Counterpoint:

- I like the switch of the control center to the side-button; I use control center regularly, and almost never used the dock. I also like the general concept of scrolling in widgets, lowering the number of must-have complications on a face, but haven't gotten used to using it yet.

- Confirming workout-ending is great, because I occasionally mistapped starting a new segment and wound up instantly canceling my workout and needing to restart it, which was super-annoying.

- They just reversed the direction of the app switcher. The bottom is now the "front", and you scroll back in time towards the top ("into the distance"?), with the previous app occupying most of the center space of the display. I'm neutral on this compared to previous behavior; it's just a change, and needs to be adjusted to, and I can see an argument for it being more physically intuitive.

- Was the app switcher ever behind a double-tap of the side button? I thought that has always been the trigger for Apple Pay. The change this year was moving it from a single-tap of the side button to a double-tap of the crown. (Where formerly double-tapping the crown was an instant switch to the previous app.)

- Can't speak for Maps, since I've not used it for anything yet, but I like the Weather change. The initial screen is simpler than it used to be, and I find it easier to absorb information from it.

So, some matters of taste, I guess. :D

What's actually annoying me about WatchOS 10 is that they seem to have done something to mess up the raise-to-speak behavior. It's super-finicky now, and I'm hoping that's just a bug they'll be fixing, because it's really annoying having to try multiple times before it works.

Disagreed on all of these being regressions. It sounds like it's your personal preference that you'd like these changed, but they're not objectively worse.

- I prefer the swipe up gesture bringing up widgets. An option would be nice for folks who preferred the old way, but I much prefer control center pinned to the button that I basically never used before.

- Agreed that "Are you sure?" for workout ending is annoying, but I guess it didn't feel like a major regression to me. It felt similar to what I do much more often: completely forget to stop the workout, and then the watch asks me if I want to end the workout after I've stopped moving a lot. But agreed, hopefully they bring back just ending it.

- the most recent watch app is onscreen at the most "front" slot. It's a little strange different than before, but seems fairly reasonable to me.

- I have basically never used the app drawer for the last ten years - it's just not useful to me, and I'm guessing Apple's user studies showed the same, which is why they hid it.

- I hadn't checked out the weather and maps apps, but at a quick glance I like these improvements.

Just thought I'd share some thoughts as to why they maybe changed these, since I imagine there's both many people like you, and many people like me, out there :)

I disagree, most of that is upgrades except the “are you sure” when ending workouts. On the other hand, it seems to be much better about automatically starting and stopping workouts, mainly for walks, which has drastically improved my day to day experience.

The apps feel like real apps, which I like.

Button is easier than swipe gesture for control center.

Not sure what you’re talking about with the app drawer, I always see most recent on top. Maybe you’re confused by the orientation?

I’ve been pretty critical of recent iOS and watchOS releases, but I really feel like they knocked it out of the park this year. Like early Christmas.

This 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.

> 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.

My biggest complaint is the removal of the lock button on the active workout screen. There's just a blank space where it used to be. Is that bug? Seriously what the hell?

That was so handy to lock the watch during a vigorous workout, especially when your hands are all sweaty. Now it's like, push a button to get the control center and swipe down for ages to find it. Impossible with wet hands.

Personally, I find all of these changes a big upgrade. I never used the old quick switcher menu, I use control center constantly, etc etc.

Making things configurable could make sense but it will make writing any kind of manual, guides or support a nightmare as most users are very confused about the settings they change.

No no more turn-by-turn directions when navigating, instead it just shows you a map. Dangerous when on a bike.

Scroll up. Still there. We all need to get used to many more scroll pages.

Oh no, I haven't upgraded yet, but--did they remove double tapping the crown to get to your second most recent app? i use that all the time!

Yes, that's harder to do now -- it's now double-tap the crown and then tap the app. (Which will either be the frontmost app if you're on a watch face, or the second frontmost app if you're actually in another app.)