“watchOS 3 is Apple’s most crowdsourced product ever,” Michael Simon writes for Macworld.
“Barely a year into the product’s existence, Apple is rebooting watchOS, dumping key features, reimagining others and dramatically changing the way we implement and interact with it,” Simon writes. “On its website, Apple says it “Feels like a whole new watch,” and it’s hard to argue that point.”
“At its introduction, Tim Cook called Apple Watch the company’s most personal product, but I think its connection goes deeper than the physical relationship. Apple is allowing watchOS to grow within the community that uses it, and our experiences with it will directly impact its evolution,” Simon writes. “watchOS 3 is Apple’s first truly crowd-sourced product, a direct response to its consumers’ real-world usage; feedback from users revealed that the watch is much more of a passive device than Apple envisioned.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yet another of the myriad benefits of early adoption: You get to help define new platforms.
And, yes, it is quite stunning to witness how malleable Apple has proven itself to be with Apple Watch! With the release of watchOS 3, Apple Watch side buttons everywhere are going to be shocked at how much use they’re getting!
watchOS 3: It truly is a whole new Apple Watch. More info: apple.com/watchos-preview/
Everyone knows Jobs made Apple great. But I suspect Steve would not be so open to making major changes to watchOS based on user preferences.
Steve too often believed a device should work a certain way and god damn-it, it is only going to work that way, regardless of what the users thought and desired.
Sometimes that approach worked, but sometimes it prevented necessary changes from occurring.
Good points. But then, Jobs did understand that users did want some choices. He believed that iTunes should allow the user to curate their own music collections. Now Apple seems not to care about users managing their own music, it seems Apple Music is just another corporate radio station attempting to get everyone on subscription. The message they delivered monday is, “we’ll tell you what the most important music is”. Not cool.
As with any huge corporation, we are seeing Apple’s leadership start to wander in the direction of maximum profit rather than optimum user experience. Apple seems to think that everyone is going to complicate their lives by managing 4 different screens to do things that require one or two max.
Moreover, Apple has lost its continuity. Who wants to make an appointment to buy a $12k gold watch from a hipster kid in a blue T-shirt? Who wants to pay $150 for an Apple TV that underperforms in every objective way the $130 Roku 4?
Is it because Apple design is so much better than the rest? Sorry, but that’s not really so anymore. Macrumors shows almost all Apple hardware is long overdue for a refresh. The Mac hardware that Apple has released in the past 5 years has been almost entirely forgettable. Software releases have been ugly and buggy. Why? Is there any reason that Apple products now require user manuals to figure out how to do stuff? Here is your answer: All Apple keeps pushing is its iCloud because Cook bets big on it garnering continuous subscription revenue. Personal computing isn’t even a phrase Apple uses anymore. Apple wants you to rely on Big Blue/Big Brother/Siri in order to accomplish anything.
These layers of bloat and complicated connectivity have been added piecemeal to formerly reliable and efficient products to please the iCloud team that now seems to hold all political power in Cupertino. WWDC showed that all new features are iCloud reliant. And will these features work reliably for the majority of users who do not spend their entire lives covered with a secure WiFi signal? Not likely because the patchwork of regional cellular networks certainly isn’t up to the task.
Meanwhile, Apple hardware falls further behind the curve for unknown reasons.
This really shows how off the rails Apple has been without Steve Jobs. People also seem to forget that major UI changes to iPhone happened even with incremental updates!
Your impression of Steve Jobs is only partially correct. He made u-turns regularly in his history. Being wrong is the constant state of humanity. He clearly had figured that out by the time he’d grown up a bit and returned to Apple. Instead, he wanted to get things as right as possible and work on the rest. That is why Apple gear under his supervision was as good as it was. His philosophical legacy lives on.
Of course Apple has always had the reputation of bungling one thing or another. But they usual get back up again and sort it out… eventually. We members of the chorus here on line either cheer Apple on or bitch like maniacs for them to get off their wake up, get off their ass and fix what they broke. That’s just want Apple fanbois do (unlike ANY other fanbois ever).
Apple’s first attempt at the Watch isn’t great. They’re FUNDAMENTALLY changing how it works now.
This is much different compared to say OS X or iOS. Put the very first iPhone next to the latest one and iOS works exactly the same. The paint has been updated but that’s about it.
What the Apple Watch shows is that Apple didn’t really know what they were doing. To make such fundamental changes now is evidence of that.
I can’t agree. But what’s great is that Apple clearly has an accelerated evolution of the Watch. – – I have to wonder if that’s why Apple has dropped the ball on a few other things. Apple needs to ‘scale’.
