A rant: I am quite disappointed with the latest watchOS.
Why would Apple change a variety of core UI habits at this point? It seems like nothing is the same from watchOS 9. Gestures like swiping between watch faces no longer work, meanwhile the Watch’s buttons do different things.
It’s more than just muscle memory, too: swapping watch faces with a swipe let you check multiple sets of complications with just one finger (or, as I’ve talked about before, a nose). Now you need both your thumb and your fingers free on your other hand to switch from your Photos watch face to see how many minutes are left on your cooking timer. The designer behind these decisions must not have a toddler and must never have dirty hands…
It takes a lot of energy to be angry. I would love to be convinced that these changes are a good thing. Does anyone like them? Tell me why!
I never really use my watch for anything other than telling time now. Other than Drafts a lot of apps are crippled to the extent that I’d rather pull my iPhone out of my pocket…
Yes, there was a rant thread on this a while back, and I agree with your main point about swiping, and having multiple complications easily accessible. Aside from the swiping slowdown, I otherwise have grown to like the changes.
The removal of the ability to swipe between spaces makes no sense to me and is a substantial regression. But, once I got used to how the button functions have changed, I like them better this way, especially since I found out that double-clicking the crown provides similar functionality to what the side button used to provide.
Unfortunately, “like” is a strong word to use in this case, but I would say I have grown mostly accustomed to the changes sooner than I thought I would. But I don’t swipe between faces all that much. I can see why that would be a lingering annoyance.
If I could get a temperature complication that doesn’t take up extra space to tell me what the temperature was 9 hours ago — which I guess somebody at Apple thinks is crucial information to have instantly available at all times — I’d be happy.
I just want to know why the double-tap finger gesture is so - meh. User error on my part could be a big part of it but it doesn’t function how I’d expect.
If I double-tap now it takes me to the little “scroll up” screen as expected. If I set a 3-4 minute timer to brew some tea and it goes off, I can smash my fingers together at will and the stupid thing won’t turn off/register.
I knew it was a silly feature, but it’s even more useless than I had imagined…so far.
If I recall correctly from an article around the time of the release, the watch face swap was due to metrics that Apple had, showing that the vast majority of swaps were accidental. Thus the hold+swipe change.
I couldn’t agree with you more and was about to start a similar thread (even though one already existed) to give this more attention. I have given it a month and I just don’t understand why apple added the extra step to swap watch faces. I find this highly annoying. An even bigger concern for me is that the watch does not consistently connect to my AirPods anymore. I listen to music stored on the watch while running, before I updated to watch OS 10 it was very simple to get music going. There are many more steps now to get the music going and most of the time it will try to play to my iPhone, yes that’s right, to my iPhone from my watch! To get the music to work I have to run a couple hundred yards away from my wifi, at that point I can usually start my music. I find this highly irritating as well. I NEVER had a problem like this until updating to watchOS 10. Definitely a step backwards!
I have to say I found the old watch face changing method really, really annoying because it was often triggered when I didn’t want it to. It got so annoying that I removed every other face than the couple I use regularly.
For me the new method is a much better design: the face only changes when I want it to, and the difference between ‘swipe’ and ‘press and swipe’ is trivial.
I kept swiping over and over trying to change faces lol. I get the muscle memory retraining thing, but the swipe-to-change was so handy for me. I had faces in a particular order and routinely swiped to change them depending on what I was doing. I didn’t even have the date on my main face, so I would swipe over and back real quick to check the date. Now changing the face is more like changing a setting than a feature, so it’s less useful to me.
I understand why they moved control centre to make room for the widgets, but I don’t agree with it and don’t know why they put it on the button. I never remember to swipe up to use the widgets.
I used to use the dock for 4 apps which I’ve now had to add as widgets which means I need more watch faces and have to swipe more WHICH REALLY ANNOYS ME THAT I HAVE TO TAP AND HOLD BEFORE SWIPING.
I understand that devs see metrics we don’t and extrapolate behaviours, but these changes to multi year use of interfaces break muscle memory and often don’t provide much significant benefit.
And Apple don’t provide an easy way to provide polite feedback saying “WTF DID YOU DO, put it back”
