Over 2 Hours To Update

I’m not asking as much as sounding off. If updating an Apple

Watch was as awkward, annoying and time consuming as Apple products in general,

the company would have died on the Apple I.

I’m now 1.5 hours updating my Ultra 1 to iOS 26.1. It’s

about 90% done based on the progress bar. I see ZERO reason this has to take

this long or why the process can’t keep the watch and phone on while the

process proceeds. Instead I need to babysit the phone waking it up again and

again. I’m now on my THIRD iteration of the phone informing me that it’s, “Installing….”

It does this for an hour then goes on to something else such as "Preparing..."

finally looping back to, “Installing…”.

I have this fantasy apparently way beyond Apple’s abilities

that I can start the update and *walk away* confident that the update will

occur. Instead I’m ONCE AGAIN stuck unable to do squat with the watch because

it’s now 1.75 hours updating and I’m sure some sort of poorly error trapped

condition will occur if I give up trying to update in the middle of the process.

At the start of this my watch was 80% charged. Why does it

need to be on the charger? Why do I need to enter my watch code? Do the

geniuses at Apple think someone will steal my Ultra and then to spite me update

it? Here’s a security flaw: as soon as this finishes, (if it ever does) I’m

removing the code so future updates may take less than the full 2 HOURS this

has and still I get ‘Installing…’. Can’t Apple manage to prevent the iPhone

from sleeping as it should the watch? Whatever the phone is doing seems to halt

upon it sleeping so I’m hovering over the watch waking it back up when needed. Either

this process is absurd or I’m doing something grossly wrong.

I checked the tutorial. I’m doing things correctly. iPhone

is a 17 Max, iOS 26.1. Internet is tested and is at gig speed. There, I feel

better.