Some brief thoughts on watchOS 6

Posted 9th October 2019 in Apple

A quick summary of my thoughts on the newest operating system for Apple Watch:

  • I love the new Meridian watch face – turn off all the complications and this is the perfect watch face (Series 4 and 5 only); classy and fills the whole screen, rounded-corner to rounded-corner
  • The Calculator app is nicely implemented but might be fiddly on the older 38mm watches; weird it has taken until now to add something so basic
  • ‘Find People’ is now built in – My wife and I share locations, so now I can ask Siri where she is without taking my phone out of my pocket or bag
  • Siri is better – it used to be pretty useless other than for sending a message or making a phone call, but now it works more or less like it does on the phone itself
  • List View for apps looks great – subtly curved as you scroll through; surely this should be the default instead of the awful (and impractical) honeycomb Grid View
  • I thought the Rain complication would be more useful… I’d like to know at a glance how if it’ll be dry enough over the course of the day to ride my longboard to work (I’m really not a fan of the bus), but it only gives the current percentage chance of rain, which is what windows are for
  • I love the new Reminders app and it’s now a bit easier to use on the watch than it used to be
  • Awards now appear as a third swipe-across option in the Workouts app, after Sharing, where they used to only be available on the phone
  • The App Store is another step toward de-coupling from the iPhone, but I’m not sure it needs to like the iPhone needed to decouple from iTunes on a laptop

Accessibility in your inbox

I send an accessibility-centric newsletter on the last day of every month, containing:

  • A roundup of the articles I’ve posted
  • A hot pick from my archives
  • Some interesting posts from around the web

I don’t collect any data on when, where or if people open the emails I send them. Your email will only be used to send you newsletters and will never be passed on. You can unsubscribe at any time.

More posts

Here are a couple more posts for you to enjoy. If that’s not enough, have a look at the full list.

  1. Own your own content

    Posting valuable content to social media or other platforms you have no control over can be risky; just look at the mess over on Twitter…

  2. Mastodon and me

    Mastodon has enjoyed a spike in popularity lately. It took me a while to wrap my head around the basic concept, but it feels like the right way to do social networking.