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I was an early adopter of smart watches. The original Pebble watch on Kickstarter was an amazing product and revolutionary at the time. It had an eInk display (like the Kobo reader and Amazon Kindle) and was so great in its simplicity. It also had endless choices for watch faces. When Pebble shut its doors I moved to the Apple Watch. I was always a bit disappointed by the lack of watch faces available.
Apple, of course, has a closed system for its Watch. The faces available is all you get. You can customize it a bit, but not by much. I've always had a list of faces I've swapped through but it wasn't until the debut of Metropolitan in WatchOS 9 that I found "the one". It was simple and elegant and perfect for me. While I will change faces for special occasions like date night dinners out or hockey games, Metropolitan is my go-to face.
Then WatchOS 10 came out in October. The Snoopy watch face is part of this update and frankly, it's so much fun I haven't spent a day back on Metro since upgrading. Apple's watch team worked directly with the Charles Schulz team to create an amazing face. Each time the watch wakes up, I'm welcomed by a new whimsical animation featuring Snoopy. Sometimes Woodstock is mixed in there. But it's always Snoopy. For a kid of the 80s like me, it's so good.
Snoopy reacts to the time of the day, the current weather conditions, and possibly even after a workout. It has some level of contextual awareness that adds even more whimsy. Even better, it looks like Apple is holding back many animations because after a point update a few weeks ago, new ones appeared. I love that there's a possibility that even when I think I've seen them all, there are still new ones to discover down the road.
Snoopy is funny, lovable, grumpy, and ambitious. It's a perfect watch face, even though it does not allow for complications to be added (something I generally ding other faces on). I never thought a face I kept as my main one for a year would be dethroned, but it was. And it's all due to that cute little beagle.
If you have an Apple Watch and it's running WatchOS 10, give the Snoopy face a spin. It's a lot of fun.
I hope you have a great week.
-Aaron
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