I updated both my watch and phone this week, leaving my Mac to run Tahoe until a few dot updates pass. First impression was nothing much had changed, everything seemed more or less normal, but it hasn’t been all perfect.
First off, sleep score notifications can take several minutes to arrive, whereas on the previous version it was a few seconds. Not a big deal, it just seemed off.
Maps seems worse, Siri much the same. “Get me directions to Stockton Beach” became “I can’t get directions to Stockbridge” - multiple times. We manually entered an address and when we went to ‘End Route’ it froze completely. When it finally came back to life, it spun a globe on screen, eventually stopping with Australia displayed upside down - which some might argue is comically correct.
My greater concern is my Series 11 Watch. At the gym yesterday, doing a normal workout, it froze and all attempts to get it back failed. It then appeared to reboot the workout - screen black except for a spinning workout icon - and then it eventually returned with the original workout still running.
More concerning, today I had a legitimately hard fall, climbing over some rocks on the beach. I caught my toe and fell HARD onto my knee, hand and forearm - also damaging the camera I was carrying. Despite having fall detection on - nothing. No alert, no attempt to call for assistance. This is the same watch which thinks I’ve fallen when throwing a long pass in touch football, or when I light up the field with a sparking side-step. Multiple times it has started to call our ‘000’ emergency number which has me fumbling to stop it.
I appreciate it can’t detect every fall, but this was EASILY the hardest fall I’ve ever had, and I genuinely thought I’d broken something in my knee. Now sitting in my hotel room with ice strapped on my leg, I’m wondering about the effectiveness of fall detection, or if perhaps the update is the cause. I’m sceptical when it alerts doing normal activity, but fails to detect a genuinely hard fall. I’m glad I didn’t hit my head, I could still be lying there (I was alone).
If I had the option, I would wind them both back to OS26.