Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment. And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes,

00:00:08 ◼   ► so let's get started. So today, I think what we

00:00:12 ◼   ► wanted to dive into and talk a bit about is the sort of state

00:00:16 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch as an app platform. And we're going to

00:00:20 ◼   ► talk a little bit about my own experience recently doing a lot of watchOS work.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Essentially the last quarter of 2015, all I did was

00:00:28 ◼   ► is work on watch apps.

00:00:29 ◼   ► A little bit of my experience there,

00:00:32 ◼   ► and then also kind of looking forward

00:00:34 ◼   ► to what we think could make the Apple Watch

00:00:37 ◼   ► a better platform than it is today

00:00:39 ◼   ► for apps and app developers.

00:00:40 ◼   ► My big app that I launched last year was Sleep++,

00:00:45 ◼   ► which is a watch app.

00:00:46 ◼   ► We're not gonna talk too much about it,

00:00:47 ◼   ► but it was all about the watch.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's a sleep tracker, a motion tracker.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And then after I got that out the door,

00:00:53 ◼   ► I spent a lot of time working on Podometer++

00:00:55 ◼   ► Apple Watch, which was--

00:00:57 ◼   ► Pedometer++ is a step counter sort of fitness tracker

00:01:00 ◼   ► that had mostly been on the phones for a long time.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I had originally done a watchOS One app for it,

00:01:08 ◼   ► but it was very limited because at that time,

00:01:12 ◼   ► watchOS One apps entirely ran on the phone,

00:01:15 ◼   ► and so there was no way to get the watch's data actually

00:01:20 ◼   ► be displayed on the watch, which is a little bit weird.

00:01:22 ◼   ► So if you wore the watch all day long,

00:01:25 ◼   ► and then you start the watch app,

00:01:28 ◼   ► it would only be showing you data from your phone's

00:01:30 ◼   ► activity, which was weird.

00:01:32 ◼   ► WatchOS 2, I could finally fix that.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And so I spent what I thought would be a few weeks,

00:01:36 ◼   ► turned out to be a few months, getting the data sync

00:01:39 ◼   ► portion of that together so that the watch app now displays

00:01:42 ◼   ► this merged set of data between the watch and the phone.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And that took a lot longer than I think mostly because sync,

00:01:51 ◼   ► as I was always like, sync is hard.

00:01:53 ◼   ► There's a lot of really complicated things here,

00:01:55 ◼   ► and it's not even like regular user data sync

00:01:58 ◼   ► where there's some basic rules about it.

00:01:59 ◼   ► It's just like, I have to analyze your activity

00:02:04 ◼   ► through the day and work out what number to show

00:02:08 ◼   ► for your step count as you go through it.

00:02:09 ◼   ► But I got through all that and shipped the app

00:02:13 ◼   ► middle of December in 2015.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And one thing that I did that I was very glad I did

00:02:20 ◼   ► is I included a bunch of little analytics

00:02:22 ◼   ► about the watch app's use,

00:02:25 ◼   ► because I wanted to see how it's actually being used

00:02:30 ◼   ► in practice.

00:02:31 ◼   ► And initially when I launched,

00:02:34 ◼   ► it looked like something right around 11% of people

00:02:39 ◼   ► who were using Pedometer++ had Apple Watches.

00:02:43 ◼   ► - That's pretty good.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is pretty good.

00:02:45 ◼   ► It's better than I thought it was.

00:02:46 ◼   ► I was expecting the number probably to be like four or five,

00:02:49 ◼   ► maybe. So 11 is pretty good. And after Christmas, it's now up to about 13.5% of Pedometer++

00:02:57 ◼   ► users have an Apple Watch paired. It's kind of interesting. It's building something

00:03:03 ◼   ► for a relatively narrow group of my users, but I think was still valuable to do. And

00:03:11 ◼   ► hopefully that percentage will grow over time. And of course it's funny, of the 13.5%

00:03:17 ◼   ► people who have watches, something like 80% of them have the watch app installed, and

00:03:22 ◼   ► then 20% of them are using the complication, which is probably the most—like, from my

00:03:27 ◼   ► perspective, the coolest part of the app was the complication, so you can see your step

00:03:31 ◼   ► counts grow, but only 20% of people who have watches use it, which is something like 2%

00:03:37 ◼   ► overall. So that's a bit mixed, but that's sort of the way these things go, I think.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that part is interesting.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I mean, we could talk about how do you decide

00:03:49 ◼   ► whether to do a feature like this

00:03:52 ◼   ► that's gonna require tons and tons of work,

00:03:55 ◼   ► 'cause you're really building this whole thing from scratch,

00:03:57 ◼   ► really, on this different platform and everything,

00:03:59 ◼   ► and then it ends up that 2% of your user base

00:04:02 ◼   ► will ever use it.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Is that worth doing, or when is it worth doing?

