Apple Watch Newbie Initial Reactions

[JulianL]

I've been an iPhone user since 2010 (iPhone 4 release day) but haven't jumped into the Apple Watch world until I picked up my S6 on Monday afternoon and have had a full day playing with it yesterday, and I really mean that I spent almost the full day either interacting directly with it or doing stuff on the iPhone Watch app to push watch faces etc down to it.

My basic reaction is that I love it but 3 things leapt out at me that I really hope Apple will address in the not too distant future...

1 - I find the app launcher frustrating. I really wish there was a way in Settings to hide specified app icons in the launcher in order to reduce clutter. I find it infuriating that I have to have what to me is nonsense like Memoji cluttering up the launcher. I could actually clean it up a lot if I could hide icons because I'd not only get rid of things I will never use but also hide icons for like Weather, Calendar and ultimately probably quite a lot of other stuff where I can more quickly launch those apps via a complication on my watch face (or faces).

2 - Now that I've discovered that I can set up multiple watch faces and swipe through them using left and right swipes I'm beginning to treat my watch faces a bit like pages of the home screen on an iPhone and to make that more effective I'd love it if Apple added an extra watch face that didn't have any time display at all but was simply a grid of complications where maybe the dial-type options in the watch face allowed the user to choose between 3 or 4 different layouts for the complications. A dial option that offered a simple 3 x 3 grid on which to place complications would allow up to 9 applications to be launched from a single screen for instance. I would never set this as my main clock face but it would be great for swipe-left and/or swipe-right faces to take me to launcher/info screens where I could put lots of complications linked to various apps that I wanted to quick-launch plus maybe some info displays. If I had this facility I think I'd set it up so that I could swipe-right to see a health page with my activity rings & heart rate info plus the other complications set up to launch the workout, ECG, blood-ox, Breathe etc apps. I'd then set up another complications/launcher page on swipe-left for utilities with complications on that page to launch stuff like Calculator, Shazam, Messages, Contacts, Settings, Maps, Timer etc. (complications on my main clock face allow me to launch Calendar and Weather already so those are already covered). With that I doubt I'd need to go into the main launcher at all and if I did, coupled with the ability to hide icons from (1) above, the launcher would probably only have 10 or fewer items in it anyway so would be very quick and easy to navigate.

3 - This is a really minor niggle but Apple offers a lot of flexibility to choose different dial styles and colours within a given watch face. I really wish it also offered a few options to customise the look of the hour and minute hands, for instance the Utility face has solid hands whereas the California Face has "outline" hands and you're stuck with that. At the very least I wish that I could have solid hands on my California watch face although I find pretty much all the hour and minute hands to be quite "chunky", more like a sports watch, and I would love it if I could select slightly finer solid hands (not as fine as the second hand obviously) more like a dress watch. Adding even 2 or 3 options for hand styles would make many of the watch faces quite a lot more flexible I would have thought.

The above isn't intended to be a rant against the Apple Watch, as I said up front I'm really impressed with it and the fact that I can only find 3 things I really wish that it had to make it pretty much perfect in my eyes makes me even more impressed.

I will go off and do some searching to find the appropriate feedback mechanism so that I can submit my suggestions to Apple although they must get deluged with so much stuff that I am usually quite sceptical about how much effect such submissions have. In the meantime, as mentioned I am a total Apple Watch newbie so if there are any workarounds that I haven't discovered yet that could get me at least some of the way to achieving my wishes 1-3 above I'd be grateful to hear about them. So far the best I've managed is to use the "Infograph Modular" watch face for my swipe-left/right launcher screens since it does look sort of like an app launcher rather than a clock face and offers a reasonable number of complications.

 

[casperes1996]

My basic reaction is that I love it but 3 things leapt out at me that I really hope Apple will address in the not too distant future...

It really is great - Series 4 is the one I got, my first and current and from like day 2 I felt confident calling it one of the best new products Apple had come up with since the original iPod. In my opinion the execution of the idea is better than iPhone and iPad as well though those product categories as ideas have a broader market significance. The Apple Watch is really fantastically executed - well crafted both in hardware and software and does exactly what it sets out to do perfectly. Really love it too.

