WatchOS 2 and new Apple Watch Sport watches released

Apple has updated its Watch operating system, adding more apps and amusing gimmicks.

New Live Photo backgrounds with watchOS 2 on Apple Watch

Apple has made two big releases: the watchOS 2 operating system, which had been delayed by a bug; and very attractive additions to Apple Watch Sport, which is made of aluminium but has a cool gold or rose-gold finish.

The Sport not only looks better, but is cheaper (from $499, which is $300 cheaper than the standard). There is also a range of a new watchbands, including the leather classic buckle and Apple Watch Hermes, a collection of handmade leather bands.

An Apple Watch with a leather Hermes band.

I’ve been trying watchOS 2 for the past 10 days. It lets third-party apps run independently of the paired smartphone. So far, only some of Apple’s apps could do that. Presumably that will bring some benefit in loading time, and improved operating efficiency, but we’re yet to test these apps.

In my view, the major benefit of this will be third-party fitness apps. It’s great to walk or run with your watch on your arm without having to take your phone along tucked into your running shorts. You can don a Bluetooth headset and listen to music as you go.

Hopefully, your favourite fitness app will soon run in the same mode.

There’s a number of minor tweaks with watchOS 2. There’s new watch faces for photos and a chosen photo album. You select that photo album in the Apple Watch smartphone app. So you can have a watch face showing your friends, your children, or yourself, or a pic from an album. A different album pic shows each time you raise your wrist.

There’s a watch face that offers time lapse photography over 24 hours. So if it’s 12 noon where you are, your watch shows a photo of Hong Kong, London, New York, Shanghai, Paris, or Mack Lake in Florida at 12 noon. You choose where, but Australian cities are not included at this time.

There’s a feature called third party complications. Until now, you chose from a fairly limited set, the extra information that could show on the watch face, such as the temperature or the next calendar event. Third-party apps can now feed into what appears on watch faces.

There’s another feature called time travel. I can turn the circular crown forwards or backwards to see previous and upcoming calendar events on the watch face. It’s an easy way to check your calendar without opening a calendar app.

I also tried replying to mail directly on the watch. If you scroll down to the bottom of a mail message, you get options for contextually appropriate replies such as “Let me get back to you” or “Can I call you later?”.

Instead of displaying only a dozen friends, watchOS 2 lets you set up multiple friend screens, each of which can hold up to 12 contacts. So you can display dozens of them.

Remember the sketch feature on Apple Watch? I hardly use it, but if you do, you can send sketches to your friends in multiple colours.

Siri has become a little smarter. I could tell it to initiate a FaceTime call, and to start an outdoor walk.

It’s all very clever, but in terms of making Apple Watch even more attractive, it’s mostly playing around the edges.

After wearing Apple Watch for several months, I have my own wish list of improvements:

One: Make it waterproof. Sony has managed to excel in this area with its Xperia smartphones and tablets. There is no reason that Apple couldn’t succeed too. Then Australians would be more confident of taking Apple Watch to the beach, or leave it on while gardening, and it would be more knockabout device.

Two: Improve battery life. Because I charge it religiously every night, I’ve never had a problem with Apple Watch comfortably making it through a day. Nightly charging restricts Apple Watch from monitoring sleep. If Apple Watch needed to be charged only once or twice a week, it would attract more of those people who don’t like the burden of regularly charging lots of electronic devices.

Three: Offer an alternative to the cloud menu. The cloud menu certainly has a cool look, but in practice, if you don’t have wafer-thin fingers, or your eyesight isn’t so sharp, you have to expand the cloud to accurately click on apps. That’s a lot of mucking about. And you need to be good at recognising apps from the tiny icons on display. An alternative would be to scroll through apps with the digital crowd, or in a similar way to how you ferret through glances.

Four: Let apps offer a choice of glances. For example, I like Apple’s Activity app but I prefer to view steps, distance, and calories burned as the first screen in the glances view. Glances are a great idea, and there’s scope for making the experience even richer.

It’s becoming obvious that not everyone is attracted to buying a smart watch, but at the moment, if you want one, Apple is the most developed choice. But there is scope for making that watch experience even better.