“Apple may be preparing some tweaks to watchOS that will leave you fumbling for your phone less often,” Lucas Matney writes for TechCrunch.
According to Bloomberg News‘ Mark Gurman, “Apple is reportedly planning to remove one of the final Watch/iPhone dependencies and will be bolstering some of its stock apps,” Matney writes. “Apple may be adding a watchOS version of the App Store to the wrist computer, allowing users to add third-party capabilities to the Watch without having to delve into the Watch app on their iPhones.”
Additionally, “watchOS will be getting versions of some iOS stock apps that weren’t previously available,” Matney writes, “including the Calculator app, Voice Memos, Apple Books (for audiobooks) and functionality to send Animoji/Memoji stickers… [plus] a pair of health apps: ‘Dose’ helps users keep track of taking pills and ‘Cycles’ tracks menstrual cycles.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Along with a dedicated Apple Watch App Store, we’d love to see a section of it for developers to offer their own takes on Apple Watch faces.
Anything that makes AppleWatch more of a standalone device I’m in favour of.
I would probably still browse for watch apps (what few I use) on my iPhone but it would be great to be able to just search for apps on the watch and install them directly.
Rather than third-party watch faces I would love Apple to make a full on watch face configurator that runs on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. It would allow you to specify the layout, fonts, colours, backgrounds (including animations), complications and other elements exactly as you want. You could then share those faces with anyone. I’m pretty sure Apple must have something internally that they’ve used to build the current set of watch faces, maybe polish that and let us have it.
Can’t wait for WWDC!
“Apple may be preparing some tweaks to watchOS that will leave you fumbling for your phone less often,” Lucas Matney writes for TechCrunch.
The point of the Watch (according to Phil Schiller) is to compete with the iPhone for features, so by definition we know that it will add features as described every single year.
I’m in favor of Apple retaining the ability for all devices to backup and sync to a Mac. It just worked better.