Face It: Apple Watch Isn’t Personal

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Apple Watch recently.

It was released in April 2015, and Apple experimented a lot with how to position it. Now, after 11 years on the market, I can confidently say that I use it for just three things: an iPhone remote, a basic fitness tracker, and an iPod nano replacement during my runs.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one, and there’s nothing about the Apple Watch that feels truly personal. They’re quite uniform -- everyone’s Apple Watch looks the same. The number of available watch faces is fairly limited, Apple even removes ones we already had, and third-party apps are a dead end; like John Gruber, I gave up trying to use them on my Apple Watch.

I understand that this mirrors watches in general. There isn’t much customisation when you buy a traditional watch either, but the number of available models is orders of magnitude higher, and even the choice of a watch can say quite a lot about the person wearing it.

The choice of an Apple Watch, on the other hand, says nothing -- except that the person wearing it has an iPhone.

So it’s quite strange to see Apple opening up iOS 26 to a degree of customisation that adds a personal touch to the iPhone, while Apple Watches are still all alike.

Let’s admit it: the App Store is too saturated at this point. I mean, how many to-do apps do we really need? Apple could instead take the creative energy of its developers and direct it toward a new, uncharted territory of watch faces -- one with a lot of users and plenty of paying customers.

It’s not going to be like Winamp, of course, for obvious reasons, but I’d happily pay for one.