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Apple Watch watchOS 4.1 Beta Now Available To Developers. What's Included And Is It Worth Having?

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David Phelan

You may have thought that when watchOS 4 arrived, that would be that. After all, it was a stable, solid release and almost everything that had been promised had been delivered, such as the Toy Story animated Watch face and exceptional, detailed heart rate analysis.

But, oh no, there's more.

First of all, all the tracks in your iCloud Music Library are now available for streaming through your Watch. This is a big step forward – previously what was required was to sync the tracks beforehand via Bluetooth and this was not a quick thing to do. It also means you don’t have to worry about storage space – though obviously to stream it needs a decent data connection speed.

And it also means that you can access these tracks using Siri. This is very satisfying, to be able to instruct your virtual personal assistant to play a song and hear it seconds later, especially if you’re in hands-free situation like on a run, say.

The software also now includes the Radio app, separate from the Music app on the Watch, which lets you stream stations like Beats 1 or NPR. You only need an Apple Music subscription if you’re listening to, say, the Apple Music channels. You can stream over wi-fi or via LTE, hardware and signal permitting. There’s also a Radio app complication so you can get straight there from your chosen Watch face.

The biggest step forward for this update is that the Watch now allows direct LTE streaming of music meaning there’s now wi-fi and cellular access to Apple Music’s 40 million tracks.

Plus the tracks from your iCloud Music Library don’t need to be synced to your Watch for you to listen to them.

Apple is not the first to do this – the dial, the smart cuff from will.i.am’s i.am+ company did this last year – but this is a smooth and seamless experience.

When you move out of a wi-fi area, if you have an LTE-capable Apple Watch Series 3, the switch from wi-fi to cellular is impressively smooth, too, with the music continuing as wi-fi vanishes, or at worst pausing and quickly resuming.

These are neat upgrades and are worth having. Some users are reporting there’s another benefit, too: the Watch seems snappier and more responsive since they updated.

I’ll keep using the software until it’s released later this month and report back then but, well, so far, so good.

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