A major concern that spurred a few weeks ago, was of the lack of a kill switch for smartwatches in general. Surely the recent laws passed on the matter only covered smartphones, but jewelry is another major theft target, and it made all the sense in the world for a “smart” watch, to have something like this as part of the package. Apple didn’t really mention any added security measures with the keynote of watchOS 2, but the company has decided to surprise everyone.

watchOS 2 beta 3 didn’t just include bug fixes for those developers testing. We were surprised this morning with an Activation Lock message on our Apple Watch review unit after we updated to the new beta. As it turns out Apple has silently pushed the feature, and has also updated the watchOS 2 website with details on how Activation Lock works on your watch. Just like on iOS for iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch, your watch will now require your Apple ID in order to activate itself. In case of theft, your Apple Watch will pretty much become useless to the thief without this activation code.

This is definitely a major upgrade for those spending so much cash on an Apple Watch. Android Wear currently does have a pattern password service enabled through the latest version of Android Wear, but hopefully it extends to support the Android Device Manager.

Source: Apple