New Apple Watches have ears

Starting about 45 minutes into today’s Apple Event, during the segment on the new Apple Watch, Ron Huang introduced a couple of features of the Series 12 and Ultra 4 that struck me as both disturbing and possibly illegal. They certainly seem at odds with Apple’s commitment to privacy. First came Live Rewind, a feature that lets you “go back in time” to pick up on something you missed that was said in the past 15 seconds. Here’s how Apple describes it on the website: Live Rewind catches what you missed. Did someone say something you couldn’t hear in a loud restaurant or share cooking instructions you didn’t quite catch? Just double-click the Digital Crown, and Live Rewind transcribes what was said in the last 15 seconds. You can ask Siri about the content of the transcript or save it to the new Siri app to revisit later. In the Event, this was illustrated by a waitress going through the restaurant’s specials too quickly for the diners to remember all of them. One of the diners…