The above isn't intended to be a rant against the Apple Watch, as I said up front I'm really impressed with it and the fact that I can only find 3 things I really wish that it had to make it pretty much perfect in my eyes makes me even more impressed.

I will go off and do some searching to find the appropriate feedback mechanism so that I can submit my suggestions to Apple although they must get deluged with so much stuff that I am usually quite sceptical about how much effect such submissions have. In the meantime, as mentioned I am a total Apple Watch newbie so if there are any workarounds that I haven't discovered yet that could get me at least some of the way to achieving my wishes 1-3 above I'd be grateful to hear about them. So far the best I've managed is to use the "Infograph Modular" watch face for my swipe-left/right launcher screens since it does look sort of like an app launcher rather than a clock face and offers a reasonable number of complications.

To my usage your three points haven't ever really bothered me or been on my mind at all, but I could certainly see them as improvements on the formula, so yeah, good feedback to Apple.

While giving feedback can sometimes seem pointless to such a huge company, I can guarantee you that they absolutely read it and consider it, even if they don't always reply. And in fact sometimes they do reply, but usually only if they want more information on a bug, otherwise they just read and consider to save on time going through all the feedback, but there do take it all in. I've had several conversations with engineers over my feedback postings in the past - and I do love the fact that it's often an actual engineer who gets back to you on the bug reports, at least if it's not one of the common requests like "please attach system information". And I mean, I've even had emails from Craig Federichi and Tim Cook, so you really can get heard and seen even though it's a big company


On a completely different note, I have to say that when I read your very well written and generally excellent post here, I did not expect the rest of this thread to be as it is. I mean, c'mon guys, even if you're not chuffed about Apple Watch, there's no need to come in and piss on this guy's pancakes.
And likewise, OP, don't let negative comments like that affect how you feel. Apple Watch is great and the negative posters probably haven't even tried one

 

[Achilles75]

1 - I find the app launcher frustrating. I really wish there was a way in Settings to hide specified app icons in the launcher in order to reduce clutter. I find it infuriating that I have to have what to me is nonsense like Memoji cluttering up the launcher. I could actually clean it up a lot if I could hide icons because I'd not only get rid of things I will never use but also hide icons for like Weather, Calendar and ultimately probably quite a lot of other stuff where I can more quickly launch those apps via a complication on my watch face (or faces).

You can remove the Memoji app, and a number of other ones as well. Set your app view to Grid, long press and wait for the apps to start jiggling (a la iPhone or iPad). Then you will see the "x" option on the ones that are removable. Note - this is removing the app from your watch, not hiding it. But I agree with you completely on the Memoji - I have no use for it.

 

[JulianL]

You can remove the Memoji app, and a number of other ones as well. Set your app view to Grid, long press and wait for the apps to start jiggling (a la iPhone or iPad). Then you will see the "x" option on the ones that are removable. Note - this is removing the app from your watch, not hiding it. But I agree with you completely on the Memoji - I have no use for it.

Thanks. I'd found that feature but for some reason hadn't spotted the "x" on the Memoji icon so had falsely categorised it in my mind as one of the built-in apps that couldn't be deleted (or even just icons hidden in launcher). At least that's one gone so many, many thanks for pointing out my error. I do still wish I could arbitrarily hide pretty much anything from appearing in the app launcher though since I do find it most convenient to some apps from complications so no need for them in the launcher, at least for my use case, or I never directly interact with them such as the hearing app so that one I wouldn't actually want to delete (even though for that one I could) but would like to hide it from appearing in the app launcher.

 

[JulianL]

...
On a completely different note, I have to say that when I read your very well written and generally excellent post here, I did not expect the rest of this thread to be as it is. I mean, c'mon guys, even if you're not chuffed about Apple Watch, there's no need to come in and piss on this guy's pancakes.
And likewise, OP, don't let negative comments like that affect how you feel. Apple Watch is great and the negative posters probably haven't even tried one

Thanks for your constructive feedback and kind words. You are a true gentleman. Don't worry about me though, although I appreciate the sentiment. I simply tuned the guy out. Some people engage constructively here, some don't. Such is life.

 

[Never mind]

.......

 

[Never mind]

Whoops......

