Apple Watch, Watch Faces: too much 'Form', too little 'Function'

2023-09-24 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: Apple, Apple Watch

re: Apple Watch

Apple Watch 'faces' are driving me crazy. You get a truckload of 'pretty' watch faces that are 95% about design/style.

"Complications" is acuriously apropos double entendre—it’s all to complicated: so many constraints on what is allowed, so you then have to basically learn to code (in a sense) to work around the limitations.

I have yet to figure out how to get a watch face to display what I want; the choices are highly constrained. The closest one are the Activity faces, but these are designed for dilettante exercise, not for anything serious, or long hikes with varying conditions, etc, and are poorly configurable. I’m going crazy trying to find something I can use with satisfaction. My SRM power meter does a far superior job at this (4 screens all configurable and size grows/shrinks as needed and does not restrict choices). It was designed 10 years ago, and I can do it on the computer, not the PITA way with the phone.

They are mostly toy watch faces for style/fashion, where you cannot change most of the stuff, and what you can change is in a tiny size with choices that I don’t want because they are useless.

What I want to be able to see, across 2 or 3 watch faces in large type are the following. Plus a face or two with multiple of these together, arranged the way I want, with control over size of each item:

• Time of day with seconds
• Temperature
• AQI
• Heart rate
• Average heart rate
• Altitude, ascent, descent
• KCal burned since workout started
• O2 Sat (maybe, it seems to be conceringly inaccurate, reading 95% when it should read 99% or 100%)
• Speed now and average since workout start

The importance of each of these varies by activity.

Apparently there are apps for iPhone to design watch faces for Apple Watch. It appears that I have to go find and learn an app that Apple doesn’t make, so that I can work around their incompetence, where functionality takes a distant priority. Such an infuriating experience.

I also want a way to pause a workout eg when I stop to take a drink or a pee, whatever. Maybe this can be done and I just need to learn it.