Watch OS 10 - Did It Live Up to the Hype
Table of Contents
Intro
There were a lot of things that came out of WWDC this year that got me excited. Widgets everywhere, new features that I could take advantage of if I got a new phone and of course, what came across as a fairly large revamp of Watch OS. If you have listened to a few of the g4f podcast episodes, you’ll know that my watch is my favorite Apple device. Even with the new 15 Pro Max it still is, although I think it’s a bit closer race now. So I was really excited about what maybe coming with Watch OS. So much so that I even considered putting the beta on my watch very early in the cycle.
Did it live up to the hype and my expectations? Let’s find out.
Features Overview
Let’s start off with the new features.
Interface overhaul which included new look and feel for the built in apps, including the ability to take advantage of the bigger screens.
Widgets, including a widget that could hold complications for apps.
Remapping of the buttons and swipe motions.
Two new watch faces.
New cycling metrics and connectivity to cycling accessories and the ability to see your cycling working on your phone as a live activity and full screen.
New hiking features like cellular connectivity waypoints, offline maps and topographic maps.
And more…
Interface Overhaul
Let’s start with the interface overhaul. It was fairly dramatic, especially for a platform whose core interface hadn’t really changed since it launched. Overall I think it’s a positive, but there are some drawbacks, especially when we combine this with some of the button remapping. More on that later.
One of the main changes was a refresh of all the built in apps, and I assume the ability for 3rd party apps to do the same. The apps (can) now take advantage of the whole screen instead of only really stretching to the original screen size. I never really understood why, with the exception of a couple of new watch faces every year, the system didn’t take advantage of the multiple time Apple increased the screen size.
In WatchOS 10, one of the ways they made this happen was by essentially putting in-app complications in the apps. For example, if you look at the fitness app, you have additional complications and the time in the corners and your rings in the middle. Much more information on a single screen which very much aligns with how I use the watch.
And it’s more than just that. The Apple apps also got a look and feel overhaul. They look more modern and have new animations. To me, they feel cleaner and like they are finally not the first generation of the apps. All of this gets a thumbs up from me.
Widgets
Widgets were supposed to be the game changer. You can probably tell by how I wrote that first sentence that they have not yet lived up to their hype.
One of the primary uses I have for my watch is to get information. Notifications, current weather, time, date and other quick glanceable info. I don’t interact a lot with the apps on the watch for this kind of information. Widgets were going to make it so much easier for me to do this AND to do something I have wanted to do for years - to use watch faces that don’t have a million complications. They theory was that you would just swipe up from the bottom of the screen and have all of your information in these small widgets. And one of those widgets would be able to hold app complications, like you have on the watch face.
As soon as I loaded the new version, I immediately put on a watch face with no complications and set up my widgets. Or at least I set up the widgets that were available - only Apple’s. Weeks after the release that’s still pretty much all there are. And that’s where we start to run into issues. The widgets that have been developed are just not good enough and there are not enough apps that have adopted it. Right now, I only have three. Weather, fitness, and the one that can hold three complications (which there are also not enough options for). The weather one is useful. The complications one I wanted to use to launch apps but the apps I keep on my watch face don’t support it. So in that one I have music, messages and heart rate. Not exactly the robust feature I was expecting.
To say I was disappointed is an understatement.. Now, I still do use a watch face with no complications on occasion but it’s no longer my default, as much as I want it to be. Instead I’ve gone back to one with as much information as possible. I’ll talk about that in the watch faces section.
So the interface overhaul is a mixed bag for me. I think it has tremendous potential, especially if they continue to work on gestures that would make navigating the system easier or finally get Siri smart enough to really know what information I want to see at any given time. But for now, it’s just not as much of a step forward as I had hoped for and is one reason that I would say the lead my watch has over my iPhone is shrinking.
Buttons & Gestures
Not to go into too much detail here, but the new button and gestures changes are a mixed bag as well. Single press on the crown to see all the apps. Double press to see most recently used. Single press on the side button is still Apple Pay and a double press now pulls up control center since the swipe up gesture now pulls up the widgets.
