Back up your iOS device before you read another word.
OK. On your iOS device, tap Settings > General > Software Update and update to iOS 8.2, which landed yesterday.
One little goodie that came along for the ride is the brand new Apple Watch app. Fire up the app and you’ll see a tab bar with three icons. The first one, the default, is where you’ll pair your iPhone with your Apple Watch, if you do decide to get one. The pairing process is done via your iPhone camera, which I find fascinating. You can also pair manually, by tapping the info icon to view your Apple Watch name, then tap it on the list to pair.
All very interesting, but not particularly useful. The second tab is a short collection of Apple Watch videos, all of which you’ve likely already seen.
The third tab is a front end for the Apple Store, formatted nicely to fit your phone.
The Apple Watch app will, no doubt, become much more useful when the Apple Watch actually, you know, ships.
unless you don’t have nor intend to get a watch
one more i will never use and can’t delete.
this should have been an optional download
But NOT on the iPad! Because of course, the iPhone is in reality the centre of the mobile digital hub, despite Apple telling us all that the Cloud is the centre of the hub. :-/
As someone who has already tired of their phone, I’m getting increasingly angry at the prospect of having to buy one every year, just to make the other Apple devices work.
If I have an iPad, it has a cellular connection, and I carry it around with me just as others carry their phone, why can’t I use that with the Apple Watch? Why can’t I get a phone call on it?
Apple tells us that the Cloud is the centre and that they are device agnostic, but in fact the iPhone is the centre and all devices and services require it. The iPads have even had the motion chip for two generations now, but are excluded from the Health App, and unable to even run a simple pedometer app.
The whole situation is getting crazy far away from the ideal they keep selling us. Seemingly for the sole reason of placating the phone carriers.
I know, and BLACK too. What a poor colour choice. it goes with nothing, so it goes in a folder on my farthest screen where all the “ugly” apps live.
We used to make fun of this kind of thing on other computing platforms. “Crapware” that was difficult or impossible to uninstall.
If another company did this, would we call it promotion rather than a goodie?
I wish this was something you could turn off like the Nike+ app. I wish you could do that with a few built-in apps, actually. Like don’t show me the Newsstand app unless I buy a magazine. Still, it could be worse.
I would love a pane in Settings that let you deactivate the default apps. They could still be visible when you search on your phone, but they wouldn’t be cluttering up space on your home screen.
Of course, I’d also love to be able to reassign some of the default apps; I much prefer Calcbot to the default Calculator app, though I tend to use the latter simply because of the convenience of swiping up to get to it… but it’s not a big enough deal to bother jailbreaking.
Aaaand into a folder it goes. Wasted space.
release docs say there are other stability improvements.
the horror….
can you delete windows or mac system preference icons? nope. you just dont look at them very often.
wait — why do you have to buy an iphone every year? that doesnt make any sense.
it’s a system preference utility. if you dont have any printers, does the “Print & Fax” icon offend?
cluttering up your homescreen… so you dudes dont have a folder that you put all this stuff into?
“The Apple Watch app will, no doubt, become much more useful when the Apple Watch actually, you know, ships.”
That’s exactly what I’ve done, but it’d be nice if I didn’t have to.
(I’m completely aware that this is hardly a major issue)
Sure, I have a folder called ‘shoebox’ for all the stuff I can’t get rid of but don’t need on my home screen for whatever reason (FaceTime, Contacts, Calculator, Stocks, Newsstand, Game Center, Podcasts, Google Docs, Tips, and some keyboards). I’d just prefer it was more dynamic. Having to figure out a ‘workaround’ should not be part of the user experience.
I’m sure Apple’s thinking is that the Apple Watch app will be constant reminder that I don’t have an Apple Watch.
1st world problems.