PodSearch

Under the Radar

32: watchOS 3

 

00:00:00   Welcome to under the radar show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment and I'm David Smith under the radar is never longer than 30 minutes

00:00:07   So let's get started. So we are here live in person in my hotel room in California, but we're live to ourselves not to you

00:00:14   Sorry, anyway, so WVDC that we're here recording the very last day of it on Friday

00:00:20   So we kind of get an idea of what the whole week was like get you know

00:00:23   More info on a lot of the sessions and everything and what we decided to do for the format here since there's so much to

00:00:29   cover is that we're gonna cover approximately one maybe two platforms

00:00:34   or top or major topics per week for the next few weeks until we get through it

00:00:38   so we're gonna start today with watch OS and what's new in watch OS 3 and what

00:00:45   that might mean for watch developers because it seemed like you know a waste

00:00:48   not to when we have like the world leader in watch development right here

00:00:51   with David here so Dave what do you think of watch OS 3 and and what is

00:00:56   different and I guess we can start with like you know high level overview and

00:01:00   then like you know maybe move into what you think you can do now that you

00:01:04   couldn't do before and how this might change the business of watch apps.

00:01:07   Sure, because it is an interesting thing this week to for the first time have come to a

00:01:12   WWDC and not feel like I could reasonably address all of the things that they were

00:01:18   talking about like usually I'd come and it would be like everything that isn't

00:01:20   game related I'd try and be aware of but there's so many platforms and so many

00:01:24   things going on right now that it really wasn't possible.

00:01:28   And so this week, I've just been doing all watch all the time,

00:01:31   essentially.

00:01:32   And as I've dug into this over watching sessions and labs,

00:01:37   there is a--

00:01:39   Watch 3 is the--

00:01:42   it seems like it might even be the only platform this year

00:01:44   that is radically different, in a way that

00:01:47   is significant, intangible, and kind of amazing

00:01:52   that what they're able to do these huge improvements

00:01:57   on exactly the same hardware.

00:01:59   I'm currently wearing two watches,

00:02:00   which is completely absurd, but--

00:02:02   Totally rocking it.

00:02:04   You know, with a watchOS 3 on one wrist

00:02:06   and a watchOS 2 on the other.

00:02:07   And it works.

00:02:09   Like in the keynote when Federici shows his like,

00:02:14   kind of like, ha ha, old watchOS 2 apps were so slow.

00:02:16   Look at the spinner.

00:02:18   But now look at watchOS 3.

00:02:19   It launches immediately.

00:02:22   And it's good, maybe it's a good sort of like applause line,

00:02:24   but I was very skeptical that that would actually

00:02:27   be the case, that I would, if I, you know,

00:02:29   I'd go download the beta and it would be kind of janky

00:02:32   and it wouldn't quite work.

00:02:34   Turns out, it works exactly like they said.

00:02:37   And I think it's because they're being very clever

00:02:39   about the way they're solving this.

00:02:43   Rather than, what they're doing is basically just saying,

00:02:47   We have extra capacity on the compute and memory and energy side that after having a--having

00:02:55   WatchOS be out in the world for a little over a year now, we understand what our constraints

00:03:01   are there more concisely.

00:03:03   And so we're going to be able to take that and turn it into better performance and do

00:03:09   it in a way that is really user focused because if you add an application as a--to the complication

00:03:17   screen on your watch. That application is like the king. It gets all the best treatment.

00:03:22   It can do all kinds of things in the background and will perform incredibly well. If you put

00:03:27   it in the dock, which set, you know, so you say, "Hey, this is an app that is important

00:03:32   to me that I think I will want to reference frequently," then you don't, you're not the

00:03:37   king anymore. Maybe you're like the jack of spades, but you kind of used to will get a

00:03:41   a lot of special treatment. And if you're in neither of those places, you're just like

00:03:48   a peon. You'll haveā€¦

00:03:49   You're like a six of clubs.

