Welcome to 9 to 5 Mac Daily for Friday, September 12th, 2025.

I'm your host, Chance Miller.

We are sponsored this week by I Amazing.

Leading off today, when Apple Watch series 11 and Ultra 3 this week, it unveiled its latest

health feature, hypertension notifications.

At the time, the company said it expected clearance from the Food and Drug Administration soon in the United States.

As of Thursday night, that clearance has officially been granted,

and the hypertension notifications feature is set to launch next week.

The feature will be available in more than

150 countries and regions around the world at launch, including the United States, the EU,

Hong Kong, and New Zealand. The feature is available on the new Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra

3, alongside the Series 9, the Series 10, and the Ultra 2.

So you don't need to buy a new watch to take advantage of this feature.

The Hypertension Alerts feature will monitor your background data over 30-day periods

and will notify you if it detects consistent signs of hypertension.

Apple says the new hypertension notifications feature could alert

nearly half of users with high blood pressure, including an even greater share of those with more severe

stage 2 hypertension. The feature runs passively in the background, rather than acting as a formal

screening tool, and Apple emphasizes that not everyone with hypertension or receive a notification.

In testing, the feature reached 95% specificity in the normal category,

meaning that many people flagged without full hypertension still showed elevated readings.

Apple says this helps raise awareness and encourages proactive conversations with doctors about long-term risks like heart disease, stroke, and kidney issues. The feature again will be available next week as part of watchOS 26 and on the new series 11 and ultra-3 hardware. Next up today, AirPods Pro 3 debuted this week with one of its headlining features

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