Posts tagged with "apple watch"

Apple Debuts Its Spring Collection of Watch Bands

In a press release today, Apple announced new spring bands for the Apple Watch. The lineup includes new Woven Nylon, Nike, and Hermès bands, which will be available later this month online and in Apple Stores.

Among the bands highlighted by Apple are striped versions of the Woven Nylon band, new Nike color schemes that match the color of the company’s running shoes, and Hermès bands with a new edge paint color.

Apple says the full spring line of its bands include the following:

  • Sport Band in Denim Blue, Lemonade and Red Raspberry
  • Woven Nylon in Black Stripe, Blue Stripe, Gray Stripe and Pink Stripe
  • Sport Loop in Flash Light, Hot Pink, Marine Green and Tahoe Blue
  • Classic Buckle in Spring Yellow, Electric Blue and Soft Pink

The Nike lineup includes:

  • Nike Sport in Barely Rose/Pearl Pink, Black/White and Cargo Khaki/Black
  • Nike Sport Loop in Black/Pure Platinum, Bright Crimson/Black, Cargo Khaki, Midnight Fog and Pearl Pink

Finally, the Single Tour Rallye and Double Tour Hèmes bands include:

  • 38mm Double Tour in Indigo with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
  • 38mm Double Tour in Blanc with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
  • 42mm Single Tour Rallye in Indigo with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop
  • 42mm Single Tour Rallye in Blanc with rouge H polished edge and rouge H contrasted loop

It’s interesting that the new Watch bands are not yet available. I suspect we’ll see them appear next week after the education event in Chicago alongside any products announced there.

Leaving the “Series 0” Apple Watch Behind→

I’ve been keeping an eye on the adoption of the Apple Watch Series 3 since its introduction last fall. From a development perspective the Series 3 is a delight to work with. It is fast, capable and LTE allows a wide variety of new applications (for example, the podcast support I added to Workouts++).

This stands in contrast to the challenges of working with the Series 0 (or Apple Watch (1st generation) as Apple would call it). It is just slow and honestly a bit painful to develop for. Even basic things like deploying your application to the watch can take uncomfortably long amounts of time. In daily use the Series 0 is probably “good enough” for many customers, especially with the speed/stability improvements added in watchOS 4, but as a developer I can’t wait until I no longer have to support it.

Which is why I’ve been watching the Apple Watch adoption curve within my apps (specifically Pedometer++ for this analysis) quite carefully. My personal hope is that this summer when we get watchOS 5 it will drop support for the Series 0 and free Apple to really push forward on what is possible for developers. But in order for that wish to be realistic I imagine Apple will need the daily use of those first watches to have died down significantly.

These are fascinating numbers about the adoption of different Apple Watch models by David Smith, who makes some of the best apps for the platform.

I’ve been wondering about when Apple could drop support for the original Apple Watch in new versions of watchOS. For context, the original iPhone, launched in 2007, couldn’t be updated to iOS 4 in 2010, three years later. The Apple Watch will have its official third anniversary next month. I suppose that Apple Watch owners hold onto their devices for longer, but if old hardware is stifling innovation for the developer community who wants to push Watch apps forward (as much as that is possible with the current tools), then maybe it is time for Apple to move on.

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Apple Highlights Apps with watchOS 4.2 Features for Skiers and Snowboarders

Apple released watchOS 4.2 in December with new workout APIs for skiing and snowboarding workouts. Those additions have allowed third-party developers to offer an enhanced workout experience to Apple Watch Series 3 users when they hit the slopes. In a press release today, which was timed with the release of updates to several popular skiing apps, Apple said:

Developers are taking advantage of the built-in GPS and altimeter in Apple Watch Series 3 as well as custom workout APIs released in watchOS 4.2 to enable tracking of specialized metrics. App updates for snoww, Slopes, Squaw Alpine, Snocru and Ski Tracks now track new metrics on the slopes including:

  • Total vertical descent and horizontal distance
  • Number of runs
  • Average and maximum speeds
  • Total time spent
  • Calories burned

The new workout features include other benefits for skiers and snowboarders too:

Apps can auto pause and resume and users will get credit towards their Activity rings; workout information will also be recorded to the Health app on iPhone with user permission. Using Siri, users can start Slopes and snoww to track their runs using just their voice.

Apps that take advantage of the new watchOS 4.2 features are also spotlighted in the App Store’s Today section and include:

There’s more Apple could do to improve the overall experience of developing for watchOS, but it’s good to see the workout APIs continue to expand and third-party developers take advantage of them.

WatchKit as a “Sweet Solution”→

Marco Arment (who’s been struggling with Watch app development for a while now) makes the case for WatchKit to be either discontinued or substantially expanded as, in its current form, it hinders the creation of more powerful apps.

Developing Apple Watch apps is extremely frustrating and limited for one big reason: unlike on iOS, Apple doesn’t give app developers access to the same watchOS frameworks that they use on Apple Watch.

Instead, we’re only allowed to use WatchKit, a baby UI framework that would’ve seemed rudimentary to developers even in the 1990s. But unlike the iPhone’s web apps, WatchKit doesn’t appear to be a stopgap — it seems to be Apple’s long-term solution to third-party app development on the Apple Watch.

