watchOS 10: Peaks and Troughs
Another year and another update to the venerable operating system that runs on millions of watches is here. This time though, it’s a mixed bag. It’s easy for us technology enthusiasts become complacent about the fact we get new features released each year for ‘free’. There is though unwritten contract between Apple and its user base that these free updates won’t regress the product that was originally purchased. Unfortunately that’s not the case with watchOS 10. While there are some fantastic new features, the overall quality appears to have dropped significantly.
Let’s start with the good. The new design is a welcome change. Having dropped the original 42/38mm watches, Apple have been able to stretch their design muscle and rethink many of the core apps. Stalwarts like Activity (which incidentally has not been renamed to Fitness like its iOS sibling - a plus in my view) now look much more modern, though there is still no way to see a map of a run or cycle on the watch itself - surprising considering the Apple Watch has shipped with a maps app since day one. The Fitness app remains the same, but now asks for confirmation when ending a workout. After eight years of not requiring one and having recorded workouts nearly every day of those eight years, this will definitely take some getting used to. The Weather app looks great, taking inspiration from its iOS counterpart. Overall, Apple have done a fantastic job with the new design.
My favourite new feature is widgets. It’s now possible to scroll the digital crown or swipe up from the main watch face and see a list of customisable widgets. The nicely solves the problem of watch faces being severely limited with space and the fact that many of the nicest looking watch faces don’t have many complication slots. It’s essentially the Siri watch face available all of the time with a simple gesture. In fact, I’m surprised the Siri face is still available as it seems unnecessary now. The downside is it requires two hands to operate, and so it’s not as convenient as a standard complication would be.
At long last we have some decent new watch faces. For the past few years the new offerings have been hit and miss. It’s as if Apple sends all its junior designers on day one to the watch face division. Well those junior designers have finally graduated. The new Solar Analogue and Palette faces are beautiful, and sit well along alongside some of the original classics such as Solar and Astronomy.
Another useful new feature is that when recording a cycling workout, your phone can be used to display metrics from the workout. File this under “totally obvious” because in hindsight, it is. In hindsight, of course. This is Apple at its best. Trying to look at a watch when cycling isn’t easy, and can often be downright unsafe! Now, thanks to the seamless integration between watchOS and iOS, an Apple Watch Series 4 purchased in 2018 can now be a full on cycle computer at no extra cost.
But I said it wasn’t all good. The biggest problem has been battery life. With watchOS 9 on my Series 8, I would typically end the day at 50% on those days when I did short workout (30mins), but with watchOS 10 it’s been down to 20%. “That’s OK” I hear you say “As long as you get through the day, that’s all that matters right?”. Wrong. It’s not acceptable for an update to regress the original capabilities of the hardware. If it was possible to get two full days from the watch, then it should be with the new update (battery aging and expected reduction in capacity notwithstanding). When I cycled around the Isle Of Wight earlier this year, I took for granted the watch could deal with a day of cycling. I often run for multiple hours at a time. I want to know the watch can cope with what I paid for it to do in the first place. With watchOS 10, I’m not so confident any more. I’m sure it’s a bug, and it will be fixed in due time, but the fact Apple didn’t spot and fix it before the release is extremely disappointing. I’ve been able to mitigate the issue somewhat by removing features such as the Weather complication and disabling background refresh for all apps. Still, I wonder if the QA department have been focusing too much on Vision Pro lately instead of the watch!
Playing media now seems unnecessarily complicated. Before it was clear whether you were playing a song or podcast on the watch or from your phone. Now when I navigate to the “Dowloaded” section and choose a podcast, it plays on my phone! I hope it’s a bug and will be fixed. I’m not sure in what world Apple thought someone would want to play audio from their phone via the watch by default. The only way to stop it doing this was to walk out of bluetooth range of my phone and then try to play the podcast again. A common scenario for me is selecting a podcast before a run. Now a task that took a couple of taps is going to take a lot of fiddling with Bluetooth settings. This is another example of poor quality and lack of testing. (If it is indeed a bug, if not then it is an astonishingly poor reading on how customers actually use their devices)
If Apple could fix the rough parts, I would recommend upgrading to watchOS 10. Right now, I wish I’d held off. I suspect after a couple of months have passed, Apple will iron out the rough bits and fix the bugs. So if you’ve not yet upgraded, I’d recommend waiting. If you have an Apple Watch Ultra but rarely use it for ultra marathons, then you might be OK with the reduced battery life. This time last year, watchOS was still the newest of Apple’s computing platforms. Now though there’s a new kid on the block: visionOS. It will be interesting to see how much attention the Apple Watch gets going forward. I’m not particularly enthused about the prospect of wearing an M1 Mac on my face, and at the current price, I won’t be trying Vision Pro for many years. The Apple Watch is still the computer that is with you all of the time and the only computer that directly senses your body. For me at least, it’s still the most exciting of Apple’s platforms.