 

[JasonHB]

I note that his profile is showing as suspended now, which can only be a good thing.

I really love my Apple Watch, had series 0 and upgraded a few times and now got my Series 6 and love it. I don’t understand peoples need to come onto forums and consistently slag off the products and criticise and put down users and people that love their tech.

Whey can’t you just not say anything at all. If you don’t like something, stay away. I don’t go on Android forums and moan and criticise them.

I don’t know what they world is coming to anymore.

Anyway, enjoy your watch and ignore all the trolls

Jason

 

[hirsthirst]

[...]

1 - I find the app launcher frustrating. I really wish there was a way in Settings to hide specified app icons in the launcher in order to reduce clutter. I find it infuriating that I have to have what to me is nonsense like Memoji cluttering up the launcher. I could actually clean it up a lot if I could hide icons because I'd not only get rid of things I will never use but also hide icons for like Weather, Calendar and ultimately probably quite a lot of other stuff where I can more quickly launch those apps via a complication on my watch face (or faces).

2 - Now that I've discovered that I can set up multiple watch faces and swipe through them using left and right swipes I'm beginning to treat my watch faces a bit like pages of the home screen on an iPhone and to make that more effective I'd love it if Apple added an extra watch face that didn't have any time display at all but was simply a grid of complications [...]

I'm much the same - long term iPod > iMac > iPhone > iPad user, but never had an AW until recently. I think these two are really good ideas & my AW interaction is now mostly a large time display with rings underneath, with the next page an identical time display with Workouts underneath it, then a third with just the battery ... All that I need + Calendar reminders 5-minutes ahead of my next meeting.

 

[maflynn]

[MOD NOTE]
A number of posts were removed, due to cleaning up a number of posts that violated the rules.

 

[djlythium]

You can remove the Memoji app, and a number of other ones as well. Set your app view to Grid, long press and wait for the apps to start jiggling (a la iPhone or iPad). Then you will see the "x" option on the ones that are removable. Note - this is removing the app from your watch, not hiding it. But I agree with you completely on the Memoji - I have no use for it.

Thanks! That helped a bit. I didnt know this!

 

[Never mind]

What I really like about my watch, which is the first time I’ve ever owned an Apple Watch, was that when I asked Siri a question as to my location, it actually came up with an address I was standing in front of, not once but twice. I thought that was interesting. It actually read out the street numbers. And the second thing I really like about my Cellular edition watch is that I can make phone calls Without carrying my darn iPhone all the time. I’m pretty impressed and it was both clear making a call and receiving a call which I was kind of impressed with.

 

[Knowlege Bomb]

1 - I find the app launcher frustrating. I really wish there was a way in Settings to hide specified app icons in the launcher in order to reduce clutter. I find it infuriating that I have to have what to me is nonsense like Memoji cluttering up the launcher. I could actually clean it up a lot if I could hide icons because I'd not only get rid of things I will never use but also hide icons for like Weather, Calendar and ultimately probably quite a lot of other stuff where I can more quickly launch those apps via a complication on my watch face (or faces).

Have you considered setting your dock up as Favorites and using that as an app launcher? Depending on how many apps you actually use, you could leave it set as Recents and still just use that as a launcher.

 

[parseckadet]

3 - This is a really minor niggle but Apple offers a lot of flexibility to choose different dial styles and colours within a given watch face. I really wish it also offered a few options to customise the look of the hour and minute hands, for instance the Utility face has solid hands whereas the California Face has "outline" hands and you're stuck with that. At the very least I wish that I could have solid hands on my California watch face although I find pretty much all the hour and minute hands to be quite "chunky", more like a sports watch, and I would love it if I could select slightly finer solid hands (not as fine as the second hand obviously) more like a dress watch. Adding even 2 or 3 options for hand styles would make many of the watch faces quite a lot more flexible I would have thought.

I agree with this 1000%. Someone at Apple has absolutely fallen in love in sub-minute markings on analog faces, but they also insist on having incredibly imprecise hands with rounded ends. That makes impossible to tell which tick mark the hands are pointing at.

