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The Timer in WatchOS 10
- hprotagonist 3y agoha! so i'm not the only nose-navigator out there!
- madrox 3y agoI'll admit that I never thought of it, but will now be doing so often
- minimaxir 3y agoSome of the aesthetic changes in watchOS 10 are significant regressions. For me, they changed how many of the complications appear, and they're harder to read at a glance. I really wish Apple made the watch faces more customizable.
- CharlesW 3y ago> The new [Timers] UI is impossible to use hands-free. "Siri, start a 5 minute timer." What makes this extra nice on Series 9 is that simple Siri requests are handled completely on-device. https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-series-9-can-handle-siri-requests-without-your-iphone-171920001.html https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-series-9-can-handle-sir...
- minimaxir 3y agoYou have to raise your wrist to your mouth first to prime Siri, which may not be easy to do while cooking.
- ketzo 3y agoI mean, the author does talk about using the watch with their nose. Same motion.
- minimaxir 3y agoFair, I admit I am not an expert in nose dexterity.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y agoGotta get dex to 75 before unlocking that perk.
- jmholla 3y agoNot to mention when she gets things wrong.
- rconti 3y agowhich works EASILY 90% of the time
- jdminhbg 3y agoI don't have as many issues with the Timers UI as the author does, but I will say for me that using Siri while cooking is mostly a no-go, because I have my Watch, my AirPods on, and a HomePod somewhere within earshot, and I only want the Timer to start on my Watch, which is not usually what's going to happen.
- CharlesW 3y agoNow that's a far, far more annoying problem than Timers UI changes.
- satya71 3y agoLong press the crown and say timer 5 minutes
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoYou can't use your hands.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wlesieutre 3y agoIf it’s because you’re cooking and your hands are dirty you can press it with your wrist or forearm
- theamk 3y agothere is a direct response to that in the article: > Setting a timer manually is much quicker and safer than relying on Siri. A kitchen also tends to be a noisy place, with multiple conversations and background music. If Siri doesn’t understand what you’ve said, you’re going to end up with burnt onions. Unreliable interfaces suck.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sneak 3y agoUnless it mishears you and turns it into a network request, which uploads your entire address book to Apple.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jachee 3y agoI almost never set a timer on my watch by hand. The main reason is that I like to give my timers names. And the only way to do that on the watch is via Siri. So I’ll raise the watch and say “Hey Siri, 5 minutes” if I want an unnamed timer, or—more frequently— “Hey Siri set a 5 minute tea timer”, or “Hey Siri, set a 15 minute pizza timer.”
- quitit 3y agoAlthough using raise-to-speak is the obvious solution here (and arguably faster than nose-navigating). AssistiveTouch is also a very reliable alternativr, so much so that we see that Apple have brought out the main tapping gesture to the forefront. Plus you can get pretty fast at doing the fist and finger tap gestures to move around the OS.
- thoughtsimple 3y agoNever mentions Siri at all. Weird. Newest watches it’s all on device. Maybe he doesn’t know that?
- kemayo 3y agoThere was one brief mention about it being difficult to use in a loud kitchen. From the way they framed it, I think they might be coming from some sort of commercial kitchen background? > A kitchen also tends to be a noisy place, with multiple conversations and background music. If Siri doesn’t understand what you’ve said, you’re going to end up with burnt onions. Doesn't apply to my own home cooking situation, but if you're a professional of some sort...
- xp84 3y ago> Doesn't apply to my own home cooking situation Tell me you don't have annoying little kids, without telling me. I can personally attest that in any room, Siri's accuracy, and even willingness to activate reliably at all, is utterly abysmal, especially on the Watch. Raise to speak? Just tried it 4 times. It activated and answered once. The other three, it just ignored me. I'm grateful that I never have to use anything Siri-based for cooking, since I use the Google Nest Hub thing (the one with a screen), which though also imperfect in its speech parsing, at least most of the time is capable to execute "Set a 5 minute onion timer" accurately. Though he makes a good point that if you wander around a big house you might miss your timer alert. Thankfully my house isn't big enough for that.
- kemayo 3y ago
- JoblessWonder 3y agoI feel like I could have written this article. I'm still using the timer each time I cook but it just feels like more of a hassle than the previous version, where the switch from watch OS 8 to 9 felt like it made things better immediately.
- punkybr3wster 3y agoThe removal of swapping watch faces with a swipe is so aggravating in 10. I use cooking timers and I had a specific face for that task and now it’s cumbersome to do with my hands full as you have to press and wait for it to pop into the faces and then swipe and long press again. They didn’t even add something in its place. It was just removed for seemingly no reason.
