Mastodawn

Craig Hockenberry Sep 28, 2023

I have a huge amount of respect for the team working on watchOS and all the improvements we've seen in the latest release. It's probably my favorite Apple platform.

So when the watchOS app I use the most has design regressions, I have to say something. I hope the feedback is constructive and helps guide the product in a way that makes it more useful for folks like me.

Here are a couple thousand words about timers:

https://furbo.org/2023/09/28/the-timer-in-watchos-10/

/cc @lorihc @douglemoine @taylorcarrigan

The Timer in watchOS 10 • furbo.org

The new visual appearance and functionality of watchOS 10 is a welcome change. There was clearly a lot of design and engineering effort put into this new interface and the improvements are tangible for most apps. Unfortunately, the app that I use the most on the Apple Watch has lost much of its usability, both […]

Furbo.org by Craig Hockenberry

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M. Lee

@chockenberry I’m really glad you wrote this analysis. I’m also a frequent user of timers and have been really aggravated by the changes, and I’m not even a (frequent) user of nose taps. It just seems like a big step back in several ways, the first of which is I always used to access it by hitting the side button to bring up recently used app cards, and now I have to pick it from the constellation of apps that contains 3 similar but wrong answers.

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alex.tm Oct 3, 2023

@zebe @chockenberry The side button was the primary way I interacted with my watch too, the large tap targets of the app cards worked great for the few apps I use. After playing with the remaining options, I think the best replacement is the widget screen (swipe up from bottom of screen). I was able to place widgets for the apps I need, and they seem to stay in the same order no matter what. It sure would be nice to be able to customize that side button though.