Something's weird. I'm a tech nerd who likes to switch things up. A new or novel software feature excites me. I might be akin to an Apple Fanboy. Despite all that, the recent overhaul to how the Apple Watch works actually put me off; I'm not a fan. In early summer at WWDC23, WatchOS was hyped to have a new widget-based interaction model. But I must be doing it wrong. Or my aging brain is more averse to change than I thought. Is it a paradox, wanting new features but disliking change?
Like I said, I love a good new feature. Typically, Apple adds new ones or enhances old ones without totally altering the deal. It often does this by keeping the former ways of doing things as an option. For example, Stage Manager, released in 2022, was a new and different way to multitask, but it is turned off by default, with the other methods still front and center.
This isn't always the case though. And though new features are usually in addition to old ones, the Apple Watch was fundamentally changed. Upon first updating, I was eager to try it out but found the changes jarring. My muscle memory was trashed. Hardware buttons now do different things. It's true that change is hard even if for the better, but I don't know how the new WatchOS is any better than the previous version. It almost seems like change for change's sake.
Before, I had used my Apple Watch SE for almost three years and was accustomed to it. I liked the "Complications" so much, the only change I wished for were watch faces that displayed more of them, like a square grid of nine tiny circular apps showing me glanceable info, with the center one showing the time for example. Instead, the big shift is away from watch faces and complications to "Widgets."
To me, it turns out that widgets are merely bigger complications, but you can only have four in a list. That seems awfully limiting. And I can no longer swipe to change watch faces to show different widgets. So while the previous WatchOS may not have been perfect, it made sense to me. The latest version doesn't.
It might be hard for non-Apple Watch users to understand how big a difference it is. Well, it's not far from the difference between using Windows and a Mac or iPhone and Android. A better example would be like the difference between stock Android and Amazon's version on the Kindle Fire tablet.
I admit that it's possible I'm reaching the point of life when I'm more averse to change. My brain may be stuck in its "old ways" or something. But I don't think so since I tend to seek out new ways of doing the same old thing. Maybe my expectations were set too high, Apple overpromised, and I'm left feeling underwhelmed. In any case, I'm slowly adapting. Yet I've got to preach, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."
I'll share one more related thing. My work computer runs Windows 10, but I'm on notice that it will soon upgrade to Windows 11. Ok, that's not bad because I like Win 11 on my home gaming laptop. But we're talking about my work computer - it works! Please don't update anything, leave well-enough alone. My experience with my Windows work PC is that something always gets messed up in the upgrade process. If nothing else, I'll need to redo some settings. Sigh.