“Apple on Tuesday updated the official App Store Review Guidelines, officially taking a stance against third-party applications for the Apple Watch whose sole purpose is to tell the time, as first discovered by developer David Smith,” Christian Zibreg reports for iDownload Blog. “A newly added clause of the agreement guiding third-party development now explicitly states that Watch applications which simply tell the time will be flatly rejected.”
“Moreover, the same principles appear to apply to custom watch faces and flatulence apps,” Zibreg reports. “In addition to time-telling apps, Apple also doesn’t want third-party developers to create custom faces for the Watch. The device ships with a selection of ten highly customizable faces, but that’s about it, at least for the time being.”
“For the time being,” Zibreg reports, “because the official Apple Watch User Guide implies that additional Apple-made faces might be coming soon by way of a future Watch OS software update.””
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Makes sense, although we’d like to see what third-party developers could do with watch faces eventually.
Their stance on watch faces is stupid, but no fart apps is a deal breaker.
I know what you mean. I came -> <- this close to dumping my AAPL shares. Whatthehell is Apple thinking!?
/s
Well Bob, it looks like you’ll have to continue to get your flatulence fix the old fashioned way: DIY.
Whats your favorite fart recipe?
A large can of pork’n’beans, several sauerkraut brats and a 6 pack of Bud. We’re talkin’ Mt. Vesuvius type action.
So basically a WMD.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
So Apple is stupid? Guess that’s why they’re failing so badly.
You only have to look at the butt-ugly collection of 3rd-party Android Wear watch faces to understand why Apple says no. Not only are 99% totally tasteless, but half of them display some sort of copyright infringement with notable brand names. There is also the issue of light colored watch faces drawing down more battery power to display.
Nothing about this “makes sense”. This is just classic Apple over control. Seriously, exactly how will the world end if I can load a custom watch face on my Watch? Please explain that? If there is a valid reason, they should say why (other than “we didn’t invent it, so you can’t use it” or “your watch face is unaesthetic, so you can’t do it”. If there is no valid reason, they should allow it.
BTW, I will be ordering my Watch soon to go with my iPhone 6, MacBook Pro, Apple TV and iPad So please, no flames about how I’m some kind of Fandroid (I wouldn’t touch Android if it was the only OS on the planet).
The probable reason is battery life. People check the time at least several times an hour. Apple can optimize its own watch faces to draw as little current as humanly possible; developers without direct access to the hardware can’t. If somebody’s watch goes dead after six hours, they are going to blame Apple, not the watch face programmer.
I want to go with an all white watch face. /s
According to those in the the know, Android based watches with custom loadable watch faces, have some pretty ugly resource draining watch faces. I suspect if you give people an inch, they will take a mile, and blame Apple for it.
macman
battery battery battery
black backgrounds less energy used period…
So corporations should not have the right to control their products? If Apple loses control, they become Android.
When a corporation sells physical property there is a transfer of ownership, for a transfer of money. Or…once they sell it to you, it is no longer theirs.
Well, you buy real estate, but you can’t pile up trash in your front yard.
That’s a community standard, determined by elected officials and have the courts as a recourse.. I want a device, not a membership to a community. What’s this? Conform or get out?
That’s true but it’s not the ‘corporation’ you bought the real estate from that has made or enforces that rule.
Ever hear of a HOA.
Sorry, I don’t see your point. You’ve simply proved my point.. The original owner of the property (not the HOA, which is a group that ‘manages’ the consistency of a grouping of residences) still does not make nor enforce the trash rule. Even the ‘first’ purchase of a residence that is part of a HOA is from the development company.
The watch face part is probably to prevent copyright infringement issues.
Even if it’s not apple making the watch face.
Fart app, hope this applies to iOS as well.
There are some really funny fart sounds out there, impossibly funny. But then you have to be 8 years old too, to really appreciate it.
I’d like to hear Big Ben chime-farts, on the quarter hour.
As much as I would love to have more watch face options .. The logic as I imagine it is owners are going to be showing there watches to folks and Apple wants them to all look their best .. For every gorgeous third party watch face there will be twenty ugly ones.
I won’t be getting an Apple Watch until they develop an analog 24 hour watch face. What can I say?