00:03:51   Yeah, exactly. And if you try and launch one of those apps, like if I'm a watchOS 2 app,

00:03:57   I try and launch one of these, like an old app on watchOS 3 that isn't in the dock

00:04:03   or a complication. It's just like the old one. I mean, it may even be slightly worse,

00:04:07   I think in some ways because it seems like it's pulling resources directly and explicitly

00:04:13   for the dock and complication apps, but who cares?

00:04:17   Because if it's not an important enough app to be in your--on your watch face or in your

00:04:21   dock, you probably don't care.

00:04:23   It probably just got automatically installed behind your back from the App Store.

00:04:28   And that seems like a pretty good compromise for them to take.

00:04:31   So I'm pretty excited for it as a platform going forward to be able to make apps that

00:04:34   actually work.

00:04:36   Because as best as I've tried to put a good face on watchOS 1 and watchOS 2, they really,

00:04:43   I always felt like I was shipping something that wasn't good.

00:04:48   It was always like barely works, kind of hacky, hopefully sufficient, but never good.

00:04:54   And now it's nice to feel like I'm actually going to be able to do that.

00:04:56   Yeah, I mean, this, I think they made changes here to reflect the way people actually use

00:05:03   their watch.

00:05:04   they've had time to release this product,

00:05:07   see it in the market, to see things like,

00:05:09   okay, well the whole digital touch circle of friends thing

00:05:12   is not really setting the road on fire

00:05:13   and probably does not justify the only,

00:05:17   one of the two hardware buttons on the watch

00:05:19   being devoted solely to it.

00:05:21   And so they made changes there

00:05:22   and I think they also recognized that,

00:05:25   you know, when they designed the watch,

00:05:26   they designed it almost to be just like a mini iPhone.

00:05:29   And so it's like, okay,

00:05:30   well you're gonna have lots of apps in this thing,

00:05:31   you're gonna be bouncing between apps all the time

00:05:33   and have tons of different little apps.

00:05:35   And I think the reality is most people who I've talked to

00:05:37   who use the watch, and when I used the watch,

00:05:40   it was this way as well, most people use

00:05:43   a very small number of apps on any kind of regular basis.

00:05:47   Talking two or three, maybe at most, of third party apps

00:05:51   plus maybe a couple Apple built-in features.

00:05:53   But you're talking like a very small number

00:05:55   and many people never went past the complications

00:05:58   on their face as, I don't know any watch owner

00:06:01   routinely goes back to the honeycomb screen and picks from 40 apps that are on there.

00:06:07   That just isn't how people use it. And so it seems like they have shifted from that

00:06:11   initial guess of how the watch would be used to the way people actually use it using very

00:06:16   few apps and have really optimized for that. So now it's like, okay, well if you're only

00:06:20   going to be using two or three third party apps on a regular basis, we're going to actually

00:06:24   make those really good and keep those in memory. And side note, there was on the talk show

00:06:30   with Jon Gruber this week that they did live here with guests Phil and Craig. Craig Federighi

00:06:36   did a really good job of explaining this decision basically of like you know how they managed

00:06:42   to pull this off with watchOS and the short version is basically what you said it's like

00:06:45   they basically like they overshot their battery budget like they dramatically overshot like

00:06:53   on the conservation side before and so he basically what he basically said was like

00:06:57   we had extra battery and RAM.

00:06:59   And so we decided to spend that battery and RAM

00:07:01   making watch apps really awesome,

00:07:03   because we could.

00:07:05   So I think what we're gonna see from this

00:07:07   is people with the Apple Watch running OS 3

00:07:11   are going to most likely see lower battery life

00:07:13   than what they saw before,

00:07:14   if they're making use of these new

00:07:16   keep apps in memory kind of usage patterns.

00:07:19   But I don't know about you,

00:07:21   you're a watch power user obviously.

00:07:23   When I used the watch,

00:07:25   I would finish most days with 50% battery left.

00:07:28   - Oh sure, I mean, I, even beyond that,

00:07:31   like I wear my watch probably 23 hours a day.

