WWDC 2023is cringe up , and with Apple sports fan starve of consequence hype since the iPhone 14 launching well over eight months ago , anticipation are high . Of of course the Reality Pro headset , if the company has wangle to get it finished in time , will be the flagship announcement . But one of Apple ’s less heralded products might be the sleeper hit of the show .
Last month , the well-thought-of leaker - analyst Mark Gurman claimed watchOS 10will be so goodthat no one will deal about the ( reportedly rather underwhelming ) new Apple Watch hardware fall later in the year . What that means in practice seems to be an updated user interface , and while the use of the word of honor “ update ” rather than “ new ” implies something less radical and alarming than iOS 7 , for example , most pundits think it will still be a major rethink of the mode we check our smartwatches .
A few days later , in fact , anew leakgave us some idea of what watchOS 10 will depend like . Most basically , the illustrious Grid View app layout , a visually baffling honeycomb of unlabeled icons that ’s stay on the same since 2015 ( albeit joined by the alternative List View in 2017 ) , will reportedly be ditched in favor of more iOS - esque uniform rows of larger ikon that you scroll through vertically . This seems far more coherent and exploiter - friendly , and might even tempt a few of us back from List View , which has many vantage but does n’t give you any way to put the more frequently used apps nigher to the center .
Grid View: A usability nightmare.
( I should put in at this point to warn that this second passing water come from @analyst941 , also know as “ anon. - A - S ” and , more recently , “ that leaker who gotbusted by an Apple confidence game . ” At this point it ’s unclear how much of 941 ’s flurry of leak were exact , and how much was target misinformation . But in this eccentric at least , the inauspicious leaker ’s sources are bear out elsewhere . The marrow is believably correct . )
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Going off the grid
Apple ’s long - term loyalty to Grid View has been unmanageable to understand ; it ’s simply not an effective use of a humble cover and requires both excellent memory board of icon graphics ( which , rather unhelpfully , can change ) and dextrous finger . Perhaps the company felt that this was a placeable theme song of the Apple Watch , much as the Home button and later the notch and Digital Island have served as seeable badge for the iPhone . But this is n’t , as those other example are , a question of making a virtue of requisite . The Grid View is simply bad invention that could well be better … and hopefully is about to be .
The interface refresh may not stop at rearranging the icons , however . If we are to think @analyst941 ( and as I say , that is n’t a given ) , then Apple is also about to include folder on the Apple Watch ’s home screen for the first time . This seems a less legitimate organic evolution , but that might be because I have n’t yet take in how watchOS will enforce the feature . I ’m mentally transplant the folder system from iOS onto the watch when it in reality take to be rethought if it ’s to avoid fiddliness . Apple ’s interface pattern squad has dropped a few globe since Jony I ve left , but I ’m optimistic that they will find the veracious way to do brochure on the small screen .
The cardinal matter is that you want to be uncoerced to take peril , try thing out , and change them if they ’re not operate . And this is where watchOS ’s development has been most disappointing . In the fundamental principle , in terms of the home screenland and app layout , Apple has generally been unwilling to ring the changes . It ’s particularly disappointing in this suit because the Apple Watch has seen a lot of change in the way it ’s consider by Creator and customers likewise since Grid View was make in 2015 . Apple accepted that it got other portion of the user interface wrongly ; the side button used to bring up a list of contacts , until the makers bring in a dock would be more useful . It should n’t have take this long to realize that Grid View too was a swing and a young lady .
Grid View: A usability nightmare.
Can I widget? Yes you can
We ’ve killed Grid View and we ’ve welcomed folder . But there ’s one more modification ( reportedly ) coming to the Apple Watch interface this twelvemonth , and it ’s widget .
At the last of April , Gurman returned to the subject of watchOS 10 and predicted that it would focus on widgets rather than apps , in an carrying out that sits somewhere between the erstwhile glance that the Apple Watch got disembarrass of back in watchOS 3 and the widgets you now get on the iPhone and iPad . ( This matches a prognostication by @analyst941 , by the direction . ) It will also divvy up some feature of speech of the Smart Stack in Io and iPadOS , a profoundly handy feature that motorcycle the widgets it establish based on the location and time of Clarence Day and what it thinks will be most useful to you .
I did n’t really go for Glances back in the day and throw away few tears when they disappeared . But plenty of others have sung their kudos to me , and I ’m prepared to conceive they can work in an updated form .
The key here is to think laterally about the fashion the Apple Watch works , and the qualities and limitation that make it different to an iPhone or an iPad . It ’s always on you , so it ’s uniquely commodious to check into quickly , but it ’s flyspeck , so it ’s unambiguously inconvenient for across-the-board navigation . ( I hate faffing around in the Maps app , for model , but when request way to a saved location with a single tap , the exploiter experience sings . ) There ’s a sweet-scented spot , rich than the complication and simpler than the app , where the Apple Watch can supply deep and relevant information without demanding that you interact with it too much , and the new watchOS widget can occupy that space .
Of naturally , we wo n’t know if the watch widget – or the eternal sleep of the port refresh - works well until thewatchOS 10beta gets roam out next month . Perhaps it will be like iOS 7 : initial alarm system followed by a slight aesthetic softening and eventual acceptance . Perhaps it will be an instant hit , or an irredeemable failure . But the important matter is that Apple has last accepted that the Apple Watch ’s interface is n’t working decent and needs to commute . The first step is recognizing you ’ve sustain a job . Everything else flows from that .
