From the visual redesigns Apple introduced on WWDC 2022the changes in the lock screen coming with iOS 16 and the hardware integration of CarPlay coming sometime in the next three years are by far the most eye-catching.
Apple is embracing a more holistic sense of customization, making your devices (and ever cars) look more like you want them to look, in a way that shares a surprising (but perhaps unsurprising) line with the Apple Watchthe companies “most personal device ever†
Look at me
If you’ve used an Apple Watch before, everything about Apple’s customization options in iOS 16 should look familiar. The lock screen can use different fonts, colors, and interactive wallpapers in much the same way as the Apple Watch watch faces. It’s an extra bit of personality, but with guardrails, as is Apple’s way.
However, the similarities also extend beyond the functionality of the user interface. Those rounded edges that appear around elements that can be changed? That’s from the Apple Watch. A scrollable list of pre-made options that you can use and customize yourself? Directly from the Apple Watch as well.
Complications and Widgets
The same goes for the “widgets” Apple is adding as part of the redesigned lock screen. They’re quite similar to watchOS complications, and at least as far as Apple showed in its keynote, they provide the same sort of manageable information with little interaction.
As mentioned beforeIn addition to making the Lock screen more useful at a glance (and oddly eliminating some of the need for an Apple Watch), these widgets set the stage for an always-on display on the iPhone 14† Coincidentally, that’s a feature Apple already offers on the Apple Watch, starting with the Series 5.
Now I don’t want to exaggerate this, it makes sense that Apple would apply its design language to different devices in similar ways. It amazes me how directly this seems to evoke elements from: watchOS† And I welcome it.
CarPlay
Many of the details are less clear (and exactly when it will arrive.) always seems far away) but the next-generation CarPlay clearly draws on the modular, customizable spirit of watchOS. Gauges on an instrument panel are a very different beast than complications on a smartwatch, but Apple wants you to have control over them anyway.
Maybe even change its color and shape depending on how many automakers ultimately say.
nuggets
The surface impact of the Apple Watch could be Apple finally dipping its toes into the world of personalized interfaces, but in the long run, the way the wearable developers think small — with clumps of information rather than a three-course meal — may well be. be even more important.
Apple isn’t ready to show off its mixed reality headset cards (although you certainly can) see hints in the WWDC 2022 announcements according to our own Ray Wong). But it seems to me that if the company is interested in interfaces you wear, and software interactions that obscure or at least hang around your field of vision, watchOS’s smaller uncluttered UI could be a good source of inspiration. The influence of the Apple Watch may be greater than its wrist-sized screen.