00:07:35   - Oh that's right.

00:07:36   - And I have for a little over a year now,

00:07:39   ever since I started working on Sleep Plus Plus,

00:07:41   where like, if you wear, if you wanna use your Apple watch

00:07:43   as a sleep tracker, which I recommend,

00:07:46   you need to wear it both during the night

00:07:50   and during the day.

00:07:51   And I've been able to do that

00:07:53   without really changing my habits too much,

00:07:57   that all it really means is that when I get,

00:07:59   you know, when I'm getting ready in the morning,

00:08:01   like when I'm taking a shower,

00:08:02   when I'm getting dressed, et cetera,

00:08:04   I always take, whenever my watch is off,

00:08:06   it'll immediately go on charge

00:08:07   rather than just like sitting on my bedside table,

00:08:10   which is fine.

00:08:11   And similarly in the evening,

00:08:13   when I'm sort of getting ready for bed

00:08:14   and brushing my teeth, I'm doing those types of things,

00:08:17   I'll again put her on charge.

00:08:18   And it means that I'm charging my watch

00:08:21   maybe an hour a day at most, and a lot of times it's even less than that, but I was

00:08:27   still having plenty of, you know, plenty of battery to get through the day. It was very

00:08:32   rare that I would run into battery problems, but it does happen, certainly, but in general

00:08:38   I think there's a lot of budget there. And the reality too is I think I would, there's

00:08:43   a, I would not be at all surprised if even with these very aggressive things that they're

00:08:48   doing, that they will actually end up being more in some ways

00:08:51   battery neutral, because they're not having to relaunch the apps

00:08:57   completely, every single time you go to it, like, I'm sure

00:09:01   there's it's a, you know, like, it's definitely a scale. And,

00:09:05   but if I would not be at all surprised if at the end of this,

00:09:07   they could say, you know, we do all this great stuff. And as

00:09:10   long as the apps that are in your comp, that are your

00:09:12   complications and are in your doc are being good citizens. And

00:09:15   And it sounds like they have a bunch of stuff in watchOS 3 that is going to enforce good

00:09:21   citizenship, which I was kind of glad to see where if you do--are too aggressive on the

00:09:26   CPU when you're doing your background app refreshes, they'll just kill you.

00:09:30   And you'll get a nice, like, report in Xcode about exactly why they did that.

00:09:34   But it's--they're being very careful to say, if you're a good citizen and you're taking

00:09:39   advantage of all these new APIs, ultimately, battery life may end up being about the same,

00:09:44   it's marginally worse, but the reality is it goes from apps being kind of maybe slightly

00:09:50   useful to being actually and practically useful, that that's a very easy trade-off, I think,

00:09:55   to convince a customer on.

00:09:57   And to convince developers to write for it in the first place. I mean, like, my overcast

00:10:01   watch app is still WatchKit 1, because WatchKit 1 was enough of a slog to get through and

00:10:07   to try to make something that was good and functional, and honestly I don't believe I

00:10:11   I even achieved that, and my usage reflects it.

00:10:15   My WatchKit app is very low usage,

00:10:17   and part of that is because it's hard to use,

00:10:21   and part of that is because I never updated it to watchOS 2.

00:10:23   And the reason I updated it to watchOS 2

00:10:25   was that it was like, well, here's a bunch more work

00:10:27   I'm gonna have to do, and it doesn't really seem worth it,

00:10:30   because the resulting app on watchOS 2

00:10:32   is still not that compelling.

00:10:34   It still wouldn't be that great,

00:10:36   and it would be a good amount of work.

00:10:38   So I decided to wait, and I'll see

00:10:40   when watchOS 3 comes out,

00:10:42   then I'll probably just rewrite it for that.

00:10:44   And boy, am I glad I waited.

00:10:45   - Oh, sure.

00:10:46   - Because it seems like a no-brainer.

00:10:49   If you have any business being on the watch at all,

00:10:53   rewriting for OS 3 is going to be a really good idea.

