What if I changed my iphones's name to something else without restoring, unpairing the Apple Watch right after that and then repairing? Do you think it might work?
(Apologies for the following lengthy post)
Happy to now report success in my case through a mix of what others above have done.
1- Backed up phone to iTunes without changing the name of the phone to make sure I had copy in case this didn't work.
2- In iTunes on computer under "main" Apps menu item which shows all Apps I have stored there (not the Apps designation for those specifically on phone), I deleted affected/crashing apps to ensure all old copies of wouldn't somehow make their way back onto phone through a future sync. I then disconnected iPhone from computer
3- Went to
Watch App on iPhone > 'General' > scrolled to bottom > "Reset" > Erase all content and settings from your Apple Watch
4- Connected iPhone to computer and backed up to iTunes again (still didn't change the phone's name). Disconnected the phone
5- On iPhone, went to ‘Settings’ > 'General' > scrolled to the bottom > 'Erase all settings',
NOT erase all content
6- Phone rebooted, then I began process of setting iPhone up as new by going into ‘Settings’ > 'General' > scrolled to bottom > 'Erase All Content and Settings'
7- iPhone then restarted and I followed prompts to set up as new. This included providing Apple ID info, enabling Location Services, enabling Touch ID and Siri, and since I don’t use iCloud Drive or Keychain, bypassed those
8- Paired iPhone with Watch, setting Watch up as new. Since I had previously used iCloud for contacts and email all that data flowed back into iPhone in a couple minutes.
9- Went to App Store on iPhone and downloaded Dark Sky. Went into Watch App on iPhone to make sure it showed up, was fully installed, and appeared in 'Complications' list. Once confirmed I launched Dark Sky on Watch and it worked.
10- One at a time I repeated the process with each of the affected apps. All worked
11- Once done, I decided NOT to proceed with attempts to restore iPhone from last backup. Instead, connected iPhone to iTunes on computer, chose to set it up as new, gave it a different name from prior backups, and then manually added back all other stuff, starting with other Apps stored – synced those first and reconfirmed
all Watch Apps still worked, followed by Books, Photos, Tones, Music – syncing after each category (probably overkill, but wanted to keep checking the Watch Apps).
At the end of it, everything works and iPhone is pretty much identical to before all of these massively tedious and frustrating efforts ensued. It is clear there is some kind of legacy data stored with pre-Watch OS 2 iTunes backups that doesn’t play nice with Watch OS 2, such that wiping Watch and iPhone and downloading fresh versions of previously affected/crashing apps directly to wiped phone solves.
watch is back to working order now.
That said, it sounds like a cheaper alternative to all the other workarounds above, right? Let us know if you try it!
