Glances, Settings, and Handoff

Abstract

One of the first things I discovered when I got my Apple Watch is how difficult it can be to launch an application. Starting from the watch face, you have to press the digital crown to open the home screen. That’s where the problems start. It’s easy to miss the digital crown and touch the screen instead, or you might touch the digital crown in the wrong place, causing it to rotate. On some watch faces (including Astronomy, which is my favorite), either of these actions starts an animation. To stop the animation, you need to press the digital crown to get back to where you started and then you need to press it again to reach the home screen. Once you’re on the home screen, your next task is to move the screen around to find the icon for the application you want to launch. Having done that, you may need to move it to the center, to make it large enough to hit reliably, and then touch it. That doesn’t sound so bad, but it can be frustratingly difficult to do, especially if you are on the move and also trying to see what’s in front of you.