00:10:57   - Sure, and even just on the policy side,

00:10:59   they've made some changes that I think

00:11:01   make it more compelling.

00:11:02   Like first of all, for example,

00:11:03   one of the things they've said now is,

00:11:05   before they said you should never be,

00:11:07   Like don't make a complication unless you have timely,

00:11:12   useful information to be displaying on the watch face.

00:11:14   That was like, used to be the policy decision.

00:11:16   Whereas now, like in the WWDC session,

00:11:19   they said if your app can, it probably should

00:11:23   have a complication, even just to launch it.

00:11:25   So for example, like having an overcast complication

00:11:28   whose purpose is just to start and adjust playback

00:11:33   makes it a lot more compelling as a thing

00:11:35   where I know for myself one of the most useful,

00:11:38   one of the most common things I'll use my watch for,

00:11:40   beyond just like, it's fitness tracking passively,

00:11:43   when I'm actively using it,

00:11:44   I'm often using it for the now playing complication,

00:11:47   which is now not, or sorry, the now playing glance,

00:11:50   which is now something that you can put in the dock,

00:11:53   but if instead of having to open the dock and go to it,

00:11:57   if I can just tap a button and then immediately,

00:12:00   because it's one of my complications,

00:12:01   so it's primed and ready and fresh,

00:12:04   the Overcast app pops up and I can control playback there.

00:12:08   It's a much more compelling use case,

00:12:10   because I think the thing that was difficult to send,

00:12:13   the old Overcast app, is in order to launch it,

00:12:16   you'd have to go-- you'd tap the crown,

00:12:19   fly around in the honeycomb for a while, tap it,

00:12:22   wait two or three seconds for it to launch, if you're lucky,

00:12:25   and then you'd get to do something.

00:12:27   And that's just not-- that's not better than just pulling out

00:12:31   my phone, swiping up, activating the control center,

00:12:34   and doing whatever I want to do there.

00:12:36   And so I think there's going to be a lot of applications where

00:12:39   if you can-- if there is a two-second action, that would

00:12:44   be useful for your application.

00:12:46   If there's something that a user might want to do that--

00:12:49   and Apple has said this many, many, many times this week.

00:12:53   It's like if you are building an app that someone can't

00:12:57   do its core functionality in two or three seconds,

00:13:01   you're doing it wrong.

00:13:02   they very clearly are saying,

00:13:04   and they've actually been changing a lot of their own apps

00:13:06   to reflect this.

00:13:07   Like the stock app in watchOS 2 had all this information,

00:13:12   and you could be like paging through like the 52 week high

00:13:16   and low and all the stuff that in many ways

00:13:19   is not really, doesn't really fit on a watch.

00:13:22   Like if you wanna go and do historical stock metrics,

00:13:25   like maybe use your phone or Mac or something.

00:13:27   - Use anything else besides this thing,

00:13:29   you have to hold your arm up

00:13:30   and look on a two inch screen to see.

00:13:31   - Exactly.

00:13:32   their watch app they just like they took out functionality and I think that is

00:13:35   something that a lot of if you like I'm trying to filter my apps through as I'm

00:13:40   thinking about them is are there any things that I can strip out to make it

00:13:44   more streamlined to make it more straightforwardly exactly what someone

00:13:50   would want to do in two or three seconds and I think if you can that's a really

00:13:54   strong use case now oh yeah I mean like you know for like for overcast you know

00:13:59   I already had redesigned it once to take it from this mini iPhone app with this tree navigation

00:14:07   that many of us tried initially.

00:14:10   I already redesigned it to take it from that down to what is basically a single screen

00:14:15   with a menu to do a little bit more stuff.

00:14:17   I'm thinking with the watchOS 3 version, whatever I do there, I haven't really sketched

00:14:21   it out yet, but whatever I do there, I'm thinking I might even reduce it even further.

