Apple pushed out an update to all its hardware last night, the most notable being WatchOS 7.2 and iOS 14.3. With the two updates installed on your Apple Watch Series 6 and iPhone, users now get access to a new health metric: Cardio Fitness. For those running iOS 14.3 on an iPhone 12 Pro or an iPhone 12 Pro Max, they will also finally be able to shoot photos in Apple’s ProRes RAW format.
The primary measurement for cardio fitness would come from measuring VO2-Max numbers, usually collected during a workout. However, most of us may not work out regularly, but still might spend a great part of our day engaged in activities that directly correlate to cardio fitness. In order to deliver on the metric, the Apple Watch Series 6 uses its on-board VO2-Max sensor, and combines that data with the data collected using the host of other sensors such as the accelerometer, GPS and even the optical heart rate sensor to arrive at a more realistic figure for your cardio fitness. After all, if you’re not moving much, or not engaging in activities that cause your heart rate to jump into a higher band for a sustained period of time, you’re probably not at the peak of your health. The cardio fitness notifications can now be setup for users with the Apple Watch Series 6 on the Watch app on their iPhones, through the newly added tab of the same name.
Image Courtesy: Apple
At the October 13 launch even for the new iPhones, Apple largely closed the gap between the Pro and non-Pro models of the iPhone. However, the camera still remained a notable differentiator, even though the software capabilities remained the same. While the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini get all the main features, hardware and software of the Pro siblings, the non-Pro models lack a telephoto lens on the hardware front and on the software, don’t get Apple’s ProRes RAW format. However, if you did buy yourself the new iPhone 12 Pro or the iPhone 12 Pro Max, your photos just got a lot better. With the update to iOS 14.3, the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max will finally get ProRes RAW capture support, bringing the ability to capture RAW images straight from the main camera app. Apple has allowed RAW capture for many years now, just not through its own camera app. That changes today. In addition, ProRes RAW is also supposed to bring the best of Deep Fusion and SmartHDR3 to the photos, while also preserving the vast amount of data associated with RAW files so that you can edit them to your liking. We’re already testing the feature out and can say with confidence that users are going to love this feature. On a side note, however, do note that popular editing apps like Snapseed and Lightroom need to be updated to read the metadata in the Apple ProRes RAW file in order to decode and consequently, display the image data correctly. You can still edit the images using the built-in editor in the Photos App.
Both iOS 14.3 and watchOS 7.2 are now available as OTA updates and can be downloaded through the iPhone’s settings app and the Watch App respectively.