Only 11 to 16 apps are fast on watchOS 3.

[Smurphy Gherkin]

Having played with watchOS 3 for several hours, some thoughts.... Amazingly both iOS 10 and watch OS 3 are working well enough (SO FAR) for me to use for daily use. I was going to just test, but just one springboard crash on the iPhone and battery life on both is great. (YMMV) Lots of stutter here and there, and some rough edges, but totally worth it and way better than I expected for a first beta.

Dock at last, Dock at last, Dock Almighty, Dock at last! With button and wheel to scroll between apps - heaven.

Apple promising fast app loading is a little bit deceptive. Loading times are the same, but the awesome Dock keeps up to 10 pinned apps open in memory, plus one Recent.

10 apps pinned in Dock
+ 1 recent in Dock for total 11
+ potentially 5 more from complications on Watch face

After that you are back to slow load times for apps you run more rarely, but hey, what a great solution - the improvement is like a new watch. Now I can keep Philips Hue pinned for adjusting lights.

Early testing shows that with 10 apps pinned in Dock, RAM seems to be an issue, and the Watch struggles to keep all loaded. With 10 in the Dock and recently active, launching apps like Just Press Record from a complication was back to 10-15 seconds. Early days - I am amazed how nearly every app works.

Full screen swiping to change Watch faces is almost unusable at this stage. Patience Grasshopper.

Scribble to text is AMAZING. Game changer.

Find my Friends not working yet, nor Now Playing music controller.

Summary: So this is 10 steps forward, 2 steps back, but absolutely revolutionizes the usefulness of the Watch. I could not be happier.

 

[Laserducky]

So we cannot have more than 10 apps in the dock ?

Cheers !

 

[Mlrollin91]

Did you install the Find my Friends iOS update to your iPhone? I'm sure that is required to get the AW version to run.

 

[Smurphy Gherkin]

So we cannot have more than 10 apps in the dock ?

Nope - 10 in dock max, and one to the right of that is a most recent.

And based on my usage, I would not be surprised if they trim that down a bit before release.
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Did you install the Find my Friends iOS update to your iPhone? I'm sure that is required to get the AW version to run.

It is on the watch, it just doesn't work yet - runs, searches for friends, error message Friends Data not Available, check your network connectivity. iOS app works fine.

 

[IphoneIssues]

Let's keep in mind that this is the beta.

 

[jens.tijtgat]

Having played with watchOS 3 for several hours, some thoughts.... Amazingly both iOS 10 and watch OS 3 are working well enough (SO FAR) for me to use for daily use. I was going to just test, but just one springboard crash on the iPhone and battery life on both is great. (YMMV) Lots of stutter here and there, and some rough edges, but totally worth it and way better than I expected for a first beta.

Dock at last, Dock at last, Dock Almighty, Dock at last! With button and wheel to scroll between apps - heaven.

Apple promising fast app loading is a little bit deceptive. Loading times are the same, but the awesome Dock keeps up to 10 pinned apps open in memory, plus one Recent.

10 apps pinned in Dock
+ 1 recent in Dock for total 11
+ potentially 5 more from complications on Watch face

After that you are back to slow load times for apps you run more rarely, but hey, what a great solution - the improvement is like a new watch. Now I can keep Philips Hue pinned for adjusting lights.

Early testing shows that with 10 apps pinned in Dock, RAM seems to be an issue, and the Watch struggles to keep all loaded. With 10 in the Dock and recently active, launching apps like Just Press Record from a complication was back to 10-15 seconds. Early days - I am amazed how nearly every app works.

Full screen swiping to change Watch faces is almost unusable at this stage. Patience Grasshopper.

Scribble to text is AMAZING. Game changer.

Find my Friends not working yet, nor Now Playing music controller.

Summary: So this is 10 steps forward, 2 steps back, but absolutely revolutionizes the usefulness of the Watch. I could not be happier.

What problems are you having with full screen swiping to change Watch faces? Works perfectly here.. Also Now Playing doesn't have a problem at all?

 

[Smurphy Gherkin]

What problems are you having with full screen swiping to change Watch faces? Works perfectly here.. Also Now Playing doesn't have a problem at all?

Reboot and now it works a lot better, especially if I swipe in the top or bottom third of the screen. If i swipe across the middle when on modular faces it does nothing a lot of the time.

This just gets better and better.

Edit: added the Now Playing back in and now it works!

 

[JohnApples]

~10 "fast" apps in the dock seems fine to me- as I probably only use 4 or 5 on a daily basis. Glad to hear mostly good news about this update!

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Brilliant info, thanks for sharing.
Also, it would be interesting, if one can keep LESS apps in the dock. Even more so, those that I'd never use. To me, that would help the issue with ram...

Having played with watchOS 3 for several hours, some thoughts.... Amazingly both iOS 10 and watch OS 3 are working well enough (SO FAR) for me to use for daily use. I was going to just test, but just one springboard crash on the iPhone and battery life on both is great. (YMMV) Lots of stutter here and there, and some rough edges, but totally worth it and way better than I expected for a first beta.

Dock at last, Dock at last, Dock Almighty, Dock at last! With button and wheel to scroll between apps - heaven.

Apple promising fast app loading is a little bit deceptive. Loading times are the same, but the awesome Dock keeps up to 10 pinned apps open in memory, plus one Recent.

10 apps pinned in Dock
+ 1 recent in Dock for total 11
+ potentially 5 more from complications on Watch face

After that you are back to slow load times for apps you run more rarely, but hey, what a great solution - the improvement is like a new watch. Now I can keep Philips Hue pinned for adjusting lights.

Early testing shows that with 10 apps pinned in Dock, RAM seems to be an issue, and the Watch struggles to keep all loaded. With 10 in the Dock and recently active, launching apps like Just Press Record from a complication was back to 10-15 seconds. Early days - I am amazed how nearly every app works.

