I’ve been pretty neutral about the changes on watchOS 10. I understood that people don’t like changes -
but it’s been 2 months now and I still try to bring up the control center the old way, I still try to access my most recently used apps the old way and I’m still annoyed by having submenus everywhere where watchOS 9 was straightforward with everything. watchOS 10 is the most unintuitive Apple experience I ever had.
Old top menu bar, one line leaving space for the actual content
New top menu bar with huge buttons at the top, pushing down the actual content
Probably the worst part on my 40mm SE is that the colorful backgrounds made all app icons on watch faces smaller (there has recently been a post about this) and I keep missing icons when clicking them. I sometimes need to click an icon 4 times until it registers, along with the colorful backgrounds and unnecessarily huge flashy other buttons this feels like a $50 knockoff Watch to me now.
Also what did they think when changing the menu bar at the top? It used to be one small line (picture 1) but now on my 40mm Watch about 1 fourth of the screen is covered by each app’s title or clock (picture 2). I know what app I’m in, I don’t need half the screen (exaggerating yes) covered to be reminded of the app I’m using.
watchOS 10 must’ve been designed by someone who doesn’t really use their Apple Watch much I assume. I’m not blaming them, everyone can make mistakes when the goal was progress but it’s not like a mistake has to be set in stone. Just roll it back or give us a choice between design and functionality - I personally prefer functionality, it’s not like watchOS 9 was so ugly that it needed a re-design to begin with.
Hated it until I realised where the recent apps shortcut was then I was happy again. I like the UI change, just would have been nice to have a quick tutorial to show where things had moved.
Man y’all really love to complain here, easy unsub…
I seem to be in the minority around here but I think OS 10 is an improvement.
The only old feature I miss is how easy it was to swipe between faces.
It took me about two days fully change
First Apple Watch and I’m loving it. I have no idea what it was like before cuz I was on android. P.s. their watches are not that good and I was with them for 8 years lol
I’ve had absolutely no issues with getting used to the button functionality changes. If it’s taking you over two months to adjust, then it’s definitely an issYOU and nothing to do with Apple.
watchOS 10 must’ve been designed by someone who doesn’t really use their Apple Watch much I assume.
You know what they say about assuming.
Yeah when something worked for almost 10 years, and Apple changes it, it’s definitely me who’s suddenly at fault. Wow what a childish mindset that is.
Seems fine for me. The only thing I would like to see a change is on the stacks. It has the time at the top of it which isn’t neccasary becasue as you scroll down the time appears anyway.
Yeah that’s pretty dumb. I wish you at least had the chance to adjust whether it’s digital or analogue. I’d actually kinda appreciate having quick access to the precise time when using an analogue watch face.
Really I just wish that you could change the entire stack for each face. Customization in general is the big issue with the OS, honestly, and you really feel it when you lose the ability to do something on a device as small/limited as a watch. A lot of the changes here should be things you can opt in or out of.
This might be useful to you. I bought it yesterday. It’s a digital time complication for 99p
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/timeglance-complication/id1531068181
Battery has been good but my cellular with Verizon stopped working and my automations related to my watch aren’t working either. SE2 40mm
Idk, I like it quite a bit
I didn’t download watchOS 10 mainly because it would make the battery way worse on my first generation, SE
I do
watchOS 10 must’ve been designed by someone who doesn’t really use their Apple Watch much I assume.
i’m not convinced all that many higher ups at apple use the product at all, which is why it’s been so stagnant for years now
You’re not alone, the best we can do is give Apple our feedback on this, I totally hated the Touch Bar and ports on MacBooks pros, most people didn’t like it either and Apple had to go back to old design. With WatchOS 10 they also tried to fix something that wasn’t broken, we must be able to customise how the watch behaves, if your side button malfunctions you’re left without control center
Yeah the touch bar is fucking useless. I programmed it to simply show the normal keys. Now went with a MacBook Air instead just to avoid the TouchBar, haven’t ever used it for anything except for showing the keys it replaced
Autocorrect was a cool feature. I think that’s the only thing I like about it.
Interesting, I always found active autocorrect annoying on computers. I’m fine with how it is in Chrome, just marking potentially wrong words instead of turning each “fuck” into “duck”
It’s quite nice when you’re paying for something. But yeah, otherwise I’d rather have the normal keys
What do you mean paying? Do you mean Touch ID? All MacBooks have Touch ID regardless of the Touch Bar, you don’t need the Touch Bar for that
Yes but it’s nice how it displays the amount right next to where you have to touch, with an arrow pointing to the Touch ID sensor. It’s a nice touch to have one last check how much you’re paying right there next to where you need to put your finger.
Did they change the ports?
HDMI, SD card reader and MagSafe charging port were added back
Customization is definitely the key here. It’s anathema to how Apple does things usually, but watches are such a personal item that you use constantly through the day that it’s necessary when you make big changes like this.
I adjusted. It took a few weeks of reprogramming my muscle memory.
Yeah was annoyed first but already forgot how it used to be before already, lol
Same - actually like it more now
My issue is that there’s still no replacement for the Dock. I can’t get to most of my apps anymore without scrolling a list of every app on my watch.
Double click the crown to view recently opened.
I find the “Smart” Stack anything but. After sucking my battery dry with the weather widget (took me a week from the RC to stumble on that) to absolute agony trying to change any features because maybe my fingers are too big. I went back to my usual faces with complications that displayed the information I needed in less than a second.
Sadly, that left me either the problem of wasting my time to simply swipe left or right to go from a pretty analog watch face to Infograph with my nice 8 complications, glance at it, and swipe back to my pretty analog face. Total time in under 2 seconds, making it simple, intuitive, and helpful. But nope, press for 2 seconds, looks through the little watch face icons, select it, read it for a second, then spend 2 seconds holding that face to go back into edit mode to select the other face. If people were having too much trouble with accidental swipes from clothing (I mostly wear dress shirts, yet only happened maybe 2 or 3 times in two years of daily wear, add a no swipe toggle in control panel, and no more accidental swipes. That group is happy, and I’m happy having my swipe function to use as I see fit (my needs and moods change throughout the day, so no, focus modes won’t help).
The list goes on and on of unintuitive changes made for the sake of change, not improvement in actual use. To take a functional and intuitive UX and fiddle with it quite literally just for the sake of it shows design teams struggling to find helpful new features, so just move things around and make it feel different. That goal they met.
The only real attempt at improving utility and speed of feature management was double tap. Rebranded from accessibility features, and not exactly enough of a breakthrough to make me rush to the counter to trade in my S7 for an S9, and hope one out of three double pinches achieves the command I meant to enter, instead of a single nose tap.
I didn’t put the watch face swipe in my post because I think some people simply accidentally swiped all the time but your suggestion making it an option sounds perfect
The odd thing is that the UX was far from perfect even before 10. There were plenty of things that could have been done. The home screen in particular, which has barely been messed with. No ability to set favorites in list view to sit at the top for easy access is a ridiculous oversight. You can’t hide apps you don’t want on your home screen, or sort them in any way, let alone organize them into folders. The best you can do is remove the app altogether. The app cluster view is really cluttered and hard to distinguish what you are looking for. To me that seems like it should be a far higher priority than redoing perfectly usable bits of UI.