 

[QCassidy352]

Have you considered setting your dock up as Favorites and using that as an app launcher? Depending on how many apps you actually use, you could leave it set as Recents and still just use that as a launcher.

yeah this is great advice. Setting the dock to show favorites can basically give you a slimmed down version of the launcher with the apps you regularly use. I also set the regular launcher to list format, as I think that's a lot easier than the grid.

 

[JulianL]

Have you considered setting your dock up as Favorites and using that as an app launcher? Depending on how many apps you actually use, you could leave it set as Recents and still just use that as a launcher.

That's exactly what I'm doing (going the favourites route). Going with Recents wouldn't work for me because I launch quite a few of my apps via complications and I'm pretty sure those would end up stealing many of the top most-recent slots and pushing out the apps that I can't get to via a complication.

I'm loving the Apple Watch experience more every day. For me a string of "I wish x/y/z was possible/different" comments aren't intended to be a negative trashing of a product, pretty much the opposite in fact. I only start picking at details if I consider something near perfect for my use case, if something is way off base for what I am looking for I don't give it so much thought, and after a few more days of playing I've added one extra niggle to my list - not really something that's bad but something that I think could be optimised in the future. The new one addition to my list is adding the ability to customise the button actions (click and double-click on Crown or Side Button). On a device that by necessity has a relatively narrow range of user interaction paths I think it is especially valuable for an individual user to have the flexibility to set things up so that they get the maximum utility from those limited number of interface paths. Apple has actually gone through this debate already years ago on the iPad where initially the slider button below the power button was for orientation lock but they then changed it to mute and, after quite a while with quite a lot of people complaining, they finally made the button function configurable in Settings. When the buttons are so important on the Watch I think having full configurability there would be really useful.

As an example of how I would optimise my buttons I would...

1 - Put the Dock on my crown single-press since as suggested it is essentially my main launcher now. I don't need to waste a button action on the main launcher at all since I would use it rarely and it is accessible by scrolling to the end of the Dock and selecting "All applications".

2 - Leave Apple Pay where it is - double-click on side button action.

3 - Map the Crown double-press to Shazam since I quite often find myself discreetly wanting to identify something that is playing in a pub or restaurant (sadly places I frequent a lot less frequently nowadays but one day normality will return) and the Apple Watch is perfect for that and it's an action I often need to do very quickly during a window when the music is particularly audible (less background noise).

4 - I'm not 100% sure on the single press of the side button. Maybe if Apple added an action option that could take you directly to a specified watch face then I might map the side button single-click to the watch face I have set up to give me access to all my health and activity info. That way it doesn't matter if I have that page quite a distance from my main watch face since I would never have to do multiple swipes to get to it, I could simply press the side button and then ideally pressing it again would take me back to my previous (main) watch face.

Obviously those are just my personal choices that would put a lot more of my frequently used functionality more at my fingertips than it is now. Other people's button assignments would presumably be quite different, or even unaltered from what Apple provides for people who consider that perfect already.

 

[Canyda]

This seems like a good of a place as any for this feedback on my new S6...

One of the things that surprised me when setting up my new watch last night (migrating from a S2) was that the newer watch faces like Infograph are not capable of taking all the complications that exist on the watch and that I can still use on the older faces. The Spark email app, for instance, doesn't appear as a Mail option under the new faces.

In Googling around on it last night, I found that Apple requires a different level of complication development for those new faces, which is why Outlook has an Infograph complication and Spark doesn't. But still.... weird.

Other than that, though... holy crap, this this is blazing fast compared to my S2. Super happy.

 

[JulianL]

I agree with this 1000%. Someone at Apple has absolutely fallen in love in sub-minute markings on analog faces, but they also insist on having incredibly imprecise hands with rounded ends. That makes impossible to tell which tick mark the hands are pointing at.

Yeah, and I think the person who designed the California face is actually a sadist deliberately trying to torture me. Ideally I would like thinner solid hour & minute hands but if I can't have that I would at least like solid hands rather than outline hands. What the California face does is use solid hands when it's in the inactive wrist-down mode so whenever I go to use my watch I initially see the inactive face and think "oh, that looks nice" but then when I lift up the watch and the screen goes active it actually changes the hands to outline and I think "ah, that's a shame".

