[Brave Ulysses]

I was an early adopter of the Apple Watch and have worn in every day since. I love it and hate it.

WatchOS 3 looks to address several major problems with the Apple Watch. But, it also has me wondering how could Apple have gotten it SO wrong in the first place? The new app dock replacing the "friends" button and Glances is about as big of a conceptual change as you could make. It's an incredibly humble move on Apple's part that basically admits they got two of the biggest UI aspects of the Apple Watch wrong upon release.

If the speed increase is close to what they claim, and the battery life doesn't suffer too much as a result of the changes, I think we may not be seeing an Apple Watch 2 until early next year. I think at this point the hardware needs a huge generational leap and to be rethought the same way they are rethinking the software. Additional sensors (blood pressure, glucose, GPS, altimeter), a screen that can work when wet, it's own 4G/LTE connection and a much faster processor are really what the watch needs next. That's a tall order and I don't think an Apple Watch 1.5 is worth it if they can't deliver on all of those.

[kieran]

The apps that work in watchOS 3 so far are incredibly fast. It's like a brand new watch. It really does make a huge difference.

Getting rid of Glances and moving things to the Dock is a big change, but one that will ultimately work very well. All of the apps are still behind the digital crown if need be, but the most frequent ones in the Dock is nice to have.

Hopefully apps will get updated in the next few weeks and things will be working again. Just hopeful that the battery life doesn't take a major hit, but I've been ending the day with over 50% on the battery lately anyway, so I have some room to play with.

[turtle]

Getting used to the major changes of watchOS 2 to 3 has been very interesting. I've been a day one user of Apple Watch and didn't mind the previous two versions. They did the job, but obviously had room for improvement.

No glances and making the Friends button be a dock is mentally a better approach. I haven't been able to make the switch all that easily though. Maybe if I were new to Watch and only had wOS 3 I would have an easier time with this.

Scribble is awesome. It gives you the ability to write on your screen like you could the old Palm Pilots and it is awesome. You write letters with your finger and Siri fixes the mistakes along the way. This is one of the best usability features as far as I'm concerned. It is far from perfect but so much better to replying to messages on your watch. More often than not I don't like looking like Penny from Inspector Gadget. I don't want to say out loud what I want to be said through my watch. Now I can just draw the letters.

I only changed my watch face a few times a week. I pretty much use the same one all the time (Modular) so switching wasn't a big deal for me. Being able to switch by swiping the screen without entering any configuration though is really slick. I actually do change the face of my watch a little more, though only a few more times a week than before.

I would love it if heart rate were a live complication rather than a shortcut to the old Glance page, now individual app. Having HR and the others move to a dedicated app makes sense, just seems like HR should be less of an app and more of a service. Maybe tap the complication and it would stay on your watch face and live update for a few minutes. Or update as your watch naturally updates and logs your heart rate. So display the last reading even if it's slightly outdated at one point.

Breathe: why? I get that some might be super thrilled with this addition but I am not one of them. Given the presentation about it I feel like it's "witchcraft"* and casting lots more than it is a real value. I did it once just for the sake of saying I breathed like it suggested. Guess I'm just not into that kind of thing. Maybe one day I'll see it differently.

I do stare at my activity all the time so the faces are nice, though I end up sticking with my Modular face and the circles as a complication. Having the Activity app display the way it does now with only one page for all your details to scroll through and the second page be for friends makes sense too. Thing is the details of your stats are harder to view now. Not horrible, but harder to view at a glance. It will be easier to just read it on the phone now.

The setting changes and ability to manage the watch through the Watch app are awesome. I'm thrilled with that change more than anything else. It means I can change faces easier and those simple things. I'm still tweaking things out with this, but it is a nice improvement.

There are a ton of other things that I'm enjoying or not enjoying but those are the things that stand out most to me. I'm really glad I did the upgrade to this.


* Tonge in cheek.

[kieran]

I've been sticking with the analog activity face with the small circles inside. It's really nice to have them separate and with a nice analog face again. I had been using the modular face but i like this much better.

Having the side button as a dock has been awesome. I never really used the glances since they took so much time to update. The time to update is much quicker with them in the dock.

[Eugene]

I find the activity graphic dominates that face way too much. I check my watch for the time mostly, not to see how many more steps I won't take or times I won't be standing the rest of the day.