Terrible Ecosystem Come on Apple!

[Tenacity]

First post so bare with me.

I felt the need to post here in case someone had some advice or perhaps i'm missing the boat but I am just floored with the lack of thought put into the Watch Ecosystem.

My setup
Iphone 6s, AirPods, Watch Series 3 with Cell Service

If I have all 3 devices on me it seems everything goes haywire. Here are some griefs I have with this and I'm surprised that they didn't put any effort into making things gel smoother. All of these scenarios are when I have all 3 devices on me.

Scenario #1
I'm listening to music through a third party app (spotify, laughable, amazon etc) through my phone. A call comes in and it doesn't show up on my watch almost 60 percent of the time. The 40 percent of the time it does show up and i hit answer on my watch it picks up the call and doesn't stop the music or audio that was playing. Now i'm stuck listening to the person on the phone and the audio that was playing from the app until i take my phone out and go into the app and pause it. Its not just one app that does this its a variety of apps that have this issue.

Scenario #2
I place a call from my phone and put it in my pocket. Its working well through my Airpods but I want to adjust the volume of the call. I look at my apple watch and surprise surprise the call controls aren't on the watch! WTF. If I receive a call or place a call from the watch then the phone controls for volume hang up etc show up on the watch and i have full control. But would be nice to be able to place a call on my phone put it away and retain control of the call on my watch. Contacted apple about this and they said this was intended behavior.

Scenario #3
I find in general that the Watch's response time to incoming stuff, Skype calls, phone calls etc is very slow compared to my phone. My phone is in my pocket on silent and a call comes in so i feel it vibrate. My ringtone goes off in my Airpods but my apple watch takes upwards of 10 - 15 seconds before the screen shows that call coming in. That is if it shows it all again only about 40 percent of the time does it actually show. Its to the point where the caller is almost about to hang up so in the end i have to take my phone out of my pocket and answer it that from the phone. Sorta defeats the whole purpose and convenience of having the ability to answer stuff from the watch.


These are just the 3 biggest scenarios I am disappointed with. When you add up all the tech I've invested to create this ecosystem (phone, watch, airpods) its close to 2k worth of stuff and I'm pretty shocked that they didn't do a better job in planning out the ecosystem to have smoother handing off of processess between phone watch and pods. Don't get me wrong I love that when I only have the watch with me the convenience of still being connected to the world but since the watch can't fully replace the functionality of the phone i would assume a lot of watch holders have a similar ecosystem setup to mine where they still carry their phone and use air pods as the hub for both devices.

Okay I feel better thanks for the vent.

 

[dave006]

First you are not using the Apple Ecosystem if you are using Third party apps that are not tightly integrated into the Apple Ecosystem.

Just kidding, you do understand that this is not a mature area of development but is still evolving every 3-9 months so I would not expect the level of integration that you are looking for any time soon.

Dave

 

[cynics]

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

I have an AW3 (non LTE), iPhone 6S and use a Samsung BT currently.

1. When I have poor LTE service I wont get phone calls on certain devices. Sometimes its the iPhone itself and my iPad is ringing away. But aside from that if my phone rings the watch rings.

Also answer the call from the device you want to take the call on, AirPods in this case (double tap). Use the Watch just to see who it is. This will generally and hopefully in your case avoid conflicts. Keep in mind there are situation where you dont want everything to come to a halt because you answered a phone call like when watching a movie via airplay.

2. Kind of like a previously mentioned the device you answer the call on is the device with the control (although the iPhone can reel the call back in from associated wifi calling devices). If you were using another bluetooth device you could adjust the volume from them. Again keep in mind other device may be control other things, what would work for you could be detrimental for someone else.

3. Not sure what to suggest here, my non LTE version rings at about the same time as the phone.

 

[matrix07]

First post so bare with me.

I felt the need to post here in case someone had some advice or perhaps i'm missing the boat but I am just floored with the lack of thought put into the Watch Ecosystem.

