The IT Nerd

The Apple Watch has only been out since 2015, but the OS that powers it is now on its fourth iteration. The changes are significant and help to make the Apple Watch more usable for most people. Here’s the things that jumped out at me:

• Immediately switch to List View for your apps: One of the things that I always hated about the Apple Watch is the grid view for apps as I found that to be difficult to navigate. Thankfully, Apple has come up with List View which displays your apps in alphabetical order in a list that scrolls up and down. You can switch to the list view with a hard-press on your watch’s app screen, then select List View. This is a way easier way to navigate your apps. Especially if you have a lot of them.
• The Dock mimics List View: Instead of scrolling from left to right, app previews are stacked vertically. just like list view which makes using the dock easier.
• The Heart Rate app is more useful: Previous versions of watchOS simply gave you what your current heart rate is. watchOS 4 gives you way more data such as resting rate and walking average. It will also detect when your heart rate increases when you are not exercising as that may be a sign of a heart issue.
• There’s now a flashlight: In a pinch if you need a flashlight, your Apple Watch can help you with that. If you swipe up to bring up Control Center, you’ll see the flashlight icon. You get a bright white setting, an alternating option and a bright red screen. It’s not the brightest, but in my testing it worked well enough in a dark room.
• The Music app has been heavily reworked… Perhaps not for the better: One huge change is found in the Music app. You can now only browse music that is on the Apple Watch itself and not the iPhone. Though you can still control an iPhone that is playing music using the Apple Watch. Other changes to the Music app in watchOS 4 include the ability to automatically add songs that are in a listener’s “heavy rotation.” Users can also manually select multiple playlists to sync to the watch, though it is limited to 2 gigabytes of storage. Now, there are going to be some who are not going to be happy about this. I personally am mixed and I will have to use this for a while to get a sense if this is good or bad for Apple Watch Users.
• Fitness fans will like watchOS 4: For starters the Workout app can switch between multiple activity types in a single workout and offers quick start workouts and pairing with gym equipment. Apple has also added greatly enhanced swim tracking. Finally he activity app now has coaching. So if you’re close to closing an activity ring, you’ll get a suggestion as to how you can do it.
• New watch faces: You get three new watch faces: Kaleidoscope, Toy Story, and Siri. The latter is potentially the most interesting. This watch face is made up of a series of cards stacked on top of each other, and scrolling the Digital Crown or swiping on the screen will navigate the list up or down. The info it provides is contextual. For example, if I was near a Starbucks, that would be displayed and I would have ready access to my Starbucks card. This is similar to the iPhone would do. But the iPhone will do this for built in and third party apps. watchOS only does this for built in apps. That limits how useful it could be. If Apple improves that, this could be a key feature. Also, with this watch face you get quick access to Siri, but pressing and holding the digital crown is just as quick for me. Thus I am not sure how useful this watch face is.
• The Phone app has a keypad: If you really want to live the Dick Tracy life, you’ll be happy to know that watchOS 4 has a keypad. This is likely a nod to the Series 3 Apple Watch with LTE, but it’s still useful for other Apple Watch users….. If you want to use your Apple Watch as a phone.
• The Camera app has more features: Beyond simply mirroring what the camera on your iPhone sees, the Camera app has some new features. You can now Force Touch the screen to flip between the front and rear cameras on your iPhone, activate or deactivate the flash, enable or disable HDR mode, and enable or disable Live Photos. You can also switch modes (say from photos to video) on your iPhone and have that reflected on the Camera app.
• Performance improvements exist: Apple claimed that they got a 70% speed boost from watchOS 4. I can’t say if that’s true or not. But I can say that my Series 2 Apple Watch does perform better. There were times with watchOS 3 when it felt sluggish. I am unable to find any such behavior now. That alone made the 2.5 hours that it took to install watchOS 4 worth it.

Here’s the bottom line. There’s more than enough here to make watchOS 4 a worthwhile jump. Besides the performance improvements, the changes to the apps are all largely positive. Though the jury is still out in terms of the music app. Be that as it may, Apple Watch owners should have no fear in terms of upgrading to watchOS 4.

