Where is Circle of Friends on iWatch?

I've just had a long conversation with Applecare about the removal of Circle of Friends and also the terrible battery life under OS3. About 10 hours battery under WOS3 when previously under WOS2.2 it was about 40 hours. One of the main issues of Circle of Friends being missing is over 2 days I have still not been able to get Siri to send a message to a close friend.. Siri is NOT good enough to rely on for contacts with many name pronunciations.. with poor wifi it is only just able to compose messages but finding contacts is hopeless..

The advice for serious problems with the Mac is always reinstall the system and apps..

Applecare advice for the Watch is un-pair it and then pair it again. I suspect I'm going to lose all the exercise data!

Don't do any trouble shooting without creating a new, current encrypted iTunes backup of your paired iPhone to save the health data.

I added the phone app to the Dock. That has favorites, recents, contacts and voicemail access. I guess we have to live with that if we are missing the circle of friends.

Yeah, but the Phone app just lets you make a phone call. Friends app let you make a phone call, send a digital touch, send a text message, send an emoji etc. And, it was beautiful interface. In fact, it was one of the features of the watch that many of us had shown to those who were interested in the watch. I posted a bug to Radar and to Feedback. I hope many others do as well.

It is almost incongruous that they removed Circle of Friends with its nice interface into iMessages, Phone, digital touch and then made these huge changes to iMessages with lots of video clips etc which are really over the top - in fact that may be where the answer lies.. They made iMessages so complicated that it can't coexist in a Watch App with just simple phone calls. I do hope this is brought back - but Apple doesn't have a good track record of bringing things back - iWeb for one was brilliant and with each new system update gets more and more messed up and Apple doesn't support it anymore. Agree with you the Phone App even with Favourites does not substitute as a failed phone call needs a message or a phone call to a busy person needs a message to check availability first. And SIRI hearing names is not good - it makes too many mistakes and doesn't seem to learn names. I tried to dictate Tookey into Siri and it changed it to Torquay. After the 10th change back to Tookey I would have thought that the learning process would have kicked in.

Ditto to all you say. Apple is doing everything they can to make Messages a platform, and I applaud all the work they've done, despite the interface being less than intuitive and a bit jumbled. But like anything, once you learn, it's okay.

Still, Friends is a sorely needed app for Apple Watch. Just try to INITIATE a simple digital touch to a loved one or a simple message to a favorite person. Good Luck! So convoluted and frustrating, I now am not using my new Apple Watch Series 2 to actually COMMUNICATE as much as I did with Apple Watch 1 (watchOS2.x and prior).

I hope a 3rd party can come up with an app that replicates the Friends app. I doubt the necessary API's are there, though. I will look later tonight.

Charmian Gaud wrote:

NB you can't choose WatchOS3 on that form - it only goes up to WatchOS2.2

That's not going to prevent Apple from accepting or understanding your feedback. As long as you explain your concern in detail, it will be fine.

There is of course an App called Friends - but it is really only for Best Best Friends and provides tracking to close friends. So maybe they need something like "Favourite Contacts". And the layout of Circle of Friends was really suitable - I too think it would be unlikely that third parties would be able to set up as Apple is very concerned about privacy in relation to our Contact list/Calendars/Mail etc.

It appears it was removed with the new update. It is unfortunate, as I used it often and prefer it return. So far I am completely unimpressed and disappointed with the watch update.

Agreed. This update is lacking and needs many of the features from OS2 returned. Why does the control center need to be the only available item from a swipe gesture? It makes no sense. i have more feature requests to send.

Please post feedback to the Apple Feedback page and to the bug reporter if you are a registered Apple developer.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html

Well, the glances were not live apps. After analyzing usage, Apple realized they had more memory to work with and came up with the Dock. The Dock is similar to Glances in that you have quick access to your "favorite apps. But the Dock improves performance. Press the side button, and you get up to 10 apps live and resident in memory. Yes, we are limited to 10 live apps in the Dock, but that's not too bad. The advantage is that these apps show current data and are running. In glances, we had a saved state, but to get current information, we had to tap on the glance to actually load the app and interact with it - and that could take up to several seconds.

I think most of us on this thread would like to see Apple bring back Friends as an app on the watch allowing us to put it in the Dock. Press the side button, navigate to Friends, and BAM! Easy access to favorite contacts giving us multiple ways communicate. Even if Apple presented us with the new Messages buttons, that would work fine.

That is fine for phone calls BUT if you prefer to message first that Phone App doesn't help. Personally if someone is likely to be busy I like to send a message of can I ring now or later?

I looked at adding Messages App to the Dock too so that then takes up 2 of the 10 dock positions restricting other useful apps.

Messages App is a MULTI step process if you don't want to discuss out loud over Siri and argue with Siri about selecting the wrong person..

First click on Messages App you see current messages, continuing those conversations is easy. For a new message conversation you first make to make a hard press on the screen Click New Message - it then says Add Contact and Create Message. To "Add contact" new person you need to click the icon of a person with a + Then you get the LONG address book list of in my case 1000 entries (Not your phone Favourites/Recents/Contacts & yet you can only send messages to Mobile Phones or Apple IDs) To speed scroll through those people you turn the crown and the letters of the alphabet appear at the rt side - then you get to choose the phone number or Apple ID - then the microphone message, or scribble or artie message and then send. This is SUCH a slow process that I think it will force us to get our phones out for anyone who isn't in the previous messages.

This is precisely the problem: starting a new and quick message to someone is a monumental task from the Apple Watch where it was once so easy and one of the reasons I use the watch. All Apple has to do is implement a new Friends app - call it "Favorites", whatever, and make it go through the iMessage service. That's really all we are asking. An easy way to get to your favorite contacts, display the buttons we now see in Messages: microphone, emoji, digital touch, scribble. This would allow us to START a new message with ease.

This is horrible! It was already so handy to tap on a friend, send text, and respond easily. Now I have to go to contacts or messages in an app. VERY BAD DECISION. I have used the link provided to let Apple know of my total disappointment.

So please help with simple instructions:

1. How do I send a quick text

2. How do I move the canned responses BACK up above all that blue crap?

3. What happened to all those beautiful large and moving emoji's?

So disappointed, that I'm telling iWatch friends not to update if they use text feature.