Conclusion

This is my first watchOS review, and to be honest, I wasn’t fully sure what to expect going in. Alex has done such a great job with previous releases that I just wanted to provide a good enough experience for readers that they wouldn’t come banging down the doors at MacStories HQ (a fictional place that should definitely exist), asking him to return to reviewing watchOS.

One aspect of the review I didn’t expect was the sheer scale of what there was to cover. I think there were two reasons for this. On the one hand, there is far more to these operating systems that we use every day than we realize; we only use the parts that we need. On the other hand, this has been a bumper year not just for watchOS but for the Apple Watch as a whole. (Just don’t tell the Apple Watch Ultra.)

The Series 10’s form factor underwent notable changes, and charging speeds and screen viewing angles were upgraded. On the software side, there was something new in almost every corner of the OS.

Training Load and Fitness app upgrades improve how we exercise. Vitals can help us sleep better (and that’s to say nothing of the just-released sleep apnea detection capabilities). The Smart Stack is fully smart now and creates an Apple Watch that is even more adaptable to our current situations. Then there’s Translate and Check In that make their way over from our iPhones and land successfully on the Apple Watch. Even Double Tap is more useful.

It’s a really expansive update. There is one outlier, however.

In his review of watchOS 10 last year, Alex praised the new Smart Stack but lamented the reassignment of Control Center to the side button without any UI changes. He suggested that Apple may not have had enough time to update it and watchOS 11 could see some refinement. Well, spoiler alert: they haven’t touched it.

This is the one significant part of watchOS that Apple has completely ignored, and it’s starting to show its age. In the same year the company introduced interactive widgets in the Smart Stack, the Control Center does exactly the same thing it has done for – checks notes – seven years. This really has to change in watchOS 12, and seeing how much work has been poured into watchOS 11, I’m hopeful that Apple has the bandwidth to take a real run at it.

Now back to the good part. Reading the fantastic conclusion to Federico’s iOS and iPadOS 18 review, I was struck by what he described as his interest in people. The Apple Watch has always been a very personal device – it tracks your heart rate, for goodness sake – but so many of the changes in watchOS 11 are designed to make fundamental differences for the people who wear an Apple Watch.

Of course, the fitness elements are very much aimed at people, but take a look at all the other new additions. Pregnancy tracking aims not only to keep track of a pregnancy, but also to help with things like heart rate monitoring and mental health. Check In is meant to help you feel safe when you’re out and about. Translation is now here to help you communicate better with people who don’t speak your native tongue. Finally, the Smart Stack adjusts to what’s happening in your day.

All of these features are focused on people and their interactions with each other and the world around them.

It’s also notable that while so much coming from Apple right now seems focused on that other thing, watchOS 11 is almost entirely plowing its own furrow. It arrives complete and ready to go. As someone who’s been using the iOS and iPadOS 18 betas over the summer, it’s been great not to have to wait for the other shoe to drop for watchOS.

There is a lot to enjoy about this year’s release, and the past three months I’ve been using it have been fun. Almost all of the features relevant to me (again, I can’t enjoy the miracle of pregnancy) have stuck after I tried using them. I feel that the Apple Watch is more relevant than ever, and judging from this release, so does Apple – which makes me happy.