00:14:25   I recently added analytics to my watch app to see, you know, just like how often people

00:14:31   are using it, how often people actually like invoke commands on it, and which ones get

00:14:36   the most use. Like are people actually going in like editing their playlist to edit what's

00:14:40   next which is how I kind of designed that second version and the answer basically is

00:14:44   no. Like nobody's really doing that. It's close enough to zero that it's probably not

00:14:48   even worth having anymore. And so I'm going to completely rethink the app again for OS

00:14:53   and like you know what's what is the what is the best way to use the watch

00:14:58   and I think you're right like and obviously Apple said this anything that

00:15:01   takes more than about two or three seconds like you're you're better off

00:15:04   using your phone for that and so you know it's basically going to be really

00:15:09   nice to have like a basically an advanced now playing screen exactly but

00:15:13   I don't think it needs to be much more than that and and that will also you

00:15:17   know help keep me motivated to keep it updated and and everything else and you

00:15:21   a really important other side of this that goes beyond my single app and talking about

00:15:26   that is that because apps are now on the watch, apps are now going to be good.

00:15:31   At least we think.

00:15:32   It seems like I would say I'm pretty confident at this point that somehow magically Apple

00:15:38   has pulled this rabbit out of a hat of the exact same watch hardware is going to feel

00:15:44   and perform in a really compelling way,

00:15:48   by rather than having to wait until the next hardware.

00:15:51   Which as a developer, I think would have been

00:15:53   really discouraging if I still had to support

00:15:58   what felt like kind of a broken old legacy platform,

00:16:03   and then also be taking advantage of the new stuff

00:16:07   for the people with the new watch.

00:16:09   That would have been a really hard sell.

00:16:10   But I think now it's like everybody who has a watch

00:16:13   is gonna have a good experience.

00:16:14   And presumably this fall, there'll be a better watch

00:16:16   that will be able to do more and be better,

00:16:18   but the baseline is gonna be pretty good,

00:16:22   just for everybody.

00:16:23   - Yeah, and that will help everybody.

00:16:26   That will help users, that will help Apple,

00:16:28   it will sell more watches,

00:16:29   and then it'll definitely help developers,

00:16:30   because the story with watch OS one and two

00:16:34   was basically like, yeah, this watch we have

00:16:37   is kind of cool, but developers,

00:16:38   you basically can't do much with it,

00:16:40   because everything you do sucks.

00:16:41   Like, it's not possible to do anything good on watchOS 1 and 2 for third-party developers

00:16:46   for the most part.

00:16:47   And now it's possible.

00:16:50   And not only possible, but it seems like it might not even be very hard to do stuff that's

00:16:54   useful and decent and worth doing besides just taking your phone out.

00:16:57   And that's huge for developers because now this is a place where we can do business.

00:17:02   This is a place where we can make compelling apps and have real sales here, real business.

00:17:08   I mean, you know, paid and free aside,

00:17:10   you know, for this moment, like,

00:17:12   this is a place where we can make compelling apps now,

00:17:14   and I think probably for the first time we can say that.

00:17:17   - And I, yeah, it's entirely that.

00:17:19   I don't think, like, some of my apps

00:17:22   are entirely watch-focused.

00:17:23   Like, I make an app, you know, like C++,

00:17:25   it's completely useless unless you have a watch.

00:17:28   And so it's entirely dependent on it being

00:17:30   a compelling thing, and the number of times

00:17:32   that I get feedback back from people who don't,

00:17:35   it just like, it just wasn't worth it for them to use.

00:17:37   like they like the concept. They wish they could track their sleep with their watch,

00:17:40   but it's awkward or cumbersome. Or like the last thing they want to do when they're getting

00:17:44   into bed is be like staring at a spinner for four or five seconds. What they're about to

00:17:51   do is like, "I'm tired. I want to go to sleep." They want it to work exactly at that moment.

00:17:56   And so if we can now actually do that, that's a much more compelling use case for somebody.

00:18:01   And I think ultimately we'll keep them in the apps, which, you know, from a business

00:18:05   side of things, that's the thing that makes it more compelling. To be able to talk to

00:18:09   their friends and tell other people about it or be excited about it in general is, it

00:18:14   worked. Like, "Hey, look, this is what I did," and they're not frustrated with it.

