Apple has announced Pride Edition bands for the Apple Watch to celebrate Pride Month in May for the past few years. Continuing with that tradition, the Cupertino-based tech giant has introduced two new Apple Watch Pride Edition bands —Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop and Pride Edition Sport Loop — with matching watch faces.
The tech giant said the Pride Edition Sport Loop had been designed using a new technique that removed several double-layer nylon-woven textile loops on the band to reveal “pride”, written in cursive and inspired by the original “hello” greeting displayed on the first ever Macintosh in 1984.
The Pride Edition Sport Loop has been designed with a colour gradient incorporating colours from various pride flags — pink, light blue, and white represents transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, black and brown symbolise the Black and Latinx communities. These colours also represent those living with or have died from HIV/AIDS.
The design of the Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop features a full spectrum of rainbow colours and honours LGBTQ+ individuals “who are expanding sport for future generations and inspiring others to feel the joy of being authentically themselves”.
Apple has also announced a matching rainbow-coloured Nike Bounce watch face for the Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop. For the Pride Edition Sport Loop, it has announced a Pride Threads watch face, inspired by multiple pride flags and combining colours to “represent the strength and mutual support of the LGBTQ+ movement”.
The Pride Threads watch face features colourful threads that mirror the woven loops on the Pride Edition Sport Loop.
Both watch faces are available for download and are compatible with the Apple Watch Series 4 or later running watchOS 8.6 and iPhone 6s or later running iOS 15.5.
The Pride Edition Sport Loop and Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop bands come in 41mm and 45mm options. It is priced at Rs 3,900. Apple has already made the bands available for purchase from its official website and the Apple Store app. It will be available at Apple Stores from May 26. Additionally, the Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop will be available on Nike’s official website.
Apple has also announced a new Shot on iPhone Pride Campaign, to be launched on Instagram next month.
