Year after year I buy the newest Apple Watch. I’ve owned both the Ultra and the regular watch since their inception . In all those years, my primary use case is the ability to go for a walk or a run without my iPhone. I’ve always had the cellular watch. I just want to pop in my AirPods Pro, pull up a podcast or music on my watch and get going. But year after year, time after time, the watch fails just enough to drive me crazy. And I’m sad to say I’m getting the exact same experience with Apple Watch 12. Connectivity issues between Bluetooth and cellular were supposed to be improved. I’ve not experienced that. As I walk away from my home listening to Macsparky, the AirPods go silent. Then I see Mac Power Users on my Apple Watch face and tap the play button only to hear some music playlist I was listening to yesterday.
Then I ask Siri to play MPU and she says “Oh…there’s a problem.” No kidding. Then I go through the hassle of rebooting my watch and maybe, or maybe not, it will work. The Apple Watch has held so much promise. But for me, it fails over and over again. Siri works no better this go around than before. No “conversation” ability. Connectivity issues persist. I’ll ask Siri to call my daughter Lindsey and sometimes the call is made. Other times Siri tells me about Lindsey Graham.
I’d rather the Apple Watch do a few things correctly every time without fail, than a promise of dozens of cool features that perform on a hit or miss basis. And yes, I’m on the latest version of Watch OS. And yes, there’s been plenty of time for indexing. Once again, Apple yanked the football away just as I was about to kick.
Out of date play information in the music app, in particular, is definitely annoying.
What a bummer. I’m still rocking my Apple Watch 6 and it works great pretty much all of the time. That makes me leery to ever upgrade it.
…and not unique to the watch, unfortunately. I don’t listen from my watch, but experience these kinds of problems. I’ve only had CarPlay for less than a year and I still can’t figure out what causes the widget screen to properly recognise whether Music or Overcast is currently playing. It seems to pick one and stick with it for weeks, then suddenly it will change.
Watch OS27 on the new Apple Watch 12 series continues to disappoint. When I ask Siri to do something as simple as start a walk workout (while still standing in my garage connected to wifi) I get the Siri app swirling and thinking like this is something really complicated. Then, it will just say - “Something went wrong.” Ya think? I mean right now, Watch OS27 on the new Apple Watch 12 is a huge disappointment. The Siri animation might as well be replaced with a spinning beachball. It really is that bad. And this is almost across the board with every app when engaging Siri. Something is really, really wrong with the software. Hopefully Apple will catch this and make a fix soon.
I find connection issues whenever I move my Airpods out of range of my NON-CONNECTED devices.
Listening on the phone, take the dog out for a walk. At the edge of Bluetooth range of my at-home devices they start cutting out. But I’m listening on the iPhone in my pocket. Get another 50 feet, and everything is fine.
It’s kind of insane. It’s been like this for years.
I bought a new AW ultra 4. It’s been brilliant.
The battery life is amazing. Transcription (using the action button and Drafts) is pretty much spot on
The screen is beautiful with the extra space being so noticeable. I don’t think I’ve had one problem.
Siri on the phone is great. We were on our way to a restaurant and the motorway was blocked meaning we’d be late. I asked Siri to phone the restaurant by name (something which in the past would have been comically bad) within seconds I was speaking to someone at the restaurant.
I keep throwing things at Siri AI on watch and phone and it keeps passing.
I know the frustration with trying to listen to something on Apple Watch and AirPods. I use Overcast, and there’s supposedly a way to get it to background sync podcasts of a particular playlist, but I’ve never once been able to get it to work. And, if I try to sync it now and play the little game that comes up, I lose patience (well, my dogs lose patience as they are waiting on me to take them on their morning walk) and give up and grab my phone.
I think when I’ve tried it with Apple Podcasts I’ve had mixed luck, but it’s not been reliable by any means. Is that what you are using?
Overall, I’m really happy with the Ultra 3. I’ve taken it everywhere, even tried out the satellite text messages when camping without cell service a couple weeks ago. Wayfinding and the compass work well. Siri works reasonably well for me, and I haven’t experienced the bluetooth problems you’re describing. (knock on wood) That sounds extremely frustrating.