I was torn between California and Utility for a while because Utility does have solid hands even when active (albeit a little too fat/chunky for my liking) but I slightly prefer the way that California displays the complications. I still swap my default between the two every now and then because I haven't 100% made my mind up yet.

 

[JulianL]

This seems like a good of a place as any for this feedback on my new S6...

One of the things that surprised me when setting up my new watch last night (migrating from a S2) was that the newer watch faces like Infograph are not capable of taking all the complications that exist on the watch and that I can still use on the older faces. The Spark email app, for instance, doesn't appear as a Mail option under the new faces.

In Googling around on it last night, I found that Apple requires a different level of complication development for those new faces, which is why Outlook has an Infograph complication and Spark doesn't. But still.... weird.

Other than that, though... holy crap, this this is blazing fast compared to my S2. Super happy.

Cool. Glad you're liking it and really interesting to hear other people's initial reactions.

We're both getting different things from our s6 first encounter. I'm being exposed for the first time the whole Apple Watch experience and discovering, after some initial scepticism I admit, that it really does have a very strong use case for me. You're not seeing that because you already jumped on board with the S2 but you are getting to see how much Apple has improved performance and presumably other things since the S2 which is something I'm not getting to see since I don't have that (or any other) point of comparison.

I've noticed a few oddities with complications as well. Hopefully it's just a case of a bit of a wait as various app developers get their complications up to date with the latest APIs.

I suppose that's one other thing I would add to my wish list. It would be nice if Apple created a new universal complication called "Launch App.." that worked a bit like the "Contacts..." complication in that if a user added it to a watch face it would allow the user, when adding the complication to the watch face, to select which installed app that complication should launch and ideally would also use the selected app's icon for the complication display. Obviously in this case the app couldn't display any active content in the complication display area but it would at least mean that any installed app could be launched directly from a watch face even if the app developer hadn't developed any complication of their own.

 

[NewUsername]

Also got an S6 as my first Apple Watch. While I still think it's mainly a toy and objectively a waste of money, I have to admit it does everything in an excellent way, so I'll keep it. Definitely wouldn't buy one if I were on a tight budget, but I can afford it and those health and fitness features are simply amazing. I like the compass too: great for not getting lost when riding a bicycle. It's nice not to take out your iPhone for everything.

The biggest drawback is the battery life. Technology has involved in an amazing way, but battery life did not. A new laptop has a better battery life than a laptop of ten years ago, but if you compare that with the huge gains in performance, display quality, et cetera, it's not so impressive. My dumbphone of that time lasted me a week on a single charge, my iPhone needs to recharge every day. And my watch would last for years before it had to get a new battery, now I need to charge my watch every day. Of course today's devices are incomparably more advanced, but if there is one field in technology which needs progress, it's the battery. (Though wireless charging was a big improvement.)

On the iPhone, since iOS 14 we can finally hide apps without deleting them. They should really have this on the Apple Watch as well, where it would be even more useful than on the iPhone in my opinion.

 

[Saturn007]

Julian, I really liked your post. I'm on the verge of getting my first Apple Watch and your remarks are exactly the type I make when using a new product.

I will likely have the very same reaction and wish — a face WITHOUT any time at all — and one that could be the launcher and default. In my case, I’d want to have it show a mini sky chart or what's up, without dealing with the time. Or, being out for a run and seeing fitness circles without any time staring me in the face. I know, I know. It's a *watch*, but still...

I also like the idea of the swipe through different “pages” — reminds me of Andy Hertzfeld's Switcher app released years ago for the Macs.

So, please keep posting your thoughts and experiences — they will help me and others visualize the interface and options and know what to expect or what the “gotchas” or wished-for items would be.

They also lead to helpful posts as in this thread whereby experienced watch users offers tips or workarounds or settings that do exactly what we‘s like.

Now, if only Apple would give us the option of hiding the time on the lock screen and status bar of our iPhones and iPads. I hate knowing what time it is in the middle of the night! Or, suddenly realizing how much time I’ve spent idling, browsing, and app playing.

 

[Night Spring]

I could put lots of complications linked to various apps that I wanted to quick-launch plus maybe some info displays.

Did you try the Infograph face? It allows up to 8 complications.