Yep, I agree that’s why we have convoluted products that we have today. Today’s Apple Watch is nothing spectacular. Hopefully the new OS improves this. The benefits I see to Apple Watch very few but are messaging, deleting email which doesn’t even impact the iPhone, weather and Apple Pay which I was only to use the first time yesterday since Fidelity Investments just added it. I basically use the AW on weekends now and have no problem living without it
The 3 criteria used by Apple to determine if they will enter a market
1. Identify a nascent market with no dominant leader.
2. Compare Apple’s financial strength to those of the current market participants.
3. Determine if Apple might possess/develop/deploy fundamental intellectual property to dominate the market for a minimum of 5 years.
– Jon Rubenstein, Apple WWDC, circa 2002
So, you mean that Apple was spying on us all along?!! Where’s the outrage? Where’s the paranoia??? 😉
I don’t about the Apple Watch.
I really don’t.
I am using a Pebble smart watch as an experiment asnit was $100 cheaper, but after 8 months of use, I really am not getting any real benefits from it.
I am not fitness obsessive, so I don’t use my watch for any fitness activitiies.
Maybe I should try out one of Pebble’s walking/activity apps as I am always moving about and busy with personal business.
I’ve tried using my Pebble with s sleep monitor app which does work quite well, but had to stop using it because it sucked the battery life out of both my Pebble watch AND my iPod Touch 6th gen. like an electronic vampire.
Currently I just have it set to notifications that I can’t easliy reply to and real time weather updates that works well, too!
I use it to remote control my iPod Touch music apps like Pandora, Slacker and Orange Radio.
But, so far, this is all I have found a smartwatch useful for.
AND I have found myself not having the watch on my wrist much lately when I can do all of these directly from my iPod Touch, which I still need to carry with me, anyways.
I just think the idea of doing all of the things that you can do on a larger handheld device is ridiculous to attempt to do on a tiny watchface.
I think the Apple Watch is not going to be a mainstay product in Apple’s lineup.
Not like an iPhone, iPod Touch OR iPad.
IMO
I think you meant “I really don’t care about the Apple Watch”…
Well, if you really didn’t care about it, then why are you spending a single second of your time reading (and then commenting) about it?
I don’t care about hog farming and I sure as hell don’t frequent hog farming blogs — and then post comments there.
OS Evolution.
That’s how it works.
With over 1 billion products in use world-wide it makes a lot of sense for a company whose top concern is the user experience to monitor how its products are being used and modify the operating systems to improve the experience. This “change” is fully consistent with Apple’s mission. Using the WatchOS to start this makes sense with the smallest user base. Apple can make major OS changes with the fewest users affected. Since the changes are being made based on their actual use of the product, the acceptance of the changes should be highly successful. Great move, Apple.!
One thing that strikes me is the flexibility we are seeing with Apple’s ability to make significant operational changes with only software updates. Yes, I know that’s the point of having programmable H/W and all, but if the H/W design is not sufficiently thought through in advance, a company can find that what they want to do with a S/W update cannot be done because they blocked themselves off in the H/W design. I know because I’ve been there.
Apple is to be congratulated (once again) because they have thought through their integrated H/W and S/W design very well, leading to the ability to make significant changes in how the device operates later in time, and can address user needs with only a S/W update, rather than pissing the user off when they come out with a newer device that does what the user wants, but the user needs to purchase a new device.
Sure, there will be a new device in the future, perhaps even the near future. But right now, I applaud Apple’s design forethought to be able to support significan changes with only a S/W update.
smp
I haven’t checked yet, is it possible to customize the default response messages?
Looking forward to the update. Personally I forgot the large side button even existed, so it makes much more sense to use it for a dock/glances replacement. I use the watch for Apple Pay (on the Tube), notifications, and most of all complications. I love the calendar complication which shows me my next appointment (synced with outlook) when at work. The Dark Sky complication tells me if it’s about to rain. I switch faces in different situations, so when travelling I have the world clock, weather and App in the Air complications etc. More 3rd party complications and third party clockfaces please! Looking forward to being able to swipe more easily between them.
This shows that they can do it, they can make important changes based on user feedback.
So why can they not do that with more important products such as the Mac?
Example:
Open a window of images and right arrow to the end of the column. Instead of going down to the next column it just stops right there. Throughout the OS there are dozens of examples of such odd behavior, in Mail, in Contacts and so on, and year after year it all goes unfixed. Sometimes it even goes backwards.
And yes I have submitted feedback, many times.
I do understand that this will get low star ratings but you know I’m right.
Any long term Pages or Aperture (RIP) users here?