple Watch Sport Band is reportedly exactly the same as the distance between the 12 sizes of Solo Loops on Apple's measuring tool.
All Apple Watch Sport Bands have seven holes. For the 38mm or 40mm band, the S/M band corresponds to the Solo Loop sizes of one to seven, and the M/L band corresponds to the Solo Loop sizes of four to 10. For the 42mm or 44mm band, the S/M band corresponds to the Solo Loop sizes of three to nine, and the M/L band corresponds to the Solo Loop sizes of six to 12. Gruber writes:
A few people have wondered why Apple doesn't just map fluoroelastomer Sport Band sizes to Solo Loop sizes. I can see why Apple doesn't do that — they can't assume everyone already has access to an Apple Watch with a Sport Band, and even for people who do have access to one, Apple can't assume it's the right size watch (38/40mm vs. 42/44mm). And to further complicate matters, each Sport Band comes with two sizes for the side with the holes: "S/M" and "M/L." So that's four separate mappings from Sport Band holes to the new Solo Loop sizes.
The below image shows size mapping for two 40mm Apple Watch Sport Bands, with S/M and M/L sizes.
The following image shows size mapping for two 44mm Apple Watch Sport Bands, also with S/M and M/L sizes.
The news that it is possible to match Solo and Braided Loop sizing to the Sport Band will reassure many existing Apple Watch users who have been concerned about sizing issues and the potential need for an inconvenient return.
Regarding Apple's measuring tool, Gruber points out that "I think you're supposed to use the tool to precisely measure the circumference of your wrist, not to simulate the circumference of what you think would be a comfortable watch band," and he believes this may be the result of much of the discontentment about Solo Loop sizing.
The process for this thing is way too complicated, especially right now.
Beyond that, he's probably correct that this was intended as a wrist-measurement tool and that people are (understandably, but probably incorrectly) using this instead to interpolate what they believe a correct band size will be. In short, there's almost certainly a communication failure at work here.
I can confirm that this is true for me. I got a size 7 band that fits perfectly, and I’ve always used the second hole (from tightest) on my sport bands. (44mm)
What a great idea to release a brand new product in 12(?) brand new sizes while stores are closed so that basically no one can try them on either.. Guess the delivery people won't be out of a job anytime soon at least :)
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
/s
Beyond that, he's probably correct that this was intended as a wrist-measurement tool and that people are (understandably, but probably incorrectly) using this instead to interpolate what they believe a correct band size will be. In short, there's almost certainly a communication failure at work here.