Off-topic: Apple announces Apple Watch Ultra with extra button, better battery life
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/09/apple-watch-ultra-hands-on-everything-you-need-to-know.html
Today, Apple has announced the biggest shift to their Apple Watch product lineup since launch, by announcing the new Apple Watch Ultra, which is targeted at the endurance athlete. This new watch has increased battery life, an added button, larger digital crown, dual-frequency GPS, redesigned compass, night mode, dive computer mode, and plenty more. It’s Apple’s first go at competing with companies like Garmin and others in the endurance sports watch market.
However, that’s not the only watch Apple announced today. They also announced a revamped Apple Watch Series 8, which adds in a temperature sensor for improved cycle/ovulation tracking. Plus, added crash detection for vehicular driving (it already has sports-focused crash detection). Further, this watch has a new Low Power Mode which doubles the battery life.
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New added button, the so-called Action Button, while the digital crown has been increased, with both designed for glove usage. You can use the action button to precisely start the run (versus the 3-second countdown), as well as change sports in a triathlon, or to mark laps.
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Later in 2022, Apple will add Track Running mode, to ensure that laps are accurately recorded. This sounds similar to what we’ve seen from COROS/Garmin/Wahoo in recent years.
I never thought they'd do it: the company for people who hate physical buttons added another physical button to their smartwatch. Then again, their fitness-focused ear buds also have physical buttons instead of touch-sensitive controls.
I hope I don't have to say why I think this is extremely relevant to Garmin watches and Connect IQ development. Every time someone points out that the usability of Apple products is far superior in many respects to Garmin, people always respond along the lines of "Apple is for noobs! Real athletes use Garmin 
"
I'll just say that one of my dealbreakers for Apple has always been the lack of a physical lap button, which I consider to be essential for running workouts. If the same button could be used to start and lap a workout (which are two time-sensitive actions), then a different gesture could be used to pause a workout (which isn't that time-sensitive, since you can always take a lap at the end of your final work interval). I actually implemented a similar control scheme for a Vivoactive 3 stopwatch app (VA3 only has one button). (Other users might prefer to map the button to Start/Pause and use a gesture for Lap.)
Hopefully serious competition in this space will motivate Garmin to step up its game.
(I'm not going to bother with a bunch of quotes or links, but I'll just say that skimming the comments at dcrainmaker, the verge, and other sites, a very common theme is "I like Garmin's hardware but their software leaves something to be desired." It's something that I've noticed for years, tbh.)