00:18:18   It doesn't have this negativity associated with it, which I think it might do now.

00:18:22   Yeah. All right, we are sponsored this week by our friends at Pingdom. Start monitoring

00:18:28   your websites and servers today at pingdom.com/radar. You get a 14-day free trial, and when you

00:18:33   you enter offer code radar at checkout, you get 20% off your first invoice.

00:18:38   Pingdom is focused on making the web faster and more reliable for everyone who has a site

00:18:42   by offering powerful, easy to use monitoring tools and services.

00:18:46   Now if you're a Pingdom user, you can monitor the availability and performance of your server,

00:18:50   database, service, or website and it's all a breeze.

00:18:53   They use more than 70 global test servers that emulate visits to your site, checking

00:18:57   its availability as often as every minute.

00:19:00   You can do basic checks like just see is it up.

00:19:02   You can also do things like, is this string present on the page?

00:19:05   You can have it send cookies and do logins and everything.

00:19:07   It's very advanced.

00:19:08   I've personally used Pingdom since 2007.

00:19:10   You use it too, right Dave?

00:19:11   >> I do, yeah.

00:19:12   I've been using it for a very long time.

00:19:13   >> Yeah, I mean, it's a great service.

00:19:14   We used it since long before they became a sponsor.

00:19:17   And I will not, you know, I have no reason to ever look around for other monitoring services

00:19:21   since 2007 because they're that good.

00:19:23   Look, you know, stuff on the internet breaks all the time.

00:19:26   You need to know, you need to know about it quickly.

00:19:28   Pingdom can alert you like within a minute of stuff going down because the last thing

00:19:32   you want for somebody on Twitter to be telling you, "Hey, by the way, your website's been

00:19:35   down for the last four hours." Like, you don't want to learn about it that way. You want

00:19:38   to learn about it first from Pingdom so you can fix it before it becomes a bigger problem

00:19:42   and before too many people see it. All they need to do is give them a URL, give them an

00:19:47   optional search string, optional conditions, and then tell them how you want it to be alerted.

00:19:50   You can be alerted via text message, push notification, email, all sorts of fun stuff.

00:19:55   It's great. I love Pingdom. Check it out today. Go to Pingdom.com/Radar and use offer code

00:20:01   radar to get 20% off at checkout and you get a 14 day free trial. Thanks a lot to Pingdom

00:20:05   for sponsoring our show.

00:20:07   Now that apps have the ability to both be good and for complications to also be good

00:20:13   and for complications to then launch you right into an app, it seems like this is a really

00:20:17   good opportunity for people to make specialty watches almost. If I want to have an overcast

00:20:25   you know like conceptually like I now have the ability if I wanted to make like a big overcast complication and

00:20:32   Have that take up like a third of the screen on the watch watch face you mean no

00:20:36   I'm talking about like well, I mean, you know, the watch face is a different thing

00:20:39   Sure that I mean that I guess that's how that's how more sane people will do it

00:20:42   And that's probably how Apple wants you to do it

00:20:44   But like for me it's like oh the watch isn't very useful because I don't do you know function X Y or Z on it

00:20:49   Sure, but it's like oh

00:20:50   but if I happen to have like one or two apps

00:20:52   that I really love, I could basically turn the watch

00:20:55   into like a device of that type.

00:20:58   Because if the complication's always there

00:21:02   and the complication API has been improved now

00:21:04   so that you can make more useful complications

00:21:06   that are more functional, that can get updated more

00:21:09   and in different conditions, you have that possibility.

00:21:13   And then if I can tap that and be immediately

00:21:15   in an overcast screen, and then when I look back

00:21:18   at my watch again within eight minutes,

00:21:19   I'm still on that overcast screen.

00:21:21   Like, that to me is very compelling as a user

00:21:24   and as a developer, 'cause there are things that I can make

00:21:27   that before would be way less compelling.

