Curt Clifton from Omni Group gave a talk on developing for Apple Watch. Even if you are not a developer, there’s lots to learn here.
For example, there’s the fact that what runs on the Apple Watch is an extension to your iPhone app, not a freestanding Apple Watch app. If you want to distribute something that runs on the Apple Watch, you’ll be distributing that as an extension of an iPhone app. Got to have both.
Another nugget: All the code that runs on the Apple Watch is Apple’s. Your app extension runs on the phone. What you provide that makes its way over to the Apple Watch are image assets and a compiled storyboard that shows the flow between views.
David Hoang of Blackpixel gave a talk on Designing for Apple Watch at the same event:
Contrast this intelligent and knowledgeable discussion of how Watch software will work, with the fenderheads mentioned earlier in the week:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/01/16/the-architecture-of-an-apple-watch-extension/
With no third-party software actually ON the Watch, I think we can be safe in agreeing that the environment will remain blessedly free of intrusions. Also, this makes anyone who actually does business with TapSense a blithering idiot. Learn how the platform works before you try and do business on it, people.
I don’t do “modern” code, but how is this particularly different from say, an AppleScript with a much more restricted vocabulary?
AFAICT, the difference between this and Jobs’s 2007 position that web apps were all devs need on the iPhone seems mostly that (a) it’s MORE limited, and (b) nobody is particularly wailing about what you can’t do.
This architecture only applies to WatchKit apps. Apple has already implied there will also be an SDK for Native Watch apps coming later on. It seems like they just want to prep developers to get in the right mind frame for developing applications for the Watch, and get used to the idea of quick glanceable interactions and utilities that make sense to have on your wrist, instead of letting the floodgates open immediately. Also the fact that the Watch isn’t out yet, so it would be tougher to develop truly native apps without hardware to test on. And not to mention the Watch OS isn’t exactly finished yet anyway. I’m sure they’re still putting the final touches on the native APIs and frameworks.