There is a gigantic temptation, bordering on a compulsion, to say that finally this is what Apple Watch needed. In truth, we were very pleased with what we must now call watchOS 1, and what we didn't like was usually either a small niggle, or just a desire for it to do more of the same, please. Such as run apps natively, rather than have your iPhone run them, and the Watch sort of show you a bit. Or the way we love the Watch faces, but we wish they didn't turn off so quickly. Now that
watchOS 2 is here, we have more of the same, and we love it -- and, go on, okay, this is what the Watch should have had all along.
In retrospect, watchOS 1 does seem like a stopgap while we waited for this: no app will ever again use the limited way of performing that was allowed before. Yet we come not to bury watchOS 1, but to praise watchOS 2, because that is exactly what it deserves: maybe we'll change our mind if some calamitous bug crops up in a month's time, but right now, it is praiseworthy. Right this moment with it on our wrists, we could no more go back to watchOS 1 than we could swap to an Android device.
New Watch faces
We're in a bit of a dilemma here: as Apple fans, we're told by PC users that we are into style over substance, and in truth we know the new Watch faces are just gloss, but they're so nice. At risk of sounding like we're praising a device for the quality of its screensaver, these Watch faces are compelling.
The most immediately out-of-the-box striking ones are called Timelapse, and are those which use new Apple photography of major cities around the world. Standing here in the UK, we set our Watch to show a rather beautiful New York image, and it changes over time. It is 24 hours in the life of Manhattan, but if we look at it in the evening our time, it shows us evening in New York. It's the same with views of London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and somewhere called Mack Lake, which must mean something to someone.
If that isn't you, you can instead pick something that means everything to you: a particular photograph of your own, or even an album of them. You select which shot, or group of shots, you want via the surely so far little-used Photos app on your Watch, then from that moment on, that's what you see when you lift your wrist. If you've picked the album, you get a different shot every time, just as you have before, with the butterfly face in watchOS 1.
It's complicated
Apple may now let you select any background image you like for a Watch face, but it still doesn't give you completely free range with the complications, the snippets of information that you can have on your screen. However, it has loosened up a lot: while you can't add more than Apple decides, nor can you nudge the design around, you can get non-Apple information in the complications.
They're now open to other developers, third-party companies, and while at launch there aren't a giant number of developers taking advantage of this, there are some. Whether they're from other companies or Apple, complications on the new watchOS 2 can be controlled via Time Travel. It's not the greatest name: if you ever have any problem with Time Travel that means you'll want to Google those words, and good luck getting past the
Doctor Who references.
We weren't that fussed about the feature, either: using the Digital Crown, you can wind forward through your day, and your complications change to reflect that. So if you have an event that's going on now, and that one line is listed in a complication on the Watch face, using Time Travel you can scroll through to the next.
That's the aspect that convinced us this was more useful than we expected. We'd imagined, back before the Watch actually came out, that the next event item on our faces would always show the next one, that is, once an event had started, it would show us the next. That's what we imagined, because it makes sense: you need to see what you're doing next. Instead, if you have a two-hour meeting at four o'clock, the Watch will show you the title of that right up to 6PM. It's still like that, except you can use Time Travel to peek forward.
Nightstand
You can also use your Apple Watch to peek at what time it is in the middle of the night. If your Watch is on charge, and you leave it turned to one side with the Digital Crown and side button facing up, you can use Nightstand: a bedside clock for Apple Watch. The buttons aren't just face up so that you don't smash them onto your night table; they're there to be controls. They act as your typical snooze and stop-the-alarm buttons.
It's a nice idea, and only a bit of a shame that it's left the manufacturers of Apple Watch stands with red foreheads from slapping. Practically every Watch stand made so far has assumed you would place the Watch with the face toward you, and pointing roughly vertically. They all tend to let the Watch lean at an angle, the better to keep it in place, but otherwise broadly vertical. Expect all new stands now to be either horizontal or adaptable, and expect eBay to be full of the old sort.
Still, while Apple must annoy hardware manufacturers, it is surely making software ones ecstatic. For watchOS 2 allows developers to create apps that live entirely on your Watch.
In your hand, not on your phone
This isn't quite what it seems. Apps will now be able to run independently on the Watch, instead of the Watch face being like a window onto a real app running on the iPhone. However, you still need that iPhone: right now, there is no other way to even download an app without going through the iPhone.
Yet the scope for developers now is vastly, simply
vastly wider and richer than it was yesterday. Now they can put more onto the Watch, and thereby rely much less on the Watch communicating back and forth with the phone. That communication was invariably the reason Watch apps were slow, so now they should all be much faster. This isn't a feature that just switches on like the way Apple has got an extra hour's worth of battery time out of the iPhone, it is something that the developers must specifically add.
That will take time, but there can't be any developer anywhere who has a watchOS 1 app and isn't working to bring it to watchOS 2 specifically for this ability to run on the Watch itself. They also get specific benefits to being on the Watch proper: they get access to the microphone, and the rest of the Watch's innards. If we had any idea what you could record on that mic while detecting that your Watch is being flung through the air, we'd be developers.
We just probably wouldn't be the kind of developers who were able to keep a secret when the Apple Watch was being criticized for not having a Facebook app. Now with watchOS 2, Facebook Messenger is going to occupy us more than we want to.
Apple's own apps
Facebook Messenger wouldn't be a lot of use without the ability to read and write messages, but then you could've said that about Mail on watchOS 1. You just can't say it any more. A key part of watchOS 2 is how you can now reply to emails directly from your Watch -- assuming you use Apple Mail.
It's seriously one of the reasons we instantly liked watchOS 2, but then another reason was another tiny yet significant change in an Apple app. You can now change how long the Watch face displays for when you lift your wrist. You don't have a lot of choice: it's either 15 or 70 seconds. Every Watch owner who spots this setting, will immediately change it to 70 seconds -- so it'll be interesting to see in the next few weeks whether people are suddenly saying the Apple Watch battery isn't as good as it used to be.
There's an adjustment to the friends feature, too: you can now add someone to this sort-of Favorites list directly on the Watch, for instance. You can also now have more than one screenful of friends. You still tap on the side button to bring up series of circles, but now a swipe takes you to another series of circles, and another. Apple suggests you keep work friends on one circle, school friends on another. We just suggest you don't let someone know they're five circles down your favorites.
If they find out, make it up to them by sending a more colorful sketch. We've sent far more sketches to people than we ever imagined we would, though this is chiefly when we're actually trying to send them a heartbeat, and miss. Now when we want to pretend we did it deliberately, we can send them sketches with multiple different colors instead of just the one a time.
When sketches won't do and only an actual word will, Siri can now look up dictionary definitions for you on the Watch. We love this, and are substantially less keen on how you can also now ask Siri to start a specific exercise run from the workout app. Doubtlessly we're going to fall somewhere between the two with the new public transit directions in Maps but, as with the same feature on the iPhone, it's only useful if you're on one of the few cities that it covers. We'll get back to you, as soon as it shows us the way.
That may be a peek into the future, but let us just point out that present is pretty excellent. Yes, we thought that yesterday with watchOS 1, and tomorrow we'll find some niggles with watchOS 2, but today is good. Today is very good.
Who is watchOS 2.0 for:
Everybody who has an Apple Watch.
Who is watchOS 2.0 not for:
All the people who do not have Apple Watches, but we expect that number to dwindle.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
Readers: do you have an app that you'd like to see us review? Developers: do you want us to take a look at your app? Send your suggestions to our Tips email.
Top