00:21:31   And now, it basically opens up third-party apps

00:21:34   to take over more of the experience

00:21:36   and to be more like a first-class citizen,

00:21:38   which is kind of a theme we saw in a lot of WBC

00:21:42   on all the platforms this year.

00:21:42   But on the watch, I think the difference is most striking.

00:21:46   - Oh, sure, and I think there's definitely a lot of things

00:21:49   they're doing to de-emphasize them, which is, like you said, a pattern we've seen many

00:21:56   times this week, where they're de-prioritizing Apple's stuff at the benefit of third-party

00:22:05   things. So like you said, they're now makingā€”it used to only be if you were a workout app,

00:22:12   would you still be on the screen if the user put their wrist down and raised it a couple

00:22:17   minutes later, which is reasonable in some ways that you could say, "Oh, I want to make

00:22:23   sure they always see the time as a reasonable experience." But it loses the sense of context

00:22:29   that the time that the user is most likely going to want to do something is probably

00:22:36   shortly after they've done it once before. Like in your example, it's the kind of thing

00:22:41   where you can imagine, "I'm doing something. I'm going for a walk. Maybe it isn't that

00:22:47   I want to have a walking workout, necessarily.

00:22:51   Maybe I'm just walking around during my day-to-day life.

00:22:55   But if I'm actively listening to a podcast,

00:22:58   I'm still probably going to be actively listening

00:23:00   to a podcast eight minutes later.

00:23:02   And so having -- every time I raise my wrist,

00:23:06   not even having to do anything to be able to have

00:23:08   that same functionality is great.

00:23:10   And it means that, you know, fair enough,

00:23:12   you have to now be a bit more thoughtful

00:23:15   about how you design your apps,

00:23:16   knowing that they'll be lingering around longer.

00:23:19   I mean, it's in some ways, it reminds me of when Apple changed the behavior of iOS apps

00:23:25   such that when you hit home, you weren't terminated anymore.

00:23:28   >> Right.

00:23:29   >> Like, it used to be one of these--like, I remember this--I'd run into this with some

00:23:32   apps where they weren't doing clever things to clean up between launches.

00:23:38   And so, they were relying on the fact that every time you hit home, the app would be

00:23:42   killed and it'd be restarted.

00:23:45   You have to be thoughtful if your app is now going to be much more long running and persistent

00:23:49   to make sure that you're doing that kind of state management yourself to say, you know,

00:23:55   and there's some good stuff in watchOS for helping with this, but it's understanding

00:23:59   that if a user say was in a detail view of your app, at a certain point, they want to

00:24:04   stay there, like for that initial period if they're going back and forth quickly.

00:24:09   After a little while, they might need to want to be kicked back one level, for example,

00:24:15   And then at a certain point, they'll probably want to go all the way back and be in sort

00:24:19   of the default mode of your application.

00:24:22   And these are things that we can do now, that we can actually be, make those kind of conscious

00:24:26   choices that, like as an example, like in Overcast, right, if I was, if you had some

00:24:31   kind of detailed view and I'm looking at it, and then you know that they've asked that

00:24:35   detailed view, like the episode that they were looking at the information for, they've

00:24:40   since started playing another episode.

00:24:43   Like, it's not relevant to them anymore,

00:24:46   to be looking at the old show, so you probably pop back,

00:24:50   or potentially even start showing the details screen,

00:24:53   be relevant for whatever they're listening to now.

00:24:56   And that's, I think, the thing that over and over again,

00:24:58   as I think of what they're doing here,

00:25:00   is that there is just so much intelligence

00:25:04   that I can actually build into my applications now,

00:25:07   that because I have the ability to be woken up

00:25:10   and be running on this regular basis,

00:25:12   I'm not having to do this kind of crazy. I'm launched and then I need to just like freak

00:25:17   out for three seconds and work out what's going on, where am I, what's the user doing.

