Apple Watch was released ten years ago today, and with it came the concept of “closing your rings.” Apple is celebrating the milestone with a special limited-edition award for everyone who closes their rings today:

To highlight how staying active can lead to a healthier life, on April 24, all Apple Watch users are encouraged to close their Activity rings to earn a special Global Close Your Rings Day limited-edition award, along with animated stickers for Messages.

In addition to the virtual rewards, Apple also has a special physical reward:

To celebrate Global Close Your Rings Day, customers can obtain a special pin inspired by the award. Customers can pick up a pin at Apple Store locations worldwide starting April 24, while supplies last.

I hope I’m still able to get one at my local store!

Update: Result!

I have fond—traumatic?—memories of the Apple Watch release. Leading up to its September 9, 2014 “One more thing…” announcement and the April 24, 2015 release, my team at Apple (DTS) helped a select group of developers prototype and then build working demos of their Watch apps. We eventually expanded that effort into all-day labs to give as many developers as possible the chance to test their apps on actual Watch hardware ahead of launch, and to enable a broad selection of apps on day one.

While we’d run developer labs before (going back to the original iPhone SDK), this was the first time we’d hosted them on such a massive scale; effectively any developer with an app was welcome to participate. We ultimately hosted thousands of developers over several months. It was exhausting, but rewarding. (We later replicated the daily lab experience for Apple Vision Pro in 2023.)

Ten years on and I still wear my Apple Watch every day, still use several third-party apps every day (Overcast, Authy, Citymapper…), and still strive to close my rings every day.

Congratulations to the Watch teams.