When I first read his post, I thought that asking Apple to discontinue and replace WatchKit was perhaps too much. But after spending some time reorganizing my Watch favorites and complications last night and this morning, I agree with Marco. My favorite apps on the Watch are all made by Apple and are not based on WatchKit. The only exception is Workouts++ (which, as a workout app, has specific privileges). The only third-party Watch apps I regularly use besides Smith’s app are Things and Shazam (which is somewhat ironic) and they’re both accessed via complications; they’re okay, but I don’t love them because they’re often slow to sync data with their iPhone counterparts or take too long to launch and be in a usable state. When I’m out and about, I still don’t trust Watch apps to be as reliable as iPhone apps.

Despite three years of watchOS updates and more powerful hardware (I use a Series 3), the Apple Watch still doesn’t feel like the rich, diverse, and vibrant app platform that the iPhone is. Some might say that’s precisely the point – it doesn’t have to be because the Watch works best through notifications and complications. However, I often ask myself if such argument is the wearable equivalent of Aesop’s sour grapes – real Watch apps wouldn’t make sense anyway. Like Marco, I wonder what would happen if only Apple exposed real watchOS development tools to app makers.

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Evolving the Apple Watch in watchOS 5→

Matt Birchler has published his list of requests for watchOS 5, and I wholeheartedly agree with all of his major feature ideas. His top request is identical to my own: letting third-party apps populate the Siri Watch face introduced last year.

Essentially, Apple should be making the Siri watch face the smartest, most useful watch face someone can choose. It already is the smartest, but to be useful to everyone, they need to make the apps people are actually using work with it.

I’ve been using the Siri face nearly non-stop since installing the watchOS 4 beta. Because I use a lot of first-party apps, it still offers me enough value to be the best Watch face for me. Once third-party apps can tap in though, it could end up becoming the best face for everyone.

Pair Siri face improvements with Birchler’s other major requests – always-on Watch faces, an Apple Podcasts app, and further updates to Activity and Workout – and watchOS 5 would stack up to address all my outstanding issues with the platform.

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How Apple Watch Saved One Man’s Life→

Amazing story shared by Scott Killian with 9to5Mac:

Then Killian, who wears his Apple Watch to bed three to four nights a week for sleep tracking, says his Apple Watch woke him up around 1 am with an alert from a third-party app called HeartWatch saying his resting heart rate was elevated while sleeping (Apple recently introduced a built-in feature that can do this with Apple Watch Series 1 and later). Killian experienced mild indigestion which can be a sign of a heart attack, but says he generally didn’t feel sick.

His Apple Watch charted his heart rate at around 121 beats per minute in the middle of the night while data previously captured showed his average resting heart rate at around 49 beats per minute. The data also showed that this was the first time his resting heart rate had reached this level since he began wearing Apple Watch, so he decided to go to the emergency room as a precaution.

I’ve been using HeartWatch since it came out in late 2015 – if you care about heart rate stats monitored by the Apple Watch, I can’t recommend it enough.

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Workouts++ Adds Podcast Playback, Mapping, New Workout Types, Siri and More

Almost a year ago, David Smith released Workouts++, an alternative to watchOS’ built-in Workout app that adds an iOS component to leverage the data collected during workouts. Today, Smith released version 2.0 of Workouts++ with a host of new features enabled by advances in the Apple Watch and Apple’s health and fitness APIs, including podcast playback, location tracking and mapping, support for new workout types, Siri integration, and more. On top of that, Workouts++ is now free with no In-App Purchases, advertising, or subscription.

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Apple Launches Heart Study App in the US in Partnership with Stanford Medicine

Today, Apple launched the Apple Heart Study app. The app lets users contribute heart rate data to a study being conducted in partnership with Stanford Medicine regarding irregular heart rhythms. The app uses the Apple Watch to monitor the user’s heart rate and alert them when they may be experiences atrial fibrillation, a leading cause of stroke. Apple COO Jeff Williams commented that:

“Every week we receive incredible customer letters about how Apple Watch has affected their lives, including learning that they have AFib. These stories inspire us and we’re determined to do more to help people understand their health,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO. “Working alongside the medical community, not only can we inform people of certain health conditions, we also hope to advance discoveries in heart science.”

If the app detects an irregular heart rhythm, the user receives an alert on their iPhone and Apple Watch, a free consultation with a study doctor, and an electrocardiogram patch for further monitoring. The app is available in the US only on the App Store and users must be 22 or older to participate in the study.

Apple Encourages Developers to Update to watchOS 4

In a short note to developers on its Developer News and Updates site, Apple is encouraging developers to:

Take advantage of increased performance, new background modes for navigation and audio recording, built-in altimeter capabilities, direct connections to accessories with Core Bluetooth, and more. In addition, the size limit of a watchOS app bundle has increased from 50 MB to 75 MB.

The carrot of new functionality comes with something of a stick as well. After April 1, 2018, watchOS 1 app updates will no longer be accepted and all updates must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK or later. New app submissions must be built with the watchOS 4 SDK.