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People who got Apple Watch .... Is it slow as reviews said ?

A

aduteau

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 14, 2007
553
46
So Apple was supposed to fix the Apple Watch for being slow with third party apps for the launch day. Is the Apple Watch still slow showing information from third party apps when launching them from the watch as most reviewers said last week ???
Has this been fixed ? Do you feel its underpowered for using third party apps ??
 
Want to know/see this as well
Cmon all of those who have it yet, post some info/video of it
 
While I think Apple might be able to tweak things, 3rd Party apps will remain slower until Apple allows Native apps.

In the meantime, the Watch Apps need to speak to their iPhone app, and transfer data to the watch, which will always produce slower results than native apps.
 
Yes but, just how slow is it ? Reviewers said that it took forever to get info from third party apps running from the iPhone ! Is it still this long ? If so it kind of beats the purpose of having the watch forba quick look to get things done faster then pulling out the phone from the pocket,
So is it acceptable slow that you still use watch for 5 seconds glances like Apple wants us to .... Or is it holding up the watch forever long to get info ?
 
aduteau said:
Yes but, just how slow is it ? Reviewers said that it took forever to get info from third party apps running from the iPhone ! Is it still this long ? If so it kind of beats the purpose of having the watch forba quick look to get things done faster then pulling out the phone from the pocket,
So is it acceptable slow that you still use watch for 5 seconds glances like Apple wants us to .... Or is it holding up the watch forever long to get info ?
Click to expand...

Apple had claimed that the reviewers experiences with third party stuff was going to be improved before the 24th. I'll believe it until I see otherwise.

Can anyone chime in with one?
 
It is not great.

I had very low expectations, assuming that the Watch had to be worth purchasing even if Apps sucked. So far apps are very hit and miss. Some fail to load after 10+ seconds, clearly not ready for primetime.

Others are less than a second to load, and do show the potential for the future. Anything that is a remote control for something else is a great use case. My Hue app for controlling lights is really good.

The inbuilt stuff is great.

So far I am still getting used to the awesome that is the Watch, the notifications and silent glances are worth it alone.
 
Smurphy Gherkin said:
It is not great.

I had very low expectations, assuming that the Watch had to be worth purchasing even if Apps sucked. So far apps are very hit and miss. Some fail to load after 10+ seconds, clearly not ready for primetime.

Others are less than a second to load, and do show the potential for the future. Anything that is a remote control for something else is a great use case. My Hue app for controlling lights is really good.

The inbuilt stuff is great.

So far I am still getting used to the awesome that is the Watch, the notifications and silent glances are worth it alone.
Click to expand...

So it seems more like bad coding from third party apps rhen the watch being actually slow ?
 
So wait a second. Apps couldn't be optimized to run on a platform that nobody had access to except for very large developers? What kind of silliness is this?
 
It's not horrible, but it definitely could be better. I think it depends on the app and how the developer pulls it in. Some apps are almost as fast as native apps, other just sit there and don't load at all. Generally it's quite good, I don't really have any major complaints.
 
jsmith189 said:
It's not horrible, but it definitely could be better. I think it depends on the app and how the developer pulls it in. Some apps are almost as fast as native apps, other just sit there and don't load at all. Generally it's quite good, I don't really have any major complaints.
Click to expand...
J
Good to see that it seems to be Thrid party apps that will need to be better codded insted of the watch being too slow to stream the data from bluetooth
 
aduteau said:
So it seems more like bad coding from third party apps rhen the watch being actually slow ?
Click to expand...

Both. Expect a few seconds delay loading on the watch, plus this is 1.0 on a new platform with stuff all hardware to test on.

I am super bullish about the future of the platform.

sk1wbw said:
So wait a second. Apps couldn't be optimized to run on a platform that nobody had access to except for very large developers? What kind of silliness is this?
Click to expand...

Would you rather no apps at all until Christmas? Or what we have, which is a great taste of things to come.

Launch day is a bit early to judge a new platform.
 
