For most people, the installation of watchOS 2 went smoothly. For most people who had problems, the answer was to wait a while because -- as ever -- Apple's servers are strained under all the demand. Unfortunately, there are also people who have found that the installation just did not work. They found that it decided to fail after they'd waited an extremely long time. They especially aggravatingly found that it failed because their iPhones insisted they weren't on the Internet anymore. We can't explain why it failed, we can't soothe you with hot chocolate, but we can tell you a workaround.
Pointers is supposed to give you specific and direct solutions, but this time it's more alchemy. Some of us had this problem, and we used this solution, and it worked. We don't know why, but it worked. So if you're having this problem, do this.
This Pointers was tested at the very edge of our patience, in the middle of the night, with excessive amounts of caffeine -- which we know we're going to regret when we eventually get to go to bed.
The short version
Reset your Watch right back to factory settings, then re-pair it with your iPhone, and restore it from a backup. Curiously, this is probably the last time we will be able to say that reasonably casually: while we can't yet guarantee that your health and fitness data will survive, you don't yet have apps that store much data. From watchOS 2 onwards, you will.
One thing you will definitely lose has to do with Apple Pay. During a long night trying to get this work, we suddenly got an email from our bank saying that Apple Pay on our credit card was cancelled. We'll just have to set it up again, and it's hardly a big deal, but points to the bank for being on the ball.
The detailed version
On your Watch, go to Settings, and General. Scroll right down to the bottom, and you'll find Reset. Tap on that, and you get the option to Erase All Content and Settings. You do back your Watch up regularly, right? Then tap that.
It takes a minute or two, but soon you will find you're back to where you were when you first got the Watch, and that you have to pair it to your iPhone again. Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, and start the pairing.
Once that's done, you'll be asked if you want to restore from a backup, or set up the Watch as new. Choose Restore, and then (if you get a list of backups), choose the most recent.
Steel yourself
Put your Apple Watch back on a charger, and go get the watchOS 2 update again. It's in the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, as it was before, and unfortunately you are right back at the start with no part of it downloaded. Let the download run again.
Eventually -- and that can be a very long time, depending on your connection; it took two hours for us -- you will see that estimated time remaining count down to almost zero. Almost. Ours kept getting to, at best, 42 seconds before freezing. Then we had the enraging notification that the update was paused, because our Watch wasn't on power, and didn't have at least a 50 percent charge. We may have said one or two things that we regret now, but the gist of it was look, there it is, right there, on the stand. Plus it's been there so long that it's now on 96 percent.
It's a very un-Apple-like error to get, and we have no idea why it sorted itself out, but it did. Leave it alone, and in a minute it will start working again.
Not quite the end
You will then schlep through a Preparing stage, where for a moment it looks like it's going to download the whole thing again but, once more, deep breath, think calmness, serenity and light -- for it will finish the preparing. It'll just then take about 15 minutes to install on your Watch.
Tomorrow you'll be glad you've got watchOS 2 but, fair's fair, tonight you wondered about switching to Android. Not seriously, and not for long, but, you know, the thought was there. Now that we finally have watchOS 2 installed, we'd best give it a shakedown.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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