December 2, 2018
On November 30, 2018, right as I put on my Apple Watch Series 3, it asked me if I wanted to upgrade the watchOS on the watch later in the evening after I went to bed. I agreed, I hate sitting through the slow watchOS upgrades.
The next day, the watch looked fine and I put it on and went about my day. Around 2PM, I check my activity on the watch and see that I accumulated no steps, no calories on the Move Ring and no minutes on the Exercise Ring. The Stand Ring, thankfully, was still accumulating stand hours. I rebooted the watch and it started counting calories, minutes and steps again. I had to work hard to close my Move and Exercise rings.
What disappointed me was that I did not get my Perfect Month Badge for finishing November in Apple Health -- I had gotten it on my watch on November 30th, but it wasn't showing in Health. Nor was my 280-day Move Streak badge in Health there. This was quite demotivating as I had been working hard to keep that move streak going. I restarted my iPhone 8 later on at night and the Perfect Month Badge for November showed up in Apple Health, but my move streak was still broken.
I was quite disappointed in Apple.
Tonight, I tried, as a last resort, removing the pairing between my iPhone and Apple Watch. Then I paired them again. The move streak returned and so did my Perfect Week for Move and Stand -- which I had earned earlier in the day on the watch -- but it would not sync to Apple Health. I had three minutes left for closing the Exercise Ring, so I paced around the house to complete that. But, the Perfect Week for Exercise (and Perfect Week for All Rings) did not show up.
I ran on the treadmill for ten minutes to get my mile for the day, still no badges. I showered and came out and my watch alerted me that I earned the Perfect Week and Perfect Exercise Week badges. I look on my phone and nothing. Sad Panda.
One last reboot of my iPhone and that got everything in sync between Apple Health and the Apple Watch.
I'm not sure what went wrong. But, this incident has gotten me to question the stability of the Apple Watch and Apple Health ecosystem. I am hoping that the whole thing still works and that at the end of December, I'll still get the December badge. Sure, the badges are nothing but digital badges, but they do provide motivation for me to keep moving, standing and exercising.
In the future, I will probably do the watchOS updates live and make sure that everything in sync'd between the Apple Watch and Apple Health before starting the upgrade.