Infograph Modular has space for 5 complications, with the middle one being a info display.

 

[deeddawg]

Also got an S6 as my first Apple Watch. While I still think it's mainly a toy and objectively a waste of money, I have to admit it does everything in an excellent way, so I'll keep it. Definitely wouldn't buy one if I were on a tight budget, but I can afford it and those health and fitness features are simply amazing. I like the compass too: great for not getting lost when riding a bicycle. It's nice not to take out your iPhone for everything.

The biggest drawback is the battery life. Technology has involved in an amazing way, but battery life did not. A new laptop has a better battery life than a laptop of ten years ago, but if you compare that with the huge gains in performance, display quality, et cetera, it's not so impressive. My dumbphone of that time lasted me a week on a single charge, my iPhone needs to recharge every day. And my watch would last for years before it had to get a new battery, now I need to charge my watch every day. Of course today's devices are incomparably more advanced, but if there is one field in technology which needs progress, it's the battery. (Though wireless charging was a big improvement.)

On the iPhone, since iOS 14 we can finally hide apps without deleting them. They should really have this on the Apple Watch as well, where it would be even more useful than on the iPhone in my opinion.

It'll be interesting to hear your views in six months to a year.

I was surprised how much my AW grew on me as I got used to using it, especially given I was a bit skeptical in the beginning.

 

[spooklog]

That's exactly what I'm doing (going the favourites route). Going with Recents wouldn't work for me because I launch quite a few of my apps via complications and I'm pretty sure those would end up stealing many of the top most-recent slots and pushing out the apps that I can't get to via a complication.

I'm loving the Apple Watch experience more every day. For me a string of "I wish x/y/z was possible/different" comments aren't intended to be a negative trashing of a product, pretty much the opposite in fact. I only start picking at details if I consider something near perfect for my use case, if something is way off base for what I am looking for I don't give it so much thought, and after a few more days of playing I've added one extra niggle to my list - not really something that's bad but something that I think could be optimised in the future. The new one addition to my list is adding the ability to customise the button actions (click and double-click on Crown or Side Button). On a device that by necessity has a relatively narrow range of user interaction paths I think it is especially valuable for an individual user to have the flexibility to set things up so that they get the maximum utility from those limited number of interface paths. Apple has actually gone through this debate already years ago on the iPad where initially the slider button below the power button was for orientation lock but they then changed it to mute and, after quite a while with quite a lot of people complaining, they finally made the button function configurable in Settings. When the buttons are so important on the Watch I think having full configurability there would be really useful.

As an example of how I would optimise my buttons I would...

1 - Put the Dock on my crown single-press since as suggested it is essentially my main launcher now. I don't need to waste a button action on the main launcher at all since I would use it rarely and it is accessible by scrolling to the end of the Dock and selecting "All applications".

2 - Leave Apple Pay where it is - double-click on side button action.

3 - Map the Crown double-press to Shazam since I quite often find myself discreetly wanting to identify something that is playing in a pub or restaurant (sadly places I frequent a lot less frequently nowadays but one day normality will return) and the Apple Watch is perfect for that and it's an action I often need to do very quickly during a window when the music is particularly audible (less background noise).

4 - I'm not 100% sure on the single press of the side button. Maybe if Apple added an action option that could take you directly to a specified watch face then I might map the side button single-click to the watch face I have set up to give me access to all my health and activity info. That way it doesn't matter if I have that page quite a distance from my main watch face since I would never have to do multiple swipes to get to it, I could simply press the side button and then ideally pressing it again would take me back to my previous (main) watch face.

Obviously those are just my personal choices that would put a lot more of my frequently used functionality more at my fingertips than it is now. Other people's button assignments would presumably be quite different, or even unaltered from what Apple provides for people who consider that perfect already.

I agree with you -- if you care about something, it's worth productive criticism.

 

[Canyda]

Obviously those are just my personal choices that would put a lot more of my frequently used functionality more at my fingertips than it is now. Other people's button assignments would presumably be quite different, or even unaltered from what Apple provides for people who consider that perfect already.

Wondering out loud whether using an Infograph watch face that has a lot of complication options with a series of individually mapped Shortcuts would work for some of what you want to do....?