I missed being able to swipe right or left to switch watch faces. Why they removed this I have no idea because they didn’t replace it with anything. And I also miss the dock. I think if I could get to the dock, the widget and non-complication faces would be more useful. Maybe we will get some of those back. And while we are at it, can we get more flexibility in programming all the buttons and gestures?
Watch Faces
Originally there were two, Snoopy and Palette. Then they added Solar, Modular Ultra and a new Nike face in the September event. At the beginning, it was all about the Snoopy watch face. And I will say that for weeks, it was amazing so.
Snoopy
This face is just a delight and makes we want way more like this. There is a whole background on how the face came about and it seems like an incredible amount of work. But the result is unreal. There are almost 200 different animations that show up. We had a podcast listener tell us that her watch battery was draining way faster because she would just sit there and tap through the animations. On top of that, they built in a nostalgia feature - on Sunday, the white background rotates through all the color options just like the Sunday newspaper had the comics in color versus black and white the rest of the week.
The downside with this is just what I talked about above. There are no complications (but it would be really cool if there were and the animations interacted with them) so that means that you have to rely on the widgets to get all of the information you would get on a watch face with complications and I just can’t get that.
So as much as I would like to use this watch face 99% of the time, it just doesn’t work and the frustration that comes trying to get to the info I want ends up outweighing the delight of the watch face. So I use it on the weekends or other key times.
Modular Ultra
What I end up using most of the time during the week is the new Modular Ultra watch face. It’s max glanceable information and one big complication in the middle (weather for me) that gives me more information. I have a video on our YouTube channel showing how I have this set up. Check it out here - https://youtube.com/shorts/RvwGVCwx-uM?feature=share.
The only time I don’t use this during the week is during a workout where I have a focus mode that switches to the Wayfinder face.
Others
The other watches faces look good. I haven’t tried the Palette or Solar but I did configure the new Nike one. it looks good but the modular ultra is just way more useful.
The Music Saga
So this probably my biggest struggle with Watch OS. And it’s related to my concerns with all of the Apple updates this fall - ecosystem stability. I’ve gotten at least one random respring, things don’t stay in sync, had to reboot it a few times and then there is the music saga which I don’t know if it’s a bug or a design feature challenge.
I use my watch a lot to playback music and podcasts. And I’m talking about playing them directly from the watch itself. I don’t keep all of my music on there but I do keep a lot (about 11gb). In previous versions of the OS it was easy to see what was on the watch and you could just hit play and no worries, even if your iPhone was close by. Then if you wanted to play something that was not on there, it would play from the iPhone, or if I was out without my phone, it would stream it. Straight forward.
The other day, I was trying to play music directly from the watch and everytime I hit play, it would play it from the phone, even if bluetooth was turned off so in theory, the devices weren’t directly connected. In order to get it to play directly from the watch, I had to go in and fiddle with the airplay part of the music app on the watch and then it worked. Right now it will default to that. But if I ever go in and control the music on my phone from the watch (or probably any of my other devices) it going to then default back to that instead of the watch. This is the shortened version of this story. If you want to hear the whole rant I went on, check out the post show of episode 19 of gadgets for families (https://player.captivate.fm/episode/de30b844-67c1-4bbb-893b-25d57a468bd8).
So here is my frustration and it’s in three parts: 1 - stabilize all the sync and backend issues we are seeing with all the new OSs. 2 - make it easier for me to default media playback directly from my watch. 3 - stop making me choose the only pair of headphones that pop up when I want to play back media. Just default to them.
Wrap Up
Overall Watch OS 10 does have great potential, but so far I don’t think it has risen up to that potential. I want my watch to remain my favorite device and it still is. But if they don’t work through some of these things, it’s going to lose ground.
Now all that being said, I don’t really regret being on the new version. Even with the trade offs, it’s still a good step forward.