Each spring, Apple announces a Pride Collection, with wallpapers for iPhone and iPad, new watch face for Apple Watch and band or two for the Watch. This year’s Band is highly eye-catching.
This year’s band is a Pride Edition Braided Solo Loop. It’s not the first Pride Braided Solo Loop and while the last one was bright and eye-catching, this one takes things to a new level of luminosity.
That’s because it uses what Apple calls “a vibrant, fluorescent design,” and if it lives up to the images, it’ll look retina-searingly bright. If you’ve ever been to a Pride event, you’ll know that demure and understated colors are definitely not the order of the day, so this band reflects this.
Of course, this being Apple, there’s more to it than just colors. The Watch Pride bands always have something extra, even down to more colorful packaging, for instance. This time, the band has a laser-etched lug that reads PRIDE 2024. Apple says the design is inspired by multiple Pride flags: “The colors black and brown symbolize Black, Hispanic, and Latin communities, as well as those impacted by HIV/AIDS, while the pink, light blue, and white hues represent transgender and nonbinary individuals.”
There are also new wallpapers for the iPad and iPhone and Apple uses this Pride moment to support LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations. These include ILGA World, a global federation committed to advancing the rights of LGBTQ+ people worldwide; and the Human Rights Campaign, a global advocacy group working to ensure all LGBTQ+ people are treated as full and equal citizens. Apple says it also supports other organizations, such as Encircle, Equality North Carolina, Equality Texas, GLSEN, Equality Federation, the National Center for Transgender Equality, PFLAG, SMYAL, and The Trevor Project.
The Watch face that goes with the band is called Pride Radiance and users can choose from a spectrum of colors to personalize the look. “On Apple Watch, the colors trace each numeral of the watch face and react in real time as the user moves their wrist based on input from the gyroscope,” Apple says.
You don’t need to buy the band to get the Watch face, of course, though you need to wait for an upcoming software release, watchOS 10.5, which Apple says is coming soon—though it could be very soon indeed: some analysts the next slew of updates could arrive as soon as today, May 7.
The Watch band itself is on sale from Monday, May 22 and will cost $99, £99 in the U.K. The Braided Solo Loop is one of the most comfortable bands around.
Oh, and if you want something even brighter, Nomad has just released a limited-edition Glow Sport Band which actually glows in the dark (but be quick, the luminous iPhone case that launched at the same time sold out in less than a day).
