I hope WWDC brings these two fixes in watchOS 12.
There’s been a viral clip going around X ever since the Siri fiasco took off.
A clip emphasizing simplicity.
A clip emphasizing stability.
It was about the new features in Snow Leopard back in 2009, and how Apple proudly announced zero new features.
Although there were new features, what Apple was trying to emphasize was software stability and how important it was to them to make sure, “it just works.”
The famous “it just works,” implying how seamless and unbelievable it is, and not the jerry rigged “it juuust (barely) works.”
Apple had a more recent instance similar to this with iOS9 in 2015, where Craig Federighi discussed how the focus was on “elevating the foundations” of iOS, such as extending battery life, improving performance, and enhancing security to protect customer data.
watchOS needs its Snow Leopard / iOS 9 moment. Have a few updates to wow the people and please Wall Street, but really hunker down and fix some key issues.
Two issues to be exact.
The first issue is the ability to swipe between your watch faces. This was a staple and stable feature starting with watchOS 3 before watchOS 10 had its huge overhaul with SmartStack. You would effortlessly swipe between watch faces and all your information was just there, present and up to date. In watchOS 10, that feature went away for a while, and I was not happy about it:
A barbaric touch and hold, followed by scrolling right or left in the edit screen. Even the original Apple Watch had a faster way to change watch faces with its Force Touch ability giving you almost instant access to the watch face edit screen.
Even Apple knew they had to bring this feature back since it made switching watch faces much faster, and they did bring it back as a hidden option with watchOS 10.2 under Settings > Clock > Swipe to Switch Watch Face.
It came back, but it came back the way Michael Jordan came back as a Washington Wizard instead of a Chicago Bull.
No longer the default option, the swipe came back as a 2nd string option due to its glitchy performance. On my 7 and a half year old Series 3 Apple Watch, with its latest software version (Watch OS 8), in the year 2025, you can swipe between watch faces and everything is in memory and seamless. Extremely smooth, with the hour, minute, and seconds hands perfectly in sync between swipes. It just works!
Somehow the architecture of watchOS 10 fundamentally changed some of the inner workings of the Apple Watch, and after almost 2 years now, it’s as if the watch face has to “load” each and every time you swipe watch faces. It feels and looks buggy, especially when you go from an analog watch face to a digital watch face that is full of data. It juuust (barely) works.
The Tips app on your iPhone even demos how to change your watch face, referring to the touch and hold method vs the swipe method.
I’m sure there are Apple Watch engineers who cringe every time they swipe from one watch face to another, knowing that this problem still exists and needs to be fixed. I understand why it’s not a high priority, but it’ll be two years in June when they announce watchOS 12.
Two years is long enough.
The second (more critical) issue that needs to be overhauled are the watch faces. I’ve said this multiple times already, but they need to be updated to support the Series 10’s always on display with seconds hand. To advertise this feature and then to only have it on 3 watch faces at launch is just embarrassing. The Unity Rhythm watch face was released recently with watchOS 11.3, but that is still 4 out of over 40 watch faces. In the Steve Jobs era, this would not have been acceptable. Heck, even Jony Ive would have put the hammer down on this one.
To complicate things further, there are plenty of complications such as the digital time and digital seconds complications that would make this feature pop even more on the watch. Your always on display would look more realistic, with ticking “components” constantly updating every second without sacrificing battery life. That “magical” touch would sell more watches, because we are visual creatures, and to see the Apple Watch acting like an actual watch that ticks and doesn’t stop moving will blur the line between digital and traditional watch faces.
Watch enthusiasts will appreciate it even more, and won’t scoff (as much) at us digital watch wearers. They will still scoff at us when they notice its quartz-like movement, but appreciate the technological step forward and will purchase one, probably a more expensive model to boot.
The real question is, was this a Wall Street move to keep this feature gimped the way Apple has? Perhaps it would have taken sales away from the higher profit margin of the Ultra 2? The Series 10 in 46mm technically does have a bigger display, and to make it more lively with its 1 sec refresh rate for $370 less does make it a much more compelling purchase from a visual standpoint.
As sleezy as it might be to keep the feature purposefully limited to drive Ultra 2 sales (I don’t think this was the plan), it would be reassuring to know they have the capability to make every watch face compatible with the 1 second refresh rate. I really do hope the Ultra 3 and Series 11 have full support for this feature, while updating the Series 10 to match.
Ideally, and this is truly my hope, Apple didn’t have time to fix the issues with the previous watch faces, and they are working diligently to update all watch faces for watchOS 12.
The updated watch faces could even be the main upgrade for watchOS 12 and it could actually revitalize interest in the Apple Watch. The timing would be perfect to coincide with the purported iOS 19 redesign.