Andrew Cunningham
Is it the fall yet?
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I make it a point not to install early betas of software on hardware that I use every day, but of all the software Apple announced at WWDC on Monday, the one that's tempting me the most is WatchOS 3. As many new things as iOS 10 and macOS Sierra both include, the next version of WatchOS is easily the biggest and most obvious improvement over the current one, and now that I've actually seen it in action on real hardware, it’s going to be hard to wait for.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about my first year with the Apple Watch. I've come to enjoy wearing the device even though I remain firmly convinced that most people don't really need one. The things I complained the most about were performance (in general) and consistency (in general). And some of the complaints I had in the original review, namely about the steep learning curve for new users and poor usage of the watch's physical buttons, still stood in WatchOS 2.0.
Let's start with the stuff that Apple has actually gotten rid of: Pressing the side button no longer brings up a Friends view, and swiping up from the bottom no longer brings up Glances. Glances were a decent idea in theory—fast access to snippets of information—but in practice they were hampered both by the watch’s speed and the way that its apps worked. The pauses while your watch and your phone communicated with each other to refresh the Glances made them frustrating and inconsistent, and it turns out that there's not really a need for a simpler, quicker version of a WatchOS app. WatchOS apps are already simple, so why make developers do the extra work?
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