Susie Ochs, Executive Editor for Macworld, gives her take on life with an Apple Watch. In her case, there’s plenty to like, but this is from the Things I hate about it section:
That brings me to my main complaint with the Apple Watch: Its poky performance. Since the lion’s share of the data it presents comes from your iPhone, be prepared for lags. Even scrolling around its face, the refresh rate seems a little laggy compared to what I’m used to (and spoiled with) on the iPhone and iPad. Location-based apps, like Maps and Weather, seem the slowest, as well as using third-party apps that pull data from apps I haven’t used on my iPhone for a while. The lagginess isn’t a deal-breaker, but it is a bummer. The watch is definitely the slowest Apple product I’ve used in years.
Poky performance will definitely get better as developers learn the subtleties of programming for a device that offloads much of its processing to, and gets much of its data from, the iPhone in your pocket.
I’ve spoken to a number of developers whose Apple Watch apps were incredibly slow, until they figured out the various techniques to speed performance and responsiveness. Developers who were lucky enough to get a chance to visit Apple’s Apple Watch lab and test their app on a real device, inevitably came away with some real insights and, more importantly, with a vastly improved app.
The point, early adopters, is this. The Apple Watch experience is going to improve, and pretty quickly. The performance problems pointed out in this review are software issues, not hardware issues. Meaning your Apple Watch will just get better over time, as developers learn the ins and outs of this new frontier.
What performance problems? I’ve read about those since the first reviews, yet have not experienced any. Everything loads, scrolls, animates just fine. I use Weather more than any other app and it never seems slow to me. Even third party apps aren’t slow. I guess I’m really missing something.
my glances occasionally stutter.
siri doesnt seem to register my commands for several seconds
maps directions sometimes dont start.
several third-party apps got deleted by me because they didnt seem to do anything — black screen w/ the spinner. sometimes if you leave them there long enough theyll load their content, but realistically im not going to sit there waiting on on my wrist.
some apps dont seem to work properly after loading (Shazaam comes to mind)
…dont get me wrong, im digging it, primarily for the activity tracking and notifications. but performance needs to (and will im sure) get better.
Well there’s definitely some lags. But all the negativity around 3rd party apps lowered my expectations significantly. And I was pleasantly surprised by relatively speedy response on many 3rd party apps. Some Internet-based apps like MLB At Bay is totally usable, but there are some dogs here and there, such as Dark Sky (then again, Dark Sky is porky on iPhone as well).
But I agree with Dave. Developers will learn over time and I strongly suspect WWDC 2015 will add many more APIs and improvements to WatchKit.
Thanks for the link! Will definitely revisit this as time marches on. The Bluetooth/Wi-Fi complaint is probably hardware dependent, but I hope the software does improve.
I sincerely heart early adopters.
I have to think that performance will increase once developers can build native apps, instead of extending their iPhone app to the watch.
Developers: write your Watch extensions the way you would write an app that needs to do network access. Asynchronous requests, background threads, pre-fetching, and all that good stuff.
“performance needs to (and will im sure) get better”
Is the the reported lag an issue that will be mostly remedied with better software from 3rd parties and Apple, both?
Or will a processor upgrade be required to move the Watch closer in performance to the iPhone?
dunno, but when third-party apps are allowed to install natively later this year (as announced by Apple), we’ll have more answers.
Also, it’s 1.0. Apple’s done precisely what they did with iPod/iPhone and iPad – they’ve shipped as soon as the tech let them make the product they wanted to even if that is just barely. Remember the iPhone and then the 3G? The iPad 1 vs 2? Watch 2 is where we’ll start seeing some breathing space – the tech will be a little ahead of the minimum needed to get a decent product and it will improve from there.
Combined with that, developers now have actual Watches to play with, not emulators and WWDC will likely bring WatchKit improvements. Next year this time we’ll look back at this like we always do with 1.0 releases and go “wow, we’ve come a long way.”
Overall, I have few complaints from this 1st-generation Watch. But my expectations were based on my experience with the Original iPhone. Both amazing, but not without shortcomings.