- Tylast 3y agoThis was the first thing I noticed after I upgraded. I constantly switched between faces & now I have this extra step. Super annoying.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nunez 3y agowatchOS 10 is a regression in many ways: - The swipe up gesture now brings up widgets instead of control center. This can't be disabled - every workout ends with "Are you sure?" Instead of just ending. - the most recent watch app is no longer at the top of the app switcher. It's buried somewhere in the stack now. - the app drawer now requires a double press of the crown to activate instead of double pressing the side button. Not a huge deal, but this breaks an action I've been doing for the last ten years for basically no reason? - weather and maps now look like their iOS equivalents instead of mini-apps that compliment your phone (ie busier than you'd expect for a watch)
- jmm5 3y agoNo no more turn-by-turn directions when navigating, instead it just shows you a map. Dangerous when on a bike.
- thoughtsimple 3y agoScroll up. Still there. We all need to get used to many more scroll pages.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoThis is yet another thing on my "if I ever become a billionaire" bucket list. If I ever become a billionaire... I'll have a new OS designed, from scratch, with all the latest innovations and cool stuff, but we'll promise to never change that design, for any reason, ever. That will be our headline feature. One design for the next 20-30 years. Build with us, never redesign your app again. Learn our user interface, never need to learn anything else ever again. We’ll call it an SLA for design stability. And if it is ever painfully necessary somehow, we'll call the new thing something else, and we'll keep making both products. We'll basically pitch it as an eternally maintained Windows 7.
- voisin 3y ago> One design for the next 20-30 years. This sounds great, but when it feels massively outdated in 5 years and the market has galloped off to an entirely different paradigm, sales will suffer or the business might even collapse.
- MawKKe 3y agoThe whole timer/alarm app experience in iOS is also the worst of all mobile OS's I've ever used. The best one was in Jolla SailfishOS. In 2014. It was so easy to add/remove/enable/disable multiple timers and alarms. And when they triggered, you could snooze or dismiss it with a simple gesture. In iOS, you can't even have more than one active timer at a time. Like wtf??? Also, when the timer or alarm clock triggers, you are presented with view containing two buttons (yellow and purple). One of them snoozes, one of them dismisses. Which one is which, you ask? You see, to keep things simple and consistent, the button actions (and labels) switch places depending on whether the view was triggered by an alarm or a timer. Oh! and the label text color is white, which makes it reeeeeeally difficult to tell which of the fucking buttons is which, especially in a rush or in the morning when your eyes are foggy. I would have replaced this shitty ass app in a heartbeat, except Apples strict controls kneecap all third party apps by preventing them from running in the background...
- signal11 3y agoThe clock app in iOS 17 has added multiple active timers.
- rconti 3y ago10 years (?) later, when an alarm goes off in iOS, and I tap/swipe/shove it away, i still never have any fucking idea if it got snoozed or cancelled/stopped, or what I was supposed to do, or what I'll do next time. I mean, yeah, clearly I could spend 2 minutes to research it and try to remember to do the 'right' one next time, but it just never made it into my muscle memory, so I'll keep fumbling with it. The problem is probably that you don't get immediate feedback of having done the 'right' thing. 9 minutes later, when your alarm goes off again, and you realize "oops, I snoozed it rather than dismissing it", you sure as hell won't remember which action was the 'wrong' one. Especially because you were half awake at the time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BakaRakuda 3y agoiOS 17 has multiple and named timers, why make a rant when a major part of it is already a non-issue? To fix your confusion: Timers - generally considered one time. If you swipe away the notification the timer is finished. If you press the circular arrow button it will restart the timer. Pretty obvious. On the Lock Screen they are clearly labeled as "Done" and "Repeat" Alarms - by default alarms are set with snooze on. Swiping away will snooze. There is a "ZzZ" and "X" button on the notification. On the Lock Screen they are clearly labeled as "Snooze" and "Stop". If the snooze function is disabled on an alarm the only option is to stop the alarm. How is any of this unclear?
- dc3k 3y agoI have no idea what this guy is talking about: > The new UI is impossible to use hands-free. Cooks who want to set or change a timer while deboning a chicken are out of luck. I opened the timer from my watch face, scrolled down to a 30 minute timer, and started it. All with my nose. It was nearly exactly as easy as it was in the previous version.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nivenhuh 3y agoI’m glad I’m not the only one who tried it! Didn’t seem that difficult to me?
- nraf 3y agoWhile I do use timers occasionally (mainly when baking or pressure cooking), I’m surprised to learn that people will set multiple timers just to caramelise onions. I find that for most cooking tasks, sight and sound are more reliable indicators, and in many cases, the food will need to be stir or flipped so as not to burn.
- sgarman 3y agoThis is semantics but I thought I'd chime in anyway. I don't think they were setting multiple timers, they were setting one timer multiple times, i.e. adjusting a single timer after doing said checks.
- strkitten 3y agoCaramelizing—truly caramelizing[0]—onions is a slow process that takes close to an hour. For this kind of task, I think it’s helpful to be able to set timers and be in and out of the kitchen, rather than be stationed at the stovetop continuously. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038796
- jwestbury 3y agoKenji came up with a method[0] which actually only takes ~15 minutes -- but it does produce very mushy onions, so it won't work for all applications. 0. https://www.seriouseats.com/quick-caramelized-onions-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/quick-caramelized-onions-recipe
- strkitten 3y agoThis is great; thanks!
