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You've all seen the Apple Watch's app screen before. Even though the device has only been out for a year, the Apple Watch's app cloud has become iconic — the face of the smartwatch — just as the iPhone's grid of apps has.

At WWDC 2016, Apple walked us through all of the improvements in watchOS 3, including showing off speed improvements, new watch faces, and even a new meditation app called Breathe, but not once did it show the iconic app screen during its keynote.

The beautiful screen, activated by pressing the digital crown, will still exist when watchOS 3 launches this fall, Apple has confirmed to Mashable. But you won't need to use it as much.

Pretty, but slow

When Apple first unveiled the Apple Watch in the fall of 2014, the apps screen was the literal face of the device, showing just how functional and innovative the creation of the digital crown was. Turning the digital crown lets you zoom closer into an app, without covering the small screen with your finger. Keep turning the crown and zoom in deep enough and you can launch the app.

In video spots, advertisements and photos, the screen is a beautiful display of all the things you can do with the Apple Watch with apps.

It's alluring, sophisticated and sleek. It's classic Apple design that makes competing products look like complete unthoughtful hot trash. I mean look at how pretty our Apple Watch photos from our review came out:

Users can even arrange apps in any layout they want, adding another level of personalization to the Apple Watch.

In practice, though, the iconic app screen's UI, is a failure.

As a person who has worn an Apple Watch for a year now, I can say definitively I almost never access the app screen. Using the digital crown to zoom in and out of apps sounded groundbreaking on paper, but in the real world it was more disappointing.

In the few times I tried to zoom into and launch an app, I always ended up zooming into the wrong app. (Pro tip: It zooms into whatever app is center-aligned on the screen.) And as pretty as the effect is, it's not fast. In fact, it's really slow.

Speed boost

With watchOS 3, how you launch apps on Apple Watch will likely change in a meaningful way.

At WWDC, Apple emphasized the new dock in watchOS 3, which is accessible by pressing the side button, which then takes you to a row of apps that you can swipe left and right between.

Apple says the dock lets you access your vital apps faster without needing to dive into the endless grid of apps on the app screen. In other words, never mind about that silly app cloud if you found it annoying.

Apple confirmed to Mashable the dock is only for accessing recent and favorite apps and not all of your apps. Users will be able to pin up to 10 apps in the dock. The dock won't be replacing the app screen, where the rest of your apps will exist.

The Apple Watch dock won't be replacing the app screen.

With the dock, you'll spend less time pecking around on the app screen searching for the right icon. Also, it's unlikely you'll ever use more than 10 core apps on a daily basis. So the dock is a huge plus in my book.

But if you get to the dock by pressing the side button, what happens to the friends shortcut for messaging, calling and sending Digital Touch doodles — what the button currently activates? Those features will be integrated into the Messages and Phone app (messaging and Digital Touch in Messages and making calls in Phone), Apple says. Good riddance, I say.

Habits are usually hard to change. But once watchOS 3 arrives, I'll finally be able to use apps (native and third-party) instead of spending an eternity locating them on the app screen and waiting for them to load.

The dock looks to be just the thing to make apps the main attraction on the Apple Watch — the way it should have been at launch. Better late than never, I suppose.

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