At the Apple Watch launch event in April 2015. It was so early that the demo software wasn’t ready yet. Image Anthony Nelzin-Santos. — Lyon (FR), 2015.04.

Existential marketing

A lot has been written about the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition, but it was just as much a lifestyle product as the iPod (“1,000 songs in your pocket”) or the iPhone (“this changes everything”) had been. Of course, it was Jony Ive and his billionaire friends’ lifestyle, but apart from that… The trio of ads that dropped on launch day was all about time management, health and fitness, and personal connection¹. If the Apple Watch is still a lifestyle product, then it’s for a rather hypochondriac one. Recent ads frequently hinge on high-stakes survival.

Apple’s strategy has shifted from lifestyle to lifeline. Its most memorable ad features snippets from emergency service calls — a driver trapped in a flipped car, a paddleboarder lost at sea, a farmer stuck in a pit with a broken leg. A few days before, just around Christmas, they’d proclaimed that “the future of health is on your wrist” while sharing the story of a mountain biker who was knocked unconscious in the forest and rescued after his Apple Watch automatically called 911. The subtext was clear and chilling: if you don’t wear an Apple Watch, you or someone you love could die alone in the wilderness.

Gone are the days when the Apple Watch was about sending cute messages before a date, paying for flowers on the way there, being on time and hopefully getting laid. The design has barely changed in 12 years, they still haven’t figured out the user experience and the chip development has pretty much stalled. It doesn’t matter: upgrading isn’t about getting a slightly bigger screen or marginally better battery life, but about renewing your insurance policy. The fear marketing campaign that culminated in “true Apple Watch stories” featuring life-or-death situations has now morphed into straight-up existential marketing.

One of the marquee features of the Apple Watch Series 12 is “the new Health Sensing System” that enables a new Longevity tab in the Health app, “with a Health Age feature showing how metrics are tracking relative to a user’s age”. In other words: by pulling data like HRV, VO₂ max, walking symmetry and even blood biomarkers, Apple will now quantify your decay. The app uses a nice little flower to represent your heart, sleep and metabolic health. I’m sure drooping petals won’t act as a daily representation of biological decline that’ll trigger existential anxiety.

Continuous high-fidelity health monitoring is a game-changer, but fear-mongering tactics might have unintended side effects. Apple is weaponizing the trust it somewhat deservedly earned by provoking a conflict of loyalty. Why listen to doctors when you can listen to your own body thanks to your Apple Watch? Its data is presented as the only objective truth you can rely on. We’re entering a weird era where people might doubt the efficacy of vaccines while wearing their Apple Watch 24/7. Maybe Apple should add ‘democracy health’ and ‘carbon emissions’ petals in the Longevity tab.

About the Z1NZ0L1N dispatch system

Z1NZ0L1N is a dispatch system operated by Anthony Nelzin-Santos, transmitting from the field since January 2025. This document describes the operator, the protocol’s naming convention, its transmission history, its field office, and how it’s funded.

Operator

Anthony Nelzin-Santos is a writer at heart, teacher by instinct, flâneur by habit. He’s known to wander in search of old shopfronts, to spend an inordinate amount of time curating his music library, to craft pocket notebooks with vintage roadmaps, to keep a collection of half-repaired typewriters and half-empty fountain pens, to wear jeans and hiking shoes all year round, to watch his plants grow, to roam around with the heaviest long-tail bike on the planet, and to acquire more books than can be read. He’s married to the only person willing to put up with all of it.

Naming convention

“Zinzolin” is a shade of purple between lavender-field blue and crushed-blackberry red. The medieval Italians traced it to jujube fruits (giuggiolino). The Mozarabs, were they still around to argue the point, would insist on sesame seeds (djoudjolân) instead. The operator chose it because it’s his favourite colour — partly because it sounds like his name.

Transmission history

The operator was born before the world wide web was invented, but grew up surrounded by computers. He launched his first website in 2000, started his first blog in 2004, recorded his first podcast in 2005, and uploaded his first video in 2006. He went pro in 2008. In 2025, after years spent transmitting in French, the frequency switched to English.

Funding

Z1NZ0L1N is proudly ad-free. The operator covers hosting and the domain name — roughly €120 a year — out of pocket. The best way to support his efforts is to subscribe to the RSS feed and share your favourite dispatches with your friends. That being said, if you ever feel like sending one, a cup of coffee is always welcome.

Tools

Notebooks: handmade. Ink: purple, one of many. Pen: a fountain pen, often a Lamy Safari, also one of many. Backup: a Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 1 ballpoint, a Uniball Zento Signature rollerball, or a Caran d’Ache 849 mechanical pencil. Notes when the notebook’s out of reach: Bloom. Computer: MacBook Air. Mechanical keyboard: more than one. Writing: Lettera, formerly Ulysses. Coding: BBEdit. Proofing: Antidote. Publication: Hugo.