The Apple Watch is design to make you healthy and help you communicate more easy , but those lofty end ca n’t be accomplish without apps to back them up . Apple has its own apps in the industrial plant , like Workout and Activity for fitness - trailing , but the company needs democratic iOS app developer to extend their serve to Apple Watch . The company rolled out theWatchKit SDK in Novemberto guidebook programmers and designers through the process , but I was singular : How do you make an elegant app without ever having seen the scout in person ?
American Airlines is one of Apple ’s early Watch app pardner .
We already roll in the hay a few of the major apps that will be on control panel when Apple Watch ships : Instagram , American Airlines , ESPN , and Starwood Hotels & Resorts among them . Apple reportedly invite scores of app developersto Cupertino in February to finish up their apps . But some have gone it alone in the Bob Hope that follow the WatchKit rule of thumb closely and stick with simple feature will win Apple ’s pestle of approval and a pip in the Watch app store .
developer faced a similar quandary when building apps for the iPad . Apple waited for more than a year after free the first iPhone to set in motion the App Store , giving developers meter to see the phone in action . But iPad apps were expected to appear in the App Store when the tablet launch , like we ’re expect Apple Watch apps to be usable from day one .
So app Lord have spend the last few months work around two major restrictions : They ca n’t reach the Watch ’s sensors and they ca n’t make native apps . Every Watch app must set out with an subsist iOS app . Then there ’s the fact that you ca n’t test a Watch app on the existent twist — at least not yet . So the developers I talk to settle to keep it simple .
Off to a light start
Aside from the whole fourth dimension - hold on part , the Watch ’s most obvious purposes are offering information at a coup d’oeil , similar to the iPhone ’s Today widgets , and giving you actionable notification . Developers I spoke to plan toextend their iOS apps with glances and notificationswhere it makes sense , make the scout more of an iPhone add-on than a standalone gadget — at least in the early mean solar day .
The Omni Group is bringing its pop personal chore management appOmniFocusto the Watch to let you keep track of job in forward motion , check into off completed items , and order reminders to Siri that you could afterward listen to on your telephone . Like other developers I spoke to , Omni Group CEO Ken Case said designing and testing an app using only a simulator has been a challenge , so his team had to get originative .
“ For testing we expend the simulator , but that ’s not a very good room to think about how I should be using this gadget , ” Case said . “ We have a 3D printer and we impress some mockups . How big is it ? How much room for release do you have ? It ’s severe to test things like the crest , but it helps you think about it somewhat better than just consume it on your Mac . ”
Trello ’s Watch app will let you join forces with coworkers on the go .
democratic to - do list app Todoist will show you your tasks for the day at a glance , then let you mark off them off or plunge in to see detailed selective information about each chore . The team is also solve on a feature that will permit you transfer tasks to unlike days using Siri .
Todoist for Apple Watch will show you much of the same information you see on the iPhone .
“ The big challenge is figuring out how to give a substance abuser access code to their task inclination in a simple and quick form , ” Todoist developer Enric Enrich say via email . “ Since there is modified space on the watch - face , we have to adjudicate how to briefly show each task ’s essential information . ”
Agile Tortoise developer Greg Pierce is behind ultimate tone - takerDrafts(a Macworld favorite ) and enumerate appTally , both of which will land on Apple Watch at launching . Tally was simple : The app keeps track of anything you necessitate to count , like how many drinking glass of urine you toast or cigarettes you ’ve smoke . Pierce said Tally will make consumption of taps to go — one tap to count up and a military force tap to bring up a menu to weigh back down or reset the heel counter .
If you already use Siri to dictate notes in Drafts , the Watch version will be similar . While you ’re on the go , just tell Siri a monitor or a speedy melodic theme , then bring it up afterwards on your phone to take a destination for your note .
The apps “ remove the additional friction of develop your phone out of your pocket and seemed like a innate fit , like the Watch is likely to be good for , ” Pierce said .
No one I utter to had used the Watch , but everyone was confident that Apple would open up more of the twist ’s functionality to developer in the time to come .
Not just a smaller iPhone app
Starwood Hotels & Resorts has the advantage of being a preferred Apple partner — the hospitality company worked with Cupertino to hustle out Passbook with iOS 7 and has a similar role for the Apple Watch launching . We caught a glimpse of what Starwood ’s SPG app will look like at theWatch reveal back in September , when we found out that the Watch will unlock SPG hotel elbow room doors .
The keyless unlocking part is n’t exactly new : Starwood add the lineament toits iPhone app , which I saw in action at the W New York in downtown Manhattan back in November . Stephen Gates , Starwood ’s vice United States President and creative manager of global brand name design , tell Macworld that the fellowship has experimented with Android Wear , but could only make the contactless door unlock work on Apple Watch .
“ To be capable to do something like keyless entry , which work very just and seems like magic , there ’s a vast amount that goes into the programming and security , ” he say . “ The Watch is the most full-bodied [ wearable ] political program we ’ve seen so far . ”
Apple announced Starwood ’s keyless unlocking feature film at the Apple Watch reveal last September .
Gates slump to say what the Watch app ’s other marquee features will be , but say wearables loan themselves to travel by offering information you want to see at a glance .
“ The watch is n’t just a smaller version of our iPhone app , ” he said .
We ’re expecting to see more Watch apps and their features on display at Apple ’s “ Spring Forward ” event on Monday . go over back at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern for theMacworld live blogstraight from the event and complete coverage of the Apple Watch launching .
