This is more of a report to help than a question. A friend in Montana has been trying for several weeks to install Watch OS 3 on his first gen Apple Watch. Tried a dozen times and failed. Finally, I came for a visit and we tried a total of 32 times to get the installation to finish. Here's what happens:.
We start the installation by pairing the watch to the iPhone 6 running IOS 10.0.2. The process takes about an hour and, when right at the end, it stops with this message on the iPhone:
"Unable to Verify Update"
"The Watch OS update couldn't be verified because
you are not connected to the internet."
The message is false as we ARE connected to a 60Mbps cable connection.
We called Apple Support, described the problem. The agent hadn't heard of it before and we got cut off while going through cycle #30. Called back, different agent who hadn't heard of the problem either, and we got cut off while going through cycle #31. Remember that each cycle takes an hour! Called back and got another agent who hadn't heard of the problem as well. He stayed with us though cycle #32 with the same message above.
Stuck in the "seams" of the update, the watch cannot do anything except try the update again.
I took the iPhone and watch back to Atlanta (my friend's nearest Apple Store is 200 miles away) and scheduled a Genius Bar appointment. The first genius went through cycle #33 with the same result and escalated the problem to Genius #2; same action, same result. Genius #3 suggested we try it with my iPhone 7 just to see where the problem lies. Cycle #34: Same result. We think the problem is with the Watch though it worked perfectly before we tried to install Watch OS 3.
Watch is being sent to their repair facility.
I don't know if we're alone with this problem but I thought I document what hasn't worked so far.
