Design is how… Apple Watch doesn’t work?

Design is how it works, right? This used to be Apple. Now they’re managed by Excel-obsessed Tim Cook and designers seemed to have forgotten how stuff works at all. Here’s the latest Apple Watch 26.2 and the “notifications” indicator keeps telling me that I have new notifications even if I’ve seen them all…

What’s the red dot for?

Normally when you’d see a “red dot” 🔴 at the top of the Apple Watch face - it means: “new notifications”. You’d swipe down to read them, tap “clear all” to… clear them out. And the red dot would disappear.

Well, it doesn’t disappear. It’s still there.

Even when there are no new notifications.

Now I’m just confused. What does the red dot do now? What purpose does it serve?

It’s been like this since WatchOS26 and I was hoping that at some point it’d be fixed. Now at WatchOS 26.2 it’s still not fixed.

Breaking my Apple Watch habit…

I’ve been using Apple Watch since the beginning of the platform. Since the Watch 0. And I’ve gotten used to how it works. How notifications work on this device.

With WatchOS 26.X they just DON’T work.

Design is… what now?