#watchOS 10, about half a year in (I think I used the betas?): I think it’s mostly an improvement.
Changing some of the basic interactions is bold, because you’re messing with people’s muscle memory. But I doubt Apple did that lightly. They knew this was a risk. A 10.0 is one of those rare occasions where you get to take the risk.
I still have broken muscle memory with what the watchface gestures do: do I swipe up for Control Center? No, that now gives me widgets. Do I click the lower button for recent apps? No, that now gives me Control Center. Wait, so where do you get recent apps? (For a while, I thought the answer is you can’t any more. Instead, it’s: double-click the crown.) In practice, this means I often do the wrong gestures, undo, then do the right thing. (I’m using “gesture” loosely here.)
There’s a bigger conversation to be had about what that means for the Apple Watch per se (is that… fine? Is it a missed opportunity?) vs. something culturally amiss at Apple. Have they become less potent at drumming up support? Have their policies sworn too many third parties off forever? Should there perhaps be paid first-party apps for the Watch, as benchmarks of “this is what a good premium Watch app can be”, much like Final Cut Pro, iLife, etc. in the early 2000s for the Mac?
Swiping horizontally to switch watch faces came back (optionally) in 10.2 or so. Truthfully, I haven’t enabled it yet, even though I originally missed the feature.
Finally, widgets. I think this sort of makes it all worth it. One of the things that always seemed like an obvious limitation in complications was how static they made the watchface setup. Usually I don’t want a timer complication, but when a timer is currently running, I do! Usually I don’t need the Fitness icon, but if I’m in an active workout, that’s useful!
Widgets fix this, more or less. I’m not sure this is the perfect solution, but it’s a step up. I can now swipe up or turn the crown, and glance at what’s currently active. A timer, a workout, that sort of thing. Big plus.
@chucker I think this relates to the Widgets side of the watch? Most of the reasons to switch back to a previous app are better embodied as widgets: if I check something in the middle of a workout and want to get back to the workout screen there’s a widget for that; same for Apple Music, generally. (Plus there’s still the old weird tap the top edge but not enough to drag notifications down “last app” gesture.) Most of the cases I need to scroll recent apps are a missing widget, I feel.
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