Had it for around six hours. Off watch apps are for sure slower but it doesnt bother me much. For instance I tried Yahoo weather and it took around 10 seconds to fetch the info. I used Line too, but it seemed to be a bit faster. Tried DJAY but found it pretty useless compared with the iphone app.
Controlling spotify from the now playing glance had only a minor delay.

All in all Im very impressed with it and I have zero concerns even if apps continue to load at this speed in the future.

The apple watch is really a great experience. Very happy with my purchase.
 
I should add, running apps the first time is usually several seconds to load. Running them again while in RAM is fast, like half a second.

Evernote first time ever took 4 sec to load, but once running is pretty good.
 
So native apps should ne much smoother when the SDK get out ... But at the cost of battery I guess
 
aduteau said:
Yes but, just how slow is it ? Reviewers said that it took forever to get info from third party apps running from the iPhone ! Is it still this long ? If so it kind of beats the purpose of having the watch forba quick look to get things done faster then pulling out the phone from the pocket,
So is it acceptable slow that you still use watch for 5 seconds glances like Apple wants us to .... Or is it holding up the watch forever long to get info ?
Click to expand...

It's fine, IMO of course. Calling it 'acceptably slow' is doing the watch a massive disservice from what I've seen so far. It's certainly not instant but, frankly, what is? Loading up dark sky for the first time sees maybe a second, second and half to load the data for the next day which considering it's also pulling the latest data set down is pretty good.

Maybe the best way I can put it is this: it's not magic. You're going to see the same pauses for data loading that you see on practically any application that doesn't refresh in the background. Apps will take some time to load in but, again, nothing that you wouldn't expect.
 
Was there a software update available right after you paired? I follow a Twitter account that tweets new iOS releases, and it tweeted something about a watch update. I wasn't sure if it was an actual launch-day update, or if it was the Watch simply being added to their list of supported devices.
 
cwosigns said:
Was there a software update available right after you paired? I follow a Twitter account that tweets new iOS releases, and it tweeted something about a watch update. I wasn't sure if it was an actual launch-day update, or if it was the Watch simply being added to their list of supported devices.
Click to expand...

No updates here! :)
 
cwosigns said:
Was there a software update available right after you paired? I follow a Twitter account that tweets new iOS releases, and it tweeted something about a watch update. I wasn't sure if it was an actual launch-day update, or if it was the Watch simply being added to their list of supported devices.
Click to expand...

Not a Watch OS update. It is running the same build as was in the Apple Store demo units on the 18th.
 
MrLoL said:
Twitter is really quick and fluid, but Shazam is a bit slow..
Click to expand...

I can't wait until there's more customization on what the watch shows. I couldn't care less about trending hashtags, at least not on my watch. Apparently Twwetbot's watch app is better.
 
10 seconds to fetch the weather? I thought the watch was supposed to provide immediate data. I think that if not for the Apple red colored glasses, people would have a much different way of looking at this product.
 
Steviejobz said:
10 seconds to fetch the weather? I thought the watch was supposed to provide immediate data. I think that if not for the Apple red colored glasses, people would have a much different way of looking at this product.
Click to expand...

Agreed, 10 seconds to show data on the watch is in the "forever zone" and goes againts what the watch is supposed to do
 
I'm not sure it's really fair to call these apps. Third party widgets is more accurate until Apple allows them to be native.

I've seen a lot of people upset about the preorder system but the expectations for these "apps" have really been mishandled.

If I can get decent notifications from my watch from a service like ebay, I consider it a win. Or a notification if an item I've wanted reaches a certain price on amazon. Again, it boils down to what the watch is good for. Notifications. Discreet taps. A quick glance. The third party app simply needs to do well in this regard.

But actually using my watch to do anything third party? Not too interested. Yelp has an app. Why? Wouldn't you just use your phone? All the note apps. Controlling presentations. News. All that stuff. Use your phone. This will be painfully slow on the watch using widgets.

I would very much recommend to people to buy based on the features Apple includes and consider anything a third party app can or could do in the future a bonus. It's about setting expectations.
 
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