
The Apple Watch feels like a stalled platform - fearfulsymmetry
http://qz.com/557652/half-a-year-later-the-apple-watch-feels-like-a-stalled-platform/
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basseq
"New and compelling" apps and features rarely happen overnight. The "several
months" since watchOS 2 was released could _easily_ be only 50% of the
development cycle of something really awesome.

The author is not being lazy, he's being impatient.

I'll revisit this in another 4 years and 5 months and see where the platform
is then.

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jgrahamc
The original iPhone didn't have apps at all. In fact, Apple/Steve Jobs seemed
reluctant to open that platform at all (they told people to write web apps).
Perhaps the reality is that the Apple Watch doesn't need to be a 'platform';
I'm very happy with mine as an extension to the phone.

~~~
soylentcola
That's a big part of it. Also, there is at least one other parallel to the
phone space: customizing your desktop wallpaper and ringtones. The original
iPhone didn't have many options in this regard whereas many others did. Later,
they added more options to customize these things more thoroughly (though
never to the extent of homescreen widgets).

On the watch side, I don't have an Apple Watch but I picked up a Moto 360 for
around $150 last year. Not gonna get into the eternal Apple vs. The Rest
debate but one things I've noticed (aside from agreeing with your thoughts on
the adequacy of using it as a simple phone extension) is that my other most
common activity is changing the face of the watch.

It seems like such a simple thing but honestly, if someone offered me a
$150-250 watch that simply told me the time and mirrored notifications from my
phone, I might not be too enthusiastic. But if the proposition was just
$150-250 for a watch where you could change the face to look any way you want,
I think I'd still be tempted even without much in the way of other "smart"
features.

There's a huge range of watch faces I can download and there are simple tools
that allow me to make my own. I can easily swap from something minimalist to
something that looks like a luxury watch to something that looks like a
Fallout Pipboy to something that looks like a neon sign with a couple of taps
on my phone or watch.

It's something I didn't expect to care much about but the sheer flexibility of
a programmable and customizable watch face has made it one of those head-
slappingly obvious features I should've seen a mile away.

I wonder when/if the Apple Watch will give more options in this regard.
Because no matter how cool the apps are, a watch is still a personal piece of
jewelry as well. When that piece of jewelry is also a computer with a display,
there's a lot of room for customization and personalization, even if they want
to keep the core interface the same for consistency. A user-defined or even
user-created default face for when your watch is just sitting on your arm
would be great to have, even if tapping or interacting brought up the standard
Apple Watch interface.

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rizwan
In addition to some constraints on the type of product (i.e. watch apps _have_
to be focused, super-quick interactions), there's another reason we haven't
seen a lot of app, imo:

This year was an unusually crazy year for iOS developers. Apple released: \-
watchOS 1, with a slow and clunky experience \- iOS 9, with adaptive
multitasking \- watchOS 2, requiring a rewrite of the watch app – tvOS, a
whole new platform, with more easily translatable app experiences.

Additionally, with the "2-versions behind" strategy for Xcode, a lot of app
developers (myself included) dropped iOS 7 support. This was actually one of
the most complex transitions ever. (So many backwards incompatible changes
(size classes, presentation controllers, push notifications).)

So something had to give. For me, and for many others, I'd say it was probably
the watch.

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vannevar
The iPhone was successful because everyone needs a phone, and it was a quantum
leap in phone functionality (to the point where the actual phone function was
secondary). And it was beautiful, so even if you only used it as a phone, it
still made a fashion statement compared to the typical candybar phone or
utilitarian Blackberry.

No one needs to carry a watch, so the Apple Watch has a much smaller potential
market to begin with. It really needed to succeed as fashion (since that's a
major reason anyone wears a watch these days), and it simply hasn't. The
original iPhone looked like the future. The Apple Watch looks like a slightly
sleeker version of a Dick Tracy wrist radio.

The Apple Watch (or whatever wearable form it evolves into) will be truly
successful only when it can replace the iPhone entirely.

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robgibbons
I don't foresee the Apple Watch ever being untethered from the iPhone, for the
simple reason that it won't sell iPhones.

