Matt Birchler put together a great watchOS 7 wishlist. There are a lot of great ideas here. Based on past watchOS releases, this feels more like 3 years of releases than a single release. A few stood-out as realistic contenders, like bringing always-on support to more apps:
First, let’s add it to the timer and stopwatch apps. If you’re timing something, then you probably want to be able to see it at all times..
Considering how substantial the always-on-display was for Series 5, I can see Apple wanting to make that experience better over the years. Starting with clock-like apps is a natural way to start. It is a watch, after all. I wouldn’t expect Apple to expand this functionality to 3rd-party apps in watchOS 7, but that’d be a natural extension for future releases. I imagine their long-term goal is to blur the lines between always-on mode and active mode.
Adding custom watch faces is the elephant in the room. I have to believe designers at Apple are at least considering custom watch faces to make this amazing little computer feel even more personal. If there’s an institutional aversion to custom faces within Apple, adding better support for apps would be a decent half-measure to improve the always-on experience.
Adding custom watch faces is the elephant in the room. I have to believe designers at Apple are at least considering custom watch faces to make this amazing little computer feel even more personal. If there’s an institutional aversion to custom faces within Apple, adding better support for apps would be a decent half-measure to improve the always-on experience.
Another idea was “one-tap less” which would be wide-ranging…
Apple should make a run through of the things you do on the watch and try to remove one tap from the process.
I feel like Apple took a stab at this in watchOS 4. The Timer app comes to mind: they went from fiddly-circle-scrolling to a grid of 1-tap buttons for common times. Setting timers on laundry day was never the same.
Timer app in watchOS 1-3 (left) compared to watchOS 4-6 (right).
Birchler doesn’t provide any examples, but the Workouts app comes to mind. When I’m done walking Mylo in the morning, I raise my wrist to see the workout session, swipe right, tap End, scroll forever, tap Done, then hit the Digital Crown to get to the watch face. I bet there’s an easier way to end a workout, and I bet all those steps aren’t necessary today, but it feels like they are. Lots of paper-cuts like this that could be ironed-out to make the experience lightning fast.
I really appreciated Birchler’s post for its thoughtfulness and specific solutions. It takes someone who really loves a product to uncover all the ways it could be better — if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t write about it in the first place.
The post made me think about how fun (and challenging) it must be to work at Apple and think through stuff like this every day.
The post made me think about how fun (and challenging) it must be to work at Apple and think through stuff like this every day.