What it is: Apps for the Apple Watch have been limited by the restriction to work with an iPhone. Now Apple is mandating that all future Apple Watch apps run solely on the Apple Watch.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, you couldn’t buy apps for it. Yet the iPhone still managed to define the smartphone market. Later when developers complained, Apple created software frameworks to make it easy for people to create and sell their own iPhone apps. That move created the billion dollar App Store business and helped make iOS more popular than ever before, especially when Appel later introduced the iPad.
Yet when Apple created an Ap Store for Apple Watches, nobody seemed to care. The problem was that Apple Watch apps were limited. Not only did Apple require apps to run partially on the iPhone, but they also limited apps from accessing many of the hardware features of the Apple Watch. The result was a collection of slow and barely useful apps on the tiny Apple Watch screen that ran slowly and needed an iPhone nearby to do anything at all.
Now Apple has mandated that all Apple Watch apps must be native, which means they can not only access hardware features of the Apple Watch like its Taptic Engine, Digital Crown, and microphone, but it no longer must be tied to an iPhone. This will make future Apple Watch apps faster and more useful.
If you currently have an Apple Watch, chances are good you haven’t bought many (if any) apps for it. Chances are also good that the next Apple Watch model will offer more features to make Apple watch apps more compelling and interesting to use.
If you haven’t gotten an Apple Watch yet, wait until the next model comes out. You might even want to wait until the third generation of the Apple Watch appears because by then developers will have figured out how to create more useful apps and the third generation Apple Watch should contain far more features than the first one did. The first version of anything, whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, are mostly useful to learn what these devices can do and then keep them as collector’s items in the future.
For people who just want to use a product, the second or third generation will always be better. The Apple Watch may not have made a huge splash upon its announcement and initial availability, but it’s steadily growing and will only get better.
To read more about the future of Apple Watch apps, click here.