UPDATE: I got my facts about performance slightly wrong. I crossed out the incorrect parts.

Yesterday, iOS 11 hit the streets and it’s a safe bet that within a couple of weeks, something like 80% of iPhones will have it installed. Frankly, if you’re on the fence about installing iOS 11, you shouldn’t be. I installed it on my iPhone 7 Plus seconds after it became available to the public and after the install I found it to be smooth and fluid in every aspect. But there are a number of things that stood out to me:

• The Control Center can be customized: Control Center which you get to by swiping up from the bottom of the screen is now a single screen affair rather than the three screens in the past. But you can now customize what appears there in the Settings app. That way it is truly useful to you.
• The Camera app works better: Apple has made a bunch of changes to the Camera app. Portrait mode now supports  flash and image stabilization. That will make that feature way more useful. Live Photos gets three new effects: loop, bounce and long exposure. Memories which auto generates albums works smarter, which means it might actually be useful because it wasn’t before.
• Siri is more useful: First off, Siri sounds less robotic and way more natural. Second, it can translate languages. English to Mandarin, Spanish, French, German, or Italian are supported at present. Though I had to change my iPhone 7 Plus from Canadian English to US English to make that work. But once I did, it worked fine.
• You can now browse the filesystem of an iOS device…. Sort of: Apple for whatever reason was dead set against introducing any sort of file management in iOS. But now iOS 11 has Files which allows you to browse and access files on your iOS device. But not everything. I guess Apple fully doesn’t trust users yet. You should also note that Files hooks into third-party storage services like Google Drive, Box and Dropbox.
• Messages works better: Messages in iOS 10 sucked as the interface was a bit of a disaster. In iOS 11 it lets you easily scroll through your apps on the bottom of the screen. That’s a big improvement.
• Multitasking looks different: When you switch apps, it now looks card like. That’s more cosmetic than anything else, but it is worth mentioning. \
• Text is sharper: Apple clearly tweaked how text looks on my iPhone 7 Plus as it is sharper and clearer. You’re going to notice this the second you install iOS 11.
• Notifications work differently: The biggest change is going to be how notifications work. In short,  the Notification Center of iOS 10 has been replaced with a screen that looks visually just like your lock screen. If you’re on the lock screen, you swipe up to see notifications. On any one notification, swipe left-to-right to open it directly. Or swipe right-to-left to “view” or “clear” it. If you’ve unlocked your phone. This will take some getting used to and I am not sure if this change was for the better.
• Taking screenshots is more useful: iOS 11 makes taking screenshots useful. You now get editing tools via a new mini app. This is useful for people like me who use screenshots to do “how to’s” for people.
• The SOS feature makes it way to iOS: Something that I enabled on my Series 2 Apple Watch was the SOS feature. On the Apple Watch you press and hold the side button and it will reach out to your iPhone to dial emergency services as well as a contact that you specify. That feature is now on iOS. Press the sleep/wake button 5 times and your iPhone will do the same thing. It’s a handy feature for peace of mind.
• The iPad gets a bunch of unique changes: iOS 11 delivers some unique changes for iPad users. The dock which is a staple on macOS makes an appearance. It replaces the bottom row of shortcuts that you’re used to on the home screen. The big difference now is that you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen in any app to make the dock reappear. That lets you easily jump between your shortcuts and running apps. A longer swipe brings up windows showing off all of your apps, along with the Control Center on the right side of the screen. The virtual keyboard has been redesigned to make it easier to type on. Finally, Apple Pencil support will make using the stylus feel more natural. All of this makes the iPad more like a fully fledged computer than a tablet.

One thing that I didn’t get a chance to test is augmented reality or “AR” as I didn’t have apps that supported that feature. But apps are starting to appear and it should be interesting to see how that feature is used.

So, here’s the bottom line with iOS 11. You’re going to upgrade to it if you have an iOS device. That’s a given seeing as roughly 80% of iOS users run the latest OS from Apple at any given time. But these upgrades are worth it. Though I am not yet sold on how notifications work. If you’re hesitant, you might want to wait until the first update comes out in a couple of weeks or so. But I wouldn’t be as there’s more than enough here to dive right in now.