Much has been made of the Apple Watch not being fast enough. It’s too slow for full iPhone-like apps, of course, but that doesn’t bother me because I think the watch is pretty great at its core features. But I’ve noticed that it’s slow even for some of the simple stuff, and I don’t think this can be blamed on hardware alone.
Take notifications, for example. There are several distinct steps to notifications after you receive one:
- Tapping a notification.
- Waiting for it to load, which is an animated transition.
- Optionally scrolling to the bottom to read it all.
- Actually tapping Dismiss to get rid of it.
There’s a tiny lag between all of these. I frequently can’t scroll right away, as if it’s not responsive until the animation completes. The Dismiss button also doesn’t seem to be enabled immediately, requiring a 2nd tap before it “clicks”.
I bet these are solvable with a software update. Shorter animated transitions or pre-loading notification text might go a long way to improve the experience.
