WatchOS 11 gets more well deserved criticism.

First it was Zac from 9to5Mac, and now John from Daring Fireball sharing my pain with their Apple Watch frustrations.

Here’s John’s Apple Watch Report Card:

APPLE WATCH: C (LAST YEAR: B)

Series 10 watches feature a new display that supports once-per-second updates while in energy-saving always-on mode. So the seconds hand on an analog face can “tick” once per second even when the display isn’t fully on. But Apple only enabled this ticking seconds indicator on two watch faces, both new to WatchOS 11: Flux and Reflections. Setting aside the fact that I personally don’t like either of those faces (Flux in particular seems deliberately obtuse), this is ridiculous. WatchOS 11 offers, by my quick count, at least 33 different watch faces that offer a non-digital seconds hand or indicator. And only 2 of them support the new 1Hz refresh rate? That’s bullshit. And it wasn’t just a launch thing, because here we are in February, with WatchOS 11.3, and zero additional watch faces have been updated to support it. This is not how a serious watchmaker treats its watches. I will admit to caring far more about always-on seconds hands than most people, but this isn’t how a serious watchmaker deals with technical breakthroughs like this new display with a 1Hz refresh rate. Not just most, but every single watch face should have been updated to support ticking seconds. Apple Watch is turning more into a fitness tracker that happens to show the time, and away from serving as a proper watch.

Also: no Ultra 3 this year. The year-old Ultra 2 did gain a very nice black titanium color option, but that’s it. Kind of weird for a watch that starts at $800 — and that seems quite popular — to skip a year of silicon improvements.

I really hope watchOS 12 fixes all previous watch faces and complications that are compatible with the 1Hz refresh rate, if not sooner.

As for the Ultra 2, marketing wise they get an A for selling the same watch at the same price with a worse color that everyone seems to love even though it rubs off worse than Jet Black.

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