Follow the link, jump to the article and check out the Apple Watch Infograph face at the top of the post.
Quick, what time is it?
This is absolutely spot on. Terrific exploration of why that face is so hard to parse for the current time.
Why it’s hard to read the time on the Apple Watch Infograph face
I agree with you one thousand percent, particularly about the Echo Chamber. I like Marco a lot, but Marco shares his opinion, his podcast buddies retweet it, and it becomes a bigger deal than it should be. Reading the article about why Infograph is “hard to read” confused me so much. I’ve never had trouble glancing at a clock and knowing what hour it is. Maybe I just have better awareness of shapes and relative sizes and stuff than he does, or maybe I just learned how to read an analog clock as a kid.
In my day, we were taught to read time without numerals. Had no issue reading the time in a fraction of a second. Next, Marco will be complaining about the analog time display in the menu bar.
“People use a face that isn’t Modular?”
Eh, he’s not entirely wrong, in that all the other stuff behind the hands and the notification on the top arc of the circle make it harder to read the hands.
mdelvecchio’s response is more apt; “don’t make it that busy if you don’t like it that busy” is the correct response.
(Or, well, use a digit time display on e.g. Modular, not the hands display, as I suggest.)
True, but he’s complaining more then just about that watch face.
Yeah. Even more bizarre — the Infograph face even has a complication of the *digital time* that you can put right smack in top-middle area of the face. If for some reason you can’t read the arms of the watch, you can always read the digital version….right!?
But no, it’s an echo-chamber issue.
Slow news day.
I’m sad to see that Chamber often contains Dave.
Can you read these?
https://imgur.com/a/ZIHpqZD
…same face. You’re free to add or remove as much crap as you want. Using a packed face and then complaining it’s too busy is like ordering an everything-bagel and complaining there’s too much stuff on it.
Typically hand-waiving and concern trolling by Arment, which is eaten up by Marco Arment’s Techie Echo Chamber of Doom, Worry, and Concern ™.
(Since I apparently can’t post links to The Loop, I won’t be able to show my Infrograph screenshots….so here’s a post without)
You’re free to add or remove as much crap as you want. Using a fully-loaded face and then complaining “It’s too busy!” is like ordering an everything-bagel and complaining there’s too much stuff on it.
Typical hand-waiving and concern trolling by Arment, which is eaten up by Marco Arment’s Techie Echo Chamber of Doom, Worry, and Concern ™.
The initial screenshot is bait, though. It was shot to have the sweep second hand PRECISELY over the hour indicator. That makes one’s eye (or at least MY eye) scan around for the hour hand. If the second hand were in almost any other place it would be easier and less confusing.
FYI even the faux-analog Infograph has a complication that adds a digit time display right into the watch face, so you can have both on a single face.
nailed it.
This is yet another example of people being bizarrely unwilling to take charge of their technology. The fall feature likewise – it’s off if you’re under 65 but rather than simply activate it if you want it on, I’ve run into people who feel it’s a serious issue that Apple doesn’t read your mind and set it for you. The Washington Post a few weeks ago had an article excoriating Apple for having Parental Controls set to their most permissive settings.
All of these are features that people can fairly easily set however they want and in fact are meant to be tailored to one’s preferences= but there seems to be a subset of people who are simply unwilling to take charge of their tech.
It’s annoying because I think there is also an overlap between these folks and the people who claim that we can’t look away from our phones and somehow that is the fault of the phone vendors. No, people, it’s YOUR fault. It’s called personal responsibility. Practice it.
I don’t dislike Marco…but he has become more and more of a pompous personality lately. Its like everytime he writes one of these, it just feels like he thinks hes dropping an intellectual bomb on you. He’s always had a tone of superiority, but its gotten worse as time goes on.
All of a sudden hes a watch snob….AFTER buying his first Apple Watch. I just think its kind of funny. I can’t take anyone seriously when they snob out over a topic they only recently became interested in.
We could talk about some of the design “flaws” of Overcast…but I’m sure he wouldn’t want to hear it. I’d still like to know why the latest update needs blatant overuse of haptics. Most of the haptics don’t even correlate to anything physical. Swipe up on the media player, even when its already full screen and doesn’t actually move…you still get haptics. Sloppy implementation.
The white background Infograph face might not be the easiest to read, but he purposely made it that way. All you have to do is stick with the default black background and it’s easy to read unless you’re visually impaired. I don’t think I’ve ever even thought about faces without numbers since I was a kid learning how to tell time. If you tell someone “look over there, at 10 o’clock” they immediately know which way to look. You don’t have to project a laser number 10 through the air.
At this point I’m getting kind of weary of Marco’s pontificating. He can make good points, but this isn’t one of them.
You can go into Nitpicky Details and set Reduce Haptics. There’s a lot about Overcast that I don’t like, but it’s an app that Marco initially made for himself and as much as he talks about listening to his customers, the design is always going to be what he wants.
But they won’t let us. In a time when personal expression and innovation in watch fashion should be booming, they’re instead being eroded, as everyone in the room is increasingly wearing the same watch with the same two faces.
Open this door, Apple.
…oh cry me a river, man. Funny that I have three go-to watch faces and they don’t look anything like his claim of there only being two good faces (tho yep one of mine is Modular, but in my favorite color. I’m fine with that). I think devs are more upset that they cant build custom watch faces than normals are.
I’m of that day and it was still hard to figure out where the hell the clock hands were. I have no problems reading time from just the hands. But I need to see the hands.
This is why, I think, that every time I’ve tried a different Apple watch face I come back within about ten minutes to the default ‘Modular’ face… it shows me everything I need to know at a glance, in a coherent organized fashion.
Sometimes I feel embarrassed, like a grandparent whose VCR or microwave is always blinking 12:00 , but it works for me.
ROFL!
Reduce haptics essentially eliminates ALL haptics. play/pause are gone if you do that.
He’s arguing that the default configuration should be better designed. That applies to his work as well, shouldn’t it?
It does, but my point is Marco made the app for himself and he has decided that he knows best. In the early days of Overcast some people asked for a way to subscribe to premium podcasts and were dismissed. Finally this was added about the time his pals at Do By Friday started their premium after show. Features come and go at his whim. Which is always right, as he will gladly tell you.