00:25:22   It's like, no, I'm just keeping track on an ongoing basis of what they're doing, where

00:25:27   they are, what they have been doing. And I'm able to adapt in a really, with much more

00:25:33   finesse than this kind of, like the worst thing on watchOS 2 is when you'd launch an

00:25:38   app and it would launch and then it would suddenly, like a few seconds later, like radically

00:25:43   change.

00:25:44   Right.

00:25:45   Something big would happen because that's how long it took for the app to realize what

00:25:48   was going on, what was relevant.

00:25:50   Yeah, the stale data like popping out and yeah.

00:25:53   Sure, exactly.

00:25:54   And it's like, or you'd see like, for like a lot of my fitness trackers, you'd see like,

00:25:58   it would show yesterday's data for a while and then when it wakes up, it's like it shows

00:26:04   yesterday's data, yesterday's data, today's data.

00:26:06   Right.

00:26:07   that's just confusing.

00:26:08   Whereas now, it'll be updated probably every,

00:26:12   you know, 15, 20 minutes throughout the day.

00:26:15   And so I won't have that situation

00:26:18   where I'll ever be showing yesterday's data

00:26:19   because at midnight or at worst at 12, 15,

00:26:23   it'll switch over to be showing the new day's data,

00:26:26   which is a much better experience.

00:26:28   - Yeah, yeah, I could not be happier to see this.

00:26:32   And even though I haven't personally

00:26:35   been using the watch myself recently--

00:26:37   - Sorry, I've been wearing two just to offset the balance.

00:26:40   - Exactly, yeah, you totally,

00:26:41   you're holding up for both of us.

00:26:43   Even though I'm not a watch wearer right now,

00:26:47   I think I'm very excited to see this as a developer,

00:26:51   and especially as a developer of a media playback app,

00:26:54   that's one of the things that is compelling

00:26:55   to control on the watch.

00:26:56   Even as a user, like I mentioned,

00:27:00   maybe I'll start wearing the Apple Watch

00:27:02   when I go out for walks, or when I go shopping,

00:27:04   'cause shopping lists are a thing I use,

00:27:06   and doing shopping lists before on the watch was horrible.

00:27:10   And now through all these changes, it'll be way faster,

00:27:13   it'll stay on screen for the eight minutes thing,

00:27:15   like it'll be so much better now.

00:27:17   But I'm looking forward to this.

00:27:20   I'm very encouraged to see that Apple was willing

00:27:23   to change course on a number of these things

00:27:25   so severely really, and were able to make

00:27:29   such seemingly massive improvements without new hardware.

00:27:32   And we're even still in beta one.

00:27:34   this could even get better throughout the summer,

00:27:36   and it probably will.

00:27:37   So this, I'm just very encouraged to see this,

00:27:40   and I'm most looking forward to the changes on WatchOS

00:27:45   as a developer for my future business

00:27:49   and possible future usage of the Apple Watch.

00:27:52   - Exactly, and it's a really nice thing to see

00:27:54   the humility that Apple has in showing that,

00:27:57   of, yeah, we didn't get it quite right,

00:28:00   let's do it again, and I think it shows

00:28:03   a lot of commitment to the platform,

00:28:04   which is encouraging and useful.

00:28:08   - Exactly.

00:28:10   All right, well, that's all the time we have for this week.

00:28:13   We will be continuing in future weeks, as we said,

00:28:15   with some other things from the conference,

00:28:17   and as we learn more with the documentation and everything,

00:28:20   and playing with these new APIs,

00:28:22   and using them not on our primary phones.

00:28:24   Everyone, don't use it on your primary phone.

00:28:26   - No, no, no.

00:28:27   - And don't use it on your primary watch either,

00:28:29   'cause you have to upgrade your primary phone to do it.

00:28:32   So, but you know everybody wear two watches like David here and do it that way if you

00:28:37   want to see it.

00:28:38   It's going to be a fun summer I think.

00:28:40   I'm looking forward to see what we have.

00:28:42   So thank you everybody for listening and we will talk to you next week.

00:28:45   Bye.

00:28:46   [BLANK_AUDIO]