Member-only story
WatchOS 9 is Just Wow!
The first watch beta I have ever installed
I have installed Apple betas for years on my iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Sometimes I jump in early, sometimes late, but I haven’t missed many over the years. Until this year, I have never installed a watchOS beta.
Usually, the watchOS betas have not offered anything that intrigued me enough to risk bricking my watch. You see, unlike the other devices, botching an Apple Watch beta can put you out of business until you bring or send the dead watch to Apple. Apparently, Apple now has provided an at-home method for a possible recovery. Field reports indicate it’s not perfect yet, but that gave me courage to go ahead with the third iteration of watchOS Beta 9.
The installation was a bit scary.
If you’ve done any watchOS upgrades, you know the drill: watch on charger, download and install through the phone Watch app, wait for the dots to crawl around a circle on the watch, and finally it reboots, and it’s done.
Yeah, that’s what happened. The watch had finished, rebooted, and the phone told me the upgrade was done. I was just reaching out to remove the watch from its charger when the Watch app suddenly switched back to the “installing” message. I jerked my hand back as the watch face started its installing circle again.