Full screen swiping to change Watch faces is almost unusable at this stage. Patience Grasshopper.

Scribble to text is AMAZING. Game changer.

Find my Friends not working yet, nor Now Playing music controller.

Summary: So this is 10 steps forward, 2 steps back, but absolutely revolutionizes the usefulness of the Watch. I could not be happier.

 

[batting1000]

Brilliant info, thanks for sharing.
Also, it would be interesting, if one can keep LESS apps in the dock. Even more so, those that I'd never use. To me, that would help the issue with ram...

Yeah, you keep whatever you want. If you only want one app, you can just remove all the others and have 1 in there, etc.

 

[ZEEN0j]

So if I understand correctly. There will always be apps in the dock (recently opened). Those apps will get cleared from RAM when needed, unless I pin them?

edit: Can you remove those apps in the dock (non pinned) so you can clear memory if you'd like?

 

[Feenician]

Having played with watchOS 3 for several hours, some thoughts.... Amazingly both iOS 10 and watch OS 3 are working well enough (SO FAR) for me to use for daily use. I was going to just test, but just one springboard crash on the iPhone and battery life on both is great. (YMMV) Lots of stutter here and there, and some rough edges, but totally worth it and way better than I expected for a first beta.

Dock at last, Dock at last, Dock Almighty, Dock at last! With button and wheel to scroll between apps - heaven.

Apple promising fast app loading is a little bit deceptive. Loading times are the same, but the awesome Dock keeps up to 10 pinned apps open in memory, plus one Recent.

10 apps pinned in Dock
+ 1 recent in Dock for total 11
+ potentially 5 more from complications on Watch face

After that you are back to slow load times for apps you run more rarely, but hey, what a great solution - the improvement is like a new watch. Now I can keep Philips Hue pinned for adjusting lights.

Early testing shows that with 10 apps pinned in Dock, RAM seems to be an issue, and the Watch struggles to keep all loaded. With 10 in the Dock and recently active, launching apps like Just Press Record from a complication was back to 10-15 seconds. Early days - I am amazed how nearly every app works.

Full screen swiping to change Watch faces is almost unusable at this stage. Patience Grasshopper.

Scribble to text is AMAZING. Game changer.

Find my Friends not working yet, nor Now Playing music controller.

Summary: So this is 10 steps forward, 2 steps back, but absolutely revolutionizes the usefulness of the Watch. I could not be happier.

I'd say this is a pretty much spot on assessment of this early beta. Apple did the right thing by starting WatchOS again. I'm looking forward to app developers rethinking and merging what they considered appropriate for Glances and what will now be the "landing page" on apps in the dock. Game changer.

 

[BSG75]

The Dock solution reminds me of Pebble. On original Pebble watches, you could only load 8 apps at a time on the watch and the rest were kept on your phone. If there were 8 apps loaded on the Pebble and you wanted to add another app, you had to decide which one to remove.

While this was a limitation, the apps loaded quickly. IMO, it made you choose which apps were most important to you and it simplified things. I think this is a good move in Watch OS3.

 

[batting1000]

So if I understand correctly. There will always be apps in the dock (recently opened). Those apps will get cleared from RAM when needed, unless I pin them?

edit: Can you remove those apps in the dock (non pinned) so you can clear memory if you'd like?

No. The dock holds the apps that you pin there + 1 spot for the app opened while you pressed the side button. So lets say you're in the Calendar app and you press the side button. You'll see all of the apps you have pinned to the dock + a spot for Calendar which is labeled as a recent app and you get an option to keep it in the dock.

 

[ZEEN0j]

No. The dock holds the apps that you pin there + 1 spot for the app opened while you pressed the side button. So lets say you're in the Calendar app and you press the side button. You'll see all of the apps you have pinned to the dock + a spot for Calendar which is labeled as a recent app and you get an option to keep it in the dock.

Ahaaa, Thanks. I first thought it was like the app switcher on the iPhone but with the option to lock apps in place. I see

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Any chance of some photos (I'm more of a visual person)?

 

[Defender2010]

Remember third party apps are not optimised to run on watchOS 3 yet...hence the slowness of some. If you use only all the stock apps, it's so much faster for all apps.

 

[Smurphy Gherkin]

New setup - a work in progress. I am now using Faces as souped up Glances - swipe between these faces, using them as displays as well as launchers.

Here is the control that appears under the rightmost item in the Dock

Here is the dock while swiping or wheel scrolling through docked apps. Using either the fast swiping or the wheel is amazing.

 

[BlueMoon63]

Remember third party apps are not optimised to run on watchOS 3 yet...hence the slowness of some. If you use only all the stock apps, it's so much faster for all apps.

Agreed.... Carrot seemed to work while Dark Sky would work and then need to re-load (and slowly). Fantastical really stunk in the dock. We have to give the developers time to re-write the code to work correctly with os3. I am looking forward to weather apps updating more frequently and dynamic - and even more so, Sport Scores...
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New setup - a work in progress. I am now using Faces as souped up Glances - swipe between these faces, using them as displays as well as launchers.

Here is the control that appears under the rightmost item in the Dock

Here is the dock while swiping or wheel scrolling through docked apps. Using either the fast swiping or the wheel is amazing.

Great idea!

 

[spriter]

Yup, Im using three faces as launchers. The middle one (analogue activity) is my main with one to the left and right (both Modular for maximum complications).

I'm only a swipe and tap away from all my frequent apps. Much quicker and easier than pressing the crown and panning around or invoking the dock and swiping/scrolling with the crown. Basically a 3-home screen setup.

 

[jonnysods]

When was the deadline for devs to update their apps to run purely on the watch? Do you guys remember that MR article?