My setup
Iphone 6s, AirPods, Watch Series 3 with Cell Service

If I have all 3 devices on me it seems everything goes haywire. Here are some griefs I have with this and I'm surprised that they didn't put any effort into making things gel smoother. All of these scenarios are when I have all 3 devices on me.

Scenario #1
I'm listening to music through a third party app (spotify, laughable, amazon etc) through my phone. A call comes in and it doesn't show up on my watch almost 60 percent of the time. The 40 percent of the time it does show up and i hit answer on my watch it picks up the call and doesn't stop the music or audio that was playing. Now i'm stuck listening to the person on the phone and the audio that was playing from the app until i take my phone out and go into the app and pause it. Its not just one app that does this its a variety of apps that have this issue.

Scenario #2
I place a call from my phone and put it in my pocket. Its working well through my Airpods but I want to adjust the volume of the call. I look at my apple watch and surprise surprise the call controls aren't on the watch! WTF. If I receive a call or place a call from the watch then the phone controls for volume hang up etc show up on the watch and i have full control. But would be nice to be able to place a call on my phone put it away and retain control of the call on my watch. Contacted apple about this and they said this was intended behavior.

Scenario #3
I find in general that the Watch's response time to incoming stuff, Skype calls, phone calls etc is very slow compared to my phone. My phone is in my pocket on silent and a call comes in so i feel it vibrate. My ringtone goes off in my Airpods but my apple watch takes upwards of 10 - 15 seconds before the screen shows that call coming in. That is if it shows it all again only about 40 percent of the time does it actually show. Its to the point where the caller is almost about to hang up so in the end i have to take my phone out of my pocket and answer it that from the phone. Sorta defeats the whole purpose and convenience of having the ability to answer stuff from the watch.


These are just the 3 biggest scenarios I am disappointed with. When you add up all the tech I've invested to create this ecosystem (phone, watch, airpods) its close to 2k worth of stuff and I'm pretty shocked that they didn't do a better job in planning out the ecosystem to have smoother handing off of processess between phone watch and pods. Don't get me wrong I love that when I only have the watch with me the convenience of still being connected to the world but since the watch can't fully replace the functionality of the phone i would assume a lot of watch holders have a similar ecosystem setup to mine where they still carry their phone and use air pods as the hub for both devices.

Okay I feel better thanks for the vent.

#1 doesn’t happen to me. The music will fade out when I receive the call as intended. I didn’t use Spotify or Amazon music though so can’t vouch for that.

#3 it doesn’t matter how slow the watch get the call. If you hear ring tone in AirPods just double tap it to answer.

 

[K Anderson]

When I am home and the phone rings everything - phone, watch, mac, iPad - start ringing at about the same time.

 

[Tenacity]

#1 doesn’t happen to me. The music will fade out when I receive the call as intended. I didn’t use Spotify or Amazon music though so can’t vouch for that.

#3 it doesn’t matter how slow the watch get the call. If you hear ring tone in AirPods just double tap it to answer.

Thanks for the feedback are you on ATT by any chance starting to wonder if its a network issue rather than a eco issue
[doublepost=1510511988][/doublepost]

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

I have an AW3 (non LTE), iPhone 6S and use a Samsung BT currently.

1. When I have poor LTE service I wont get phone calls on certain devices. Sometimes its the iPhone itself and my iPad is ringing away. But aside from that if my phone rings the watch rings.

Also answer the call from the device you want to take the call on, AirPods in this case (double tap). Use the Watch just to see who it is. This will generally and hopefully in your case avoid conflicts. Keep in mind there are situation where you dont want everything to come to a halt because you answered a phone call like when watching a movie via airplay.

2. Kind of like a previously mentioned the device you answer the call on is the device with the control (although the iPhone can reel the call back in from associated wifi calling devices). If you were using another bluetooth device you could adjust the volume from them. Again keep in mind other device may be control other things, what would work for you could be detrimental for someone else.

3. Not sure what to suggest here, my non LTE version rings at about the same time as the phone.

Thanks for the tips i will try to answer on my pods to retain a more solid flow of opperations