With watchOS 3, Apple is finally putting the Watch on the right track

Smartwatches have never really appealed to me. Ignoring the aesthetics, a smartwatch just doesn’t seem functional enough to be worth the investment.

I’m not desperate for fitness information and neither do I want to know my heart-rate every few minutes. Yes, I need to check the time, but a regular watch is fully capable of doing that and it’s not like my phone is more than a foot away at any given moment.

The Apple Watch did get me to sit up and take notice, but only for the fact that it was made by Apple. I fully expected them to come out with a watch platform that was worth looking at, or at least, worth copying.

Sadly, other than a great design, a lineup of interesting wrist bands and innovative use of the crown, there was nothing new on offer. If you remember the original iPad, it was written off as a stretched iPod Touch. The Apple Watch seemed like a squished iPhone. The only real concession to uniqueness were the fitness and health features that I’m sure most of us don’t actually need.

I was disappointed, and, as Steve Wozniak pointed out , the Watch is just jewellery. Friends I’ve spoken to, people who’ve bought smartwatches, tell me the same thing. They like the design, but the watch serves not much of a functional purpose. It’s not actually smart.

With WatchOS 3 however, it finally looks like Apple is taking notice. To be fair, I don’t think anyone, even Apple, really knew what a smartwatch was for. The Apple Watch was released some 13 months ago, but given the proposed changes to the OS, it’s evident that Apple hasn’t been idle.

Among the many proposed updates to watchOS at  WWDC 2016 , the first was speed. As research has pointed out time and time again, most of us use only 2-3 apps regularly. Assuming the same is true for a smartwatch, Apple plans to preload the most-used apps into memory and ensure speedy access. If a watch can’t even deliver notifications on time, what purpose does it serve?

I really liked the idea of the revamped messaging system on the watch as well. The ability to quickly “write” a message with Scribble is so much more appealing than using canned messages.

Glances have been replaced by a dock of cards with relevant information and Apple’s Watch app is getting an update. I’ll withhold judgement on these features till I actually use them, but a dock does at least sound like a good idea.

Apple seems to have hit on something more fundamental. The smartwatch is not a watch, it’s a screen on your wrist. You glance at your phone a 100 times a day not to look at the time, but to check and respond to notifications.

Dedicated faces to show time are less important than dedicated faces to show notifications from apps, messages and even activity information. With WatchOS 3, Apple is working on just that, though they seem to have started with fitness. Still, that’s not a bad place to start.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to charge outside and grab an Apple Watch the second that WatchOS 3 is out. On the contrary, I still think it’ll take a few generations of smartwatch before we see something worthwhile.

That said, Apple is taking a step in the right direction and eventually, I believe they’ll hit on the right formula. If not them, someone else will. That’s when the Watch will finally come into its own.