Apple Watch marketing chief discusses watchOS 10 and getting more data at a glance

As Dick Tracy used to say in the good old days when Chester Gould drew the strip, "Ye Gods!" And what has us so amazed is that we are already facing the release of watchOS 10 in  a couple of months or so. It feels like it was just the other day when Apple launched its timepiece as jewelry never thinking in a million years that it would become a lifesaving tool for those looking to live a healthy lifestyle. 

So we approach the 10th major watchOS build and bringing up Dick Tracy is very appropriate since the fictional sleuth's two-way wrist radio was the most technologically advanced wrist-worn wearable before the Apple Watch even if it wasn't real. And with watchOS 10, Apple is making some significant changes according to Eric Charles, who handles Worldwide Product Marketing for the Apple Watch.

With the focus on widgets in the next major build of the smartwatch's operating system, Charles told Tom's Guide that "watchOS 10 is making the user experience a lot more seamless, where users now when they raise their wrist, they'll be able to get more information at the glance than ever before." Yeah, not every Apple Watch is an Ultra model with all that real estate able to show plenty of complications and other data. But Charles says that Apple has been working on ways to maximize the value of each small bit of screen space.

"We're really leaning into the idea of using the entire display to create more places for content," Charles said. "This has shown really well in an app like Weather, where now you can see AQI [that's the Air Quality Index, folks], you can see wind speed, you can see your up-to-date data without having to go deeper into the app. It increases discoverability, it increases glanceability."

And with Smart Stacks, users will be able to put together a group of widgets that will show up on the tap of the stack based on the time, location, and activity. The stack of widgets rotates always displaying the most relevant widget at the moment. In watchOS 10, the Smart Stack will be enabled by the Digital Crown and the side button will control the Control Center.

Two new developer APIs will allow developers of apps for the Apple Watch to track a user's hand and wrist movements and offer some useful analysis and advice for golfers. This could turn the Apple Watch into a must have tool for golfers. Charles concurs and says, "You may have an Apple Watch, and you may golf, but maybe you didn't put those two things together. Having the third-party developer space in between, that’s where there's this capability of what the watch can do."

The Apple Watch's worldwide marketing chief added, "There's a user base that's passionate about a sport, and then there's a developer that can really bring those things together." The APIs will pull the data from the Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE (2022), and the Apple Watch Ultra's three-axis gyroscopes.

Charles says that learning where everything is, and what the Digital Crown and side buttons can do in the latest version of the OS won't be a big deal. He says, "I think it’s going to be really easy for people to parse out, especially for something as simple as Control Center. That convenience and expediency will make it really easy to sort of do that mental map to be like, 'this button now brings up this thing.'" 

He adds, "We think that the clarity of having the Digital Crown for apps and the side button for the Control Center will be really easy for our consumers to adapt to."