Macworld - USA (2020-03)

MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 57

used as a face on older models with
smaller displays? If so, that’s a shame—
users of the Series 4 and Series 5 watches
ought to be able to take full advantage of
rich complications across as many faces as
possible. (I can actually make the new
California face a pretty good clone of
Utility, which says something about how
flexible California is—but there’s no option
to let me display complications in color
rather than grayscale. Oh well.)
There are also no new complication
styles in watchOS 6, after watchOS 5
introduced so many. Perhaps it’s worth
taking a year to stabilize complication
design, given that app developers had a
very short amount of time to react to the
new complications when they were
introduced with the Series 4 watch last
year. But I’m convinced that, along with
Siri, complications are a primary way for
people to interact with the Apple Watch.
They need to keep improving. (I’d love to
see dynamic complications that can
display different items over time, as well
as complications that appear only when
they’re active—for a countdown timer,
for instance.)

THE BIGGEST CHANGE, AND
HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
It’s not fair to say that Apple didn’t change
most watch faces this year, because it had
to modify every one of them to support the

always-on

display.

Faces used

to wink out of

existence

when the

Watch display

went to sleep, but

now they must

stay on—in a

power-saving mode with a dramatically

reduced frame rate.

That required Apple to remove most

animations—most notably, the sweep of a

second hand—from faces. Other faces

with bright graphics simply dim the

graphics away so that only the time is

displayed. If you watch a dimmed face

long enough, though, you’ll see that there

are still animations here and there. The

California face completely animates the

minute-by-minute tick of the minute hand,

even with the second hand silenced.

Every single watch face had to be

analyzed and updated for the dim mode

of the always-on display, and perhaps

that’s where Apple invested its face

design time this cycle.

I’ve heard some developers use the

The watchOS 6

Modular Compact

watch face.