I agree. I would love to have a 24-hr face. Not one that goes from 1-12 twice either.
So suffer. You are soooo put upon.
I insist on a decimal time option! 😛
Either way, I’ll wait for the second generation model after being burnt by the first-gen iPad.
I want a calculator digital watch face. 😛
I want a binary face!
I’ve made one using WatchKit extensions. So sad it will be rejected.
Nothing stopping you from using it yourself. 🙂
Maybe you can add some functions to your app that does more than tell time.. Seems they are only rejecting apps that ONLY tell time as their function. Maybe add a mini-game to it, or allow it to have a flashlight mode.
Flashlight mode. I LIKE! Maybe a “guess what time it is now” game.
Or the old digital stopwatch game of ‘get it exactly XX:00 seconds’. You can set a different ‘goal’ each round.. 😀 You could start with say a 100 points and subtract from that the difference in 1/100 seconds.. Rounds would continue till you lost all points. Leaderboard for max number of rounds achieved.
That… is a decent idea. I’m gonna riff off of that.
Good luck! Give me a mention in the app credits. 😀
I’ve got a Binary watch I bought from Think Geek years ago. It was quite a conversation piece, “There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand Binary, and those who don’t.” 🖖😀⌚️
Yes. Actually, I was developing a true binary face. Not entirely useful for telling the time, but it displayed the whole day as fractions, 1/2 day, 1/4 day, 1/8th… etc. all the way down to ~1.318 seconds or 2^-16 of a day.
I got a first gen iPad as well, so I know what you mean. However, I have the Apple watch, and it’s awesome. No regrets at all. (With the iPad, I immediately knew it should have had a forward facing camera, higher pixel density, etc)
I like 24 hour clocks.
I like 25 hour clocks. I get more done.
You will have to live on Mars then.
We currently have a 25h clock, if you consider it’s 0-indexed.
0:00 – 24:00 is 25 units. Some prefer 24:00, some prefer 0:00. I say…. USE BOTH!
Military: 2400=Midnight (exactly), after midnight 00 used for hour, eg, 0001= one minute after midnight. 🖖😀⌚️
Um, you mean a 25 ticks. Still the units in-between ticks is 24. IE: there are only 24 slices to the one day clock. 😛
We also have eleven fingers.
I also want a watch face that reads in sidereal time. If they are truly serious about competing with Swiss complications, that one should be very high on the list. So, yes, I’m waiting.
The iPhone was quite restricted when it first came out. Gradually the controls were loosened.
Yes, gradually the controls were loosened. Once Apple had time to address security and stability issues, not as easy as it sounds. Those last two should be top priority. Do the other stuff when you have time. (pun intended)
Wouldn’t it be great to have a “Watch Face Construction Kit” app where you could photograph a high dollar watch with lots of “complications” and make that into you Apple Watch face?
Ergo, instant copyright violations.
Well, at least you got Mickey Mouse
But I wanted Goofy.
I want Kate Upton Watch face.
The reason for no custom watch faces makes perfect sense for now. At issue is that no developer can currently make a custom watch face.
Instead, what a developer could do is make an app that mimicked a custom watch face. This would be really bad and really confusing for users who might not know the difference.
A fake face would really suck and be as useless as a fart app.
Once Apple opens the SDK to allow custom watch faces, then everything changes, but until then, it is what it is.
That’s too bad. Head start for Android Wear in that arena then.. https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/watch-faces/index.html
Pssst! Hey bud . . . over here!
How would you like a gen-u-ine Rolex watch face?
Only ten bucks!
I’d like to see astronomical watch faces in the future……
So, I can’t do this with the watch?!?! Crazy.
I fart in Apple’s general direction.
There doesn’t seem to be any opposition from Apple if your App that happens to have a watch face mode also does other things unrelated to keeping actual time. Since it would be a separate App no one is forcing you to download, give the user the freedom to decide if he wants a novelty, not integrated with Apple Watch’s watch face collection/interface on his watch. It’s something fun, like ringtones or wallpaper..
Browse and create beautiful Apple Watch Custom Faces using this website. It’s great.
http://www.applewatchcustomfaces.com