Apple opened its new watch up further to developers on Monday in a bid to improve the smartwatch experience for customers, separating it from the iPhone and allow more customisation.
The latest version of its new smartwatch operating system – WatchOS 2 – will let app developers run apps directly on the watch, rather than powered by the connected iPhone, similar to other smartwatches from Google, Pebble and Samsung.
“Today we’re bringing native apps to the Watch ... We believe in technology for the wrist and we believe that you will create powerful new apps to change our lives,” said CEO Tim Cook on the stage of WWDC, the tech company’s annual developers’ conference.
The new apps will be subject to fewer restrictions, and will be able to run similar to Apple’s own programmes. Fitness tracking apps, for instance, will work without an iPhone connected. Apps will also be able to connect directly to the internet via Wi-Fi without an iPhone connected.
Apple’s Kevin Lynch promised “performance will be great”, addressing the complaints of slow app loading and sluggish performance leveled at the Apple Watch.
Apple has added two additional photo-based watchfaces, one for personal photos and another featuring time-lapse photography linked to the wearer’s current location. An alarm clock mode, which displays the time overnight on the watch’s screen, was also added.
The Watch will now be able to play short form video, such as vines via a glance screen, on the watch face and control internet of things with Apple’s HomeKit from the watch face. Users will be able to reply to email from the watch, a function previously limited to text messages, while a new calendar, event and app browsing system called “Time Travel” will allow users to fast forward in time and see upcoming events.
WatchOS 2 will be available as a free update in the fall.
On WatchOS 1.0, all third-party apps worked in conjunction with a paired iPhone. The phone does the heavy lifting, and the code running directly on the watch is limited to the user interface. That has severely constrained what developers could do with their watch apps, particularly in situations when a paired iPhone isn’t available.
The decision not to launch the Watch with native app support was widely believed to be due in part to the compressed timeframe for the launch, with the watch shipping just months after the kit was made available to developers. But the company’s focus on extending battery life for the watch was also seen as a key reason for preventing power-hungry native apps from running. Battery life is likely to be impacted by native apps.
Google’s competing smartwatch platform, Android Wear, has always offered developers the ability to run directly on the device, in keeping with the platform’s general selling point of “openness”.
But even owners of those smartwatches may benefit from Apple’s change: the install base of the Apple Watch is large enough to guide development practices generally. For example, transit app Citymapper launched a simple Android Wear app first, before launching a much more full-featured Apple Watch app and porting it back to Android Wear.