- Scubabear68 3y agoThe gist I got from this poster is there is a lot going on in their kitchen at one time. They may have simplified the post to make a point? But they implied they are not just focusing on the onion during that time, but doing a whole lot of other prep and cooling work all at the same time.
- lvturner 3y agoHaven’t looked at the Watch ecosystem in a while, but this sounds like it could be an opportunity to create a “cooks timer” app for WatchOS?
- sgentle 3y agoI absolutely hate the list-of-custom-timer UIs on both iOS and Android. I can only assume that both companies have separately gone through the cycle of "people want favourite/recurring alarms" -> "timers are just alarms for relative time" -> "people want favourite/recurring timers". The thing is, there just aren't that many times I want a timer for. Nobody's out here with a carefully curated gallery of artisanal durations. It takes me more time and effort to scroll to my 15-minute timer than it would to hit 1-5-enter on a numeric keypad. Hell, even just a +1,+5,+10,+15 grid that starts immediately or adds to the current timer would cover everything I've ever needed within four taps. But, nope, gotta gallivant through my menagerie of exotic timers to pick out the perfect one. Infuriating.
- senkora 3y agoI’m theoretically a good candidate for the favorite timers, because I almost always choose one of 15 seconds, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 25 minutes, 40 minutes, or 1 hour. Of course, the issue is that those are six different times, the LRU cache only has four slots, and the MRU timer is put on a separate screen but is only rarely the one I want. My ideal would be either just punching in the numbers (it’s not that hard) or a fixed dashboard of N timers that I can manage myself, where the positions of the times never change.
- smazga 3y agoIt's a little embarrassing to admit, but timers ("hey siri, set a timer for 10 minutes") is the most common thing I use a voice assistant for. Works great, though.
- punkybr3wster 3y agoSame. I use adhoc timers constantly!
- brontitall 3y agoYou can save, err, time here “Hey, Siri, 10 minutes” works fine
- noman-land 3y ago
- anonymousiam 3y agoSomewhat off-topic, but I'm still waiting for Apple to un-tether their watch from the iPhone. Yeah, I know that I could get an Apple Watch and have some limited capability, or I could use an iPhone from a family member. No. My iPad pro is technically capable of running the health app, but Apple insists that I own and use an iPhone instead. I like my Android phone and I'm not going to give it up so I can have an Apple Watch. I wonder how much revenue Apple is missing out on over this...
- TheHappyOddish 3y agoGiven what you outlaid, it doesn't sound like cost is a major factor. Why not buy an old iPhone or a new SE and leave it plugged in at home as a 'hub' for your cellular watch?
- anonymousiam 3y agoGiven that there's no technical difference with regard to running an app on an iPad Pro with a SIM card vs. an iPhone, why should I need to do this?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Brajeshwar 3y agoThe Timer is also my favorite and most used App on the Watch. I was hoping that a new OS update would give us the option to turn the “Recents” ON/OFF or an option for me to pin the timer option I want. I’m still OK with the App, but I was hoping my choices are similar to others. I even wrote an article to remind myself that the Timer is indeed a good tool - https://brajeshwar.com/2023/timer/ https://brajeshwar.com/2023/timer/
- piyuple 3y agoUnrelated but I think WatchOS10 has something wrong going with how often the watch faces update the complications like heart rate, weather, etc. I have found it showing heart rates recorded as long back as an hour before I manually click on it and have it launch the heart rate app which was never the case with any of the previous versions.
- ianschmitz 3y agoSame. The weather widget is sometimes hours out of date
- karmelapple 3y agoAm I the only one who liked the timer changes in WatchOS 10?
- pgib 3y agoI have an Amazon Echo Wall Clock, and I got it for its integration with timers set by Alexa. It works great and lets me see the status of multiple timers. But I believe they discontinued it. I know this will never happen, but I would love an Apple-made clock that made timer display a primary feature. Setting timers using my voice and giving them names solves the interface issue, but being able to glance at the status of everything still needs a wonderful solution.
- freetanga 3y ago“Alexa, set timer to x mins…” while holding a dead chicken in both hands. Works every time. And has no purchases or online services configures but Spotify and TuneIn radio. I ditched my Apple Watch for a 100$ Casio g-shock that self charges and self sets time. Cheap exercise band when training. More disconnect from always-on and big tech toxicity. Don’t see me coming back
- Tagbert 3y agoI do that same timer with the Apple Watch even while choking chickens. I can understand not wanting to alway be online. I have most notifications disabled on Watch and phone and computer. I prefer a controlled and balanced approach to managing notifications and connections.
- montag 3y agoKudos to the author. Went through a ton of effort to put together what amounts to a bug report on a silver platter. I hope it reaches the right audience within Apple.