The headline feature in WatchOS 3.2 is Theater Mode. It’s turned on and off with a button in control center. Theater Mode consists of one thing: the watch face won’t turn on on wrist raise — you need to tap the screen (or press the digital crown). A decent solution to an obvious problem, but one that raises a few questions:
- Why is this called Theater Mode? If only 10% of Apple Watch users sleep with their watches on (as I do), this will be used for sleeping a hundred times as often as it’s used at the theater.
- Why can’t this be activated on a timer like Do Not Disturb? (Hell, why not combine it with Do Not Disturb?)
- Drama masks, seriously?
To me though the biggest question is, if control center is going to scroll, what about all the other things that could/should be in there? For starters, how about a brightness slider? I have my watch permanently set to the dimmest setting because of how bright it is indoors after dark and because of how buried in settings the brightness adjustment is. Until the watch gets a much-needed hardware light level sensor, wouldn’t a brightness setting be a natural thing to have in control center? (And seriously, control center should be user-configurable. I never ever use the mute (always on), Do Not Disturb (on a timer, synced with my phone), or airplane mode (also better activated from the phone) buttons, but I would use volume and brightness sliders every single day.