New job listing hints at wider number of clock face options for Apple Watch
Future versions of watchOS should incorporate more clock face options, building on the 12 already included, a new Apple job listing discovered by AppleInsider suggests.
The company is recruiting a software engineer to work on the Apple Watch's dedicated clock face team, according to the listing. The successful candidate will cooperate with various other teams, and build not just new faces but "complications" -- data displays -- configurable in some face designs.
Apple added three new faces when it introduced watchOS 2 last fall, namely Time-Lapse, Photo, and Photo Album. Those were shown when the Watch was first teased in 2014 however, and since fall 2015 the only new face has been an option exclusive to buyers of Hermes models.
The company is rumored to be working on partnerships with fashion brands beyond Hermes, which could be one reason for expanding the clock face team. Apple may also want to introduce more faces in general, though there don't appear to be any in watchOS 2.2, which might mean that people will have to wait until watchOS 3 to see additions.
Apple could make Watch announcements at a rumored March 15 press event, but if so the company is expected to focus on new physical customization options, rather than major hardware or software updates.
The company is recruiting a software engineer to work on the Apple Watch's dedicated clock face team, according to the listing. The successful candidate will cooperate with various other teams, and build not just new faces but "complications" -- data displays -- configurable in some face designs.
Apple added three new faces when it introduced watchOS 2 last fall, namely Time-Lapse, Photo, and Photo Album. Those were shown when the Watch was first teased in 2014 however, and since fall 2015 the only new face has been an option exclusive to buyers of Hermes models.
The company is rumored to be working on partnerships with fashion brands beyond Hermes, which could be one reason for expanding the clock face team. Apple may also want to introduce more faces in general, though there don't appear to be any in watchOS 2.2, which might mean that people will have to wait until watchOS 3 to see additions.
Apple could make Watch announcements at a rumored March 15 press event, but if so the company is expected to focus on new physical customization options, rather than major hardware or software updates.
Comments
An ongoing point of irritation for me is the fact that no matter if one buys the iPad mini or spends a lot more on the iPad Pro, Apple gives both customers the same paltry amount of online storage. Customers who spend more should receive more value.
Loving the watch, but all the current watch faces looking a bit old and unexciting.
Apple came way too close to the Swiss Federal Railways clock and they knew it. And "more than a million dollars" wasn't even pocket lint.
The bigger issue is letting a bunch of dev yahoos make clock faces that look like the crap that Pebble allows in their "store". There are a few Rolex faces there, and I haven't heard of any infringement complaints. (Of course when Apple does it, it's a different story.} But there are some god awful butt ugly watch faces there, and like Rolls-Royce and John Lennon, I think Apple would rather not have their fashion accessory turned into tacky scribbling.
The Watch needs some elegant rectangular faces, and faces with more granularity in customizing. One of my Watches is the gold aluminum with the midnight blue band. It has gold as a color selection in a couple of faces, and it's a nice touch. I want to see more of that.
I think they had a lot on their plate and just didn't need a watch face engineer until now. People want additional faces, but there's more to be done first. New faces are nice, but they're a very small part of the Watch experience.
watchOS 2 put the Watch where is should have been at launch. New faces wouldn't have done much at the time.
Some people found incentive having Mickey Mouse on their watch. Others in the fact that there was the ability to change faces. Like me, many others assumed that there would be additional faces at some point.
Of all the reasons anybody didn't buy a Watch, not having a face they liked was at the bottom of the list, if at all. People who did buy it did so because it offered some utility that they could benefit from with some form they could appreciate.
Read all the complaints about the Watch to date. Those saying the Watch faces are ugly or just not attractive enough barely register on the Whine meter. Battery life, lack of autonomy, shape, speed... Very few comments about the face. In fact, more people complain that the Watch faces needs to be always-on, not that it's ugly.
The Watch should have more faces, no doubt. But having an engineer working on it from the jump wasn't a necessity. They had bigger things to worry about. I'd wager that more people care about bands than the Watch face.
Apple released 17 watch faces with the iPod nano 6 years ago, when they discovered people were wearing them as watches.
They also managed to make major updates to the OS at the same time. The argument that a company the size of Apple couldn't dedicate one engineer to watch faces throughout the development of the watch, which their history suggests they understand full well the importance to customers, not to mention Jony Ive's acknowledgement that once a product is worn customers have the expectation of choice, is silly.
Moreover, you're using a strawman in your argument. Nobody said the watch faces are "ugly" as far as I know, so no need for anyone to complain that they're "ugly". But there are dozens of threads on tech forums like this one about the lack of watch faces, and desire for more, and has been since the watch was announced.
You assert that all the other features of the watch are more important than the watch face, including the watch bands! Yet nobody cares about the watch faces. That's just ridiculous. Anybody who cares about the watch band is also going to care about the watch face -- look no further than the Hermes edition for confirmation of that -- three custom watch faces for that model. And I've yet to see the Hermes edition depicted in advertising with a heart rate monitor, or exercise rings. Because that's not what attracts customers to that watch! And in exactly the same way there are all kinds of customers for the watch, some who couldn't care less about a watch face, but others who place great importance on it. But I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't have the watch face come on first. Even a customer who knows they want a fitness tracker and is undecided on which brand, is likely to base their final decision on something as arbitrary as a watch face, or a custom band.
At at the end of the day, the watch is far from a failure, but they do have to give as many people as possible a reason to buy it, to grow the market for it, and there's a lot of people out there who don't care about fitness, or notifications, but they do care about how the watch looks, especially if it's going to replace the one they are currently wearing to get the benefits of whatever other feature(s) that appeals to them (let's say Pay since that's the main reason I was interested -- that and telling time). And if you acknowledge the bands are important to that end, I don't know how you can discount the importance of the faces. So forgive me if I bet against your "insights".