watchOS 26 Brings Your iPhone's Control Center to Your Apple Watch

[cupcakes2000]

It would definitely better if it was more aware about what you’re doing. I have to use my iPhone much more than I thought I would when I original got the watch. It should recognise when you’re at the station, pull up regular routes you travel, offer to buy a ticket. All this is doable manually on the phone, your watch should be like an assistant. Or getting in the car and asking you whether you want to open Spotify and give you some normally trodden routes to take.
Or in a new city it should flash up with interest points or know when you eat and suggest stuff.

Swiping between faces is irritating- it registers most swipes as taps and opens calendars or something. so it’s not fluid. Also the obsurdly limited options when it comes to how many and why style of complications. I want that to be massively expanded and be much more configurable.

For fitness though (and why I got it anyway), it’s excellent. It’s changed my life to be honest.

 

[MacFarmer]

How about letting me swipe up to get to the watchOS control center (as it used to do) instead of the side-button press? I'd really love to meet the Apple engineer who decided to make that change & not give us the option to switch it back.

yeah, I hate that too! If you change something, then at least let us revert back in some settings

 

[svish]

Good to see this. Hoping to see more control center options that are app specific.

 

[nxt3]

Apple desperately needs to find something, anything, for Apple Watch to do. It’s getting extremely boring with literally same features as 10 years ago. It should be doing way more. But this is the new Timmy Apple so really not that surprising. Innovation has stalled.

The comments replying to this and all they can say is “more battery”, as if that would change the functionality of the watch. This commenter is complaining about “innovation”.

What new functionality would someone expect from a smart watch at this point? Apple Watch is the best device in this category hands down—I say this as someone who was an avid Android user for 13yrs.

 

[victorvictoria]

Few days or a week long battery life would be a start

That would be nice, but…the laws of physics won't allow it. You have a backlit color screen that is "always on." You have a battery less than the size of a dime. You have Bluetooth and WiFi. Any battery that would allow a week worth of use in the watch would generate enough heat to give your wrist a 3rd degree burn!

Simple and effective solution for you: Get two watches and sync them both. It works just fine, and one is always charged and ready. I have a Gen 6 that I got used for $150, that I charge during the day, and use to track sleep patterns at night, when I charge my daytime watch.

 

[gank41]

How about letting me swipe up to get to the watchOS control center (as it used to do) instead of the side-button press? I'd really love to meet the Apple engineer who decided to make that change & not give us the option to switch it back.

I would assume someone told the engineer they HAD to do such and such thing and had to use the button..
I bet there was push back and they were told to find another way to do it. They did.

 

[Andy_2341]

It would definitely better if it was more aware about what you’re doing. I have to use my iPhone much more than I thought I would when I original got the watch. It should recognise when you’re at the station, pull up regular routes you travel, offer to buy a ticket. All this is doable manually on the phone, your watch should be like an assistant. Or getting in the car and asking you whether you want to open Spotify and give you some normally trodden routes to take.
Or in a new city it should flash up with interest points or know when you eat and suggest stuff.

This would have to be optional because that sounds like a huge battery drain and absolutely horrible to me. I don’t want my watch to ding my wrist with things or suggestions anymore than it already does. If I want to open Spotify, I tell Siri to open Spotify. I just think giving the watch that much knowledge would have it doing things all the time that you might not always want it to.

 

[cupcakes2000]

This would have to be optional because that sounds like a huge battery drain and absolutely horrible to me. I don’t want my watch to ding my wrist with things or suggestions anymore than it already does. If I want to open Spotify, I tell Siri to open Spotify. I just think giving the watch that much knowledge would have it doing things all the time that you might not always want it to.

Obviously optional. And it’s your phone doing the work it normally does with the knowledge it already has - just your watch offering you help when it’s necessary.

My maps app knows where I go, i just wish the whole experience was a bit more proactive.

And Siri is the key but is useless for everything accept timers, for me.

Once they have Siri working as a proper personal assistant everything will slot into place.

 

[boswald]

I think Apple should spin off a health company and sell health devices, including the Apple Watch.

 

[pugxiwawa]

The comments replying to this and all they can say is “more battery”, as if that would change the functionality of the watch. This commenter is complaining about “innovation”.

What new functionality would someone expect from a smart watch at this point? Apple Watch is the best device in this category hands down—I say this as someone who was an avid Android user for 13yrs.

Correct, but I'm not the one being paid hundreds of millions to come up with new ideas. Apple Watch is in a stale state, nothing new added since inception. That's just the fact.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The comments replying to this and all they can say is “more battery”,

Because it's a huge reason many of us rule out Apple Watch, straight away.

 

[CarlJ]

Apple desperately needs to find something, anything, for Apple Watch to do. It’s getting extremely boring with literally same features as 10 years ago.

Uh, what? I've been wearing an Apple Watch ever since the original series 0 was released, and I've been quite pleased with what it does (else I wouldn't still be wearing them). It does what I want it to do. I'd love to see more health monitoring, but that's a matter of miniaturizing things enough to fit and be reliable (and in one case, dealing with a patent). And there's a couple of watch faces I'd like (if they ever make a WatchFaceKit for developers, I'm going to make my own just for me). But I've never felt bored with my Apple Watch.

 

[pugxiwawa]

Uh, what? I've been wearing an Apple Watch ever since the original series 0 was released, and I've been quite pleased with what it does (else I wouldn't still be wearing them). It does what I want it to do. I'd love to see more health monitoring, but that's a matter of miniaturizing things enough to fit and be reliable (and in one case, dealing with a patent). And there's a couple of watch faces I'd like (if they ever make a WatchFaceKit for developers, I'm going to make my own just for me). But I've never felt bored with my Apple Watch.

It does what it needs to do, which is not much. And same things carried over from series 0 to 10 iterations later. How's that not the definition of stagnant?

 

[cupcakes2000]

It does what it needs to do, which is not much. And same things carried over from series 0 to 10 iterations later. How's that not the definition of stagnant?

That’s not the definition of stagnation. And if it lost features on its way between series 0 and series 10 there would be plenty of complaints about that. Every year a new version with new features comes out. It might not be what you want - but it’s not ‘the definition’ of stagnation - quite the opposite.

 

[nxt3]

Correct, but I'm not the one being paid hundreds of millions to come up with new ideas. Apple Watch is in a stale state, nothing new added since inception. That's just the fact.

Sure and that's all products in this category, not only Apple Watch. Without a breakthrough in battery technology, there's only so much that's possible.

 

[CarlJ]

It does what it needs to do, which is not much. And same things carried over from series 0 to 10 iterations later. How's that not the definition of stagnant?

You're moving the goalposts. You started out with "it's boring". Now switching to "it's stagnant", yet that was nowhere in the original comment.

Hammers hammer in nails, and haven't changed radically in basic layout/operation in many decades. I don't see many people looking at hammers and saying "this is boring!" or "this is stagnant!". They just use it as the tool for the job.

You may want an Apple Watch that is triangular and emits soothing smells, just because it doesn't bore you. I'd rather not have them add things just to "shake things up". Add features when there's something compelling and new that can be reasonably supported given the size and power requirements. As I mentioned earlier, new medical sensors are the most likely choices, and those are currently constrained by size, power, and patents.