00:04:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I've definitely gone through several phases

00:04:11 ◼   ► with this, where when I first saw that number, I was crying inside. It took so much time.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I love it. I use it all the time. I think it's a great feature. In some ways, I can

00:04:26 ◼   ► remind myself that if it's a feature that I personally use and it takes some time to

00:04:30 ◼   ► build, at least I'll use it. I'll enjoy it. And these things will get better over time.

00:04:36 ◼   ► But if I'd known that number up front, I'm not sure it would have been as easy to justify

00:04:43 ◼   ► development on this.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Because overall, I wouldn't say adding watch support to the app has had a significant impact

00:04:51 ◼   ► in its sales.

00:04:53 ◼   ► There's a very small bump in sales when I release the update, just as you normally get

00:04:58 ◼   ► from little press outlets picking it up, or it's slightly noteworthy.

00:05:05 ◼   ► But beyond that, the app wasn't featured, which kind of surprised me.

00:05:08 ◼   ► Which is a weird thing to say.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I don't want to be like, "Oh, they should have featured me."

00:05:11 ◼   ► But because, as far as I can tell, so little work is being done in terms of new apps on

00:05:16 ◼   ► the watch, I was kind of more hopeful than I would normally get my hopes up for, for

00:05:20 ◼   ► getting featured, and that didn't happen.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So from a sales perspective, it didn't really add too much.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And so when I look at it, it's like, I'm glad I did it, but mostly not for right now.

00:05:33 ◼   ► I think it's more important as a keeping the app relevant, keeping the app current, and

00:05:42 ◼   ► not creating a big gap between where the state of the art would be and where the app is.

00:05:50 ◼   ► That's a good and important thing, because Pedometer++ is my biggest earning app, and

00:05:55 ◼   ► so it's important to me that it's well taken care of.

00:05:59 ◼   ► But the actual details, and when you see things, it's like, yeah, a pretty small percentage

00:06:02 ◼   ► of people are actually using it, it's a hard thing to say.

00:06:06 ◼   ► - That's interesting, I mean, and I wonder how much of it

00:06:09 ◼   ► is, like, even being featured and having this kind of,

00:06:12 ◼   ► like, you know, any kind of app store prominence,

00:06:16 ◼   ► I wonder what the value of being featured really is

00:06:18 ◼   ► for watch apps, because not only, of course,

00:06:21 ◼   ► do fewer people have Apple Watches,

00:06:23 ◼   ► which would be a separate issue, but even as somebody

00:06:26 ◼   ► who's used an Apple Watch for like, you know,

00:06:30 ◼   ► seven or eight months or however long it's been,

00:06:33 ◼   ► I never browse the App Store for new watch apps.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And I wonder, just the pattern of using the watch

00:06:39 ◼   ► and being a watch owner, how often do you go

00:06:42 ◼   ► browsing the App Store for new watch apps,

00:06:44 ◼   ► compared to how often you go for the phone.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Like in the phone, you launch the App Store app,

00:06:48 ◼   ► and if you're kinda bored or looking for new stuff,

00:06:50 ◼   ► you launch the App Store, you browse around,

00:06:51 ◼   ► you see what's featured, you see the top lists.

00:06:54 ◼   ► On the watch, I mean, as an Apple Watch user,

00:06:57 ◼   ► How often do you open the watch app store, if ever?

00:07:01 ◼   ► Is there, I mean, I guess you launched a companion app

00:07:04 ◼   ► and you can go in there and browse the apps there,

00:07:06 ◼   ► but does anybody actually do that?

00:07:08 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Like, it's, it's like people are definitely finding

00:07:13 ◼   ► the apps somewhere, 'cause like,

00:07:14 ◼   ► Sleepless Plus is only a watch app.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Like, without an Apple Watch, it's completely useless.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And it's had a pretty strong uptick

00:07:22 ◼   ► in terms of people finding it.

00:07:23 ◼   ► So I don't know exactly where they're finding it from.

00:07:25 ◼   ► I don't know if it's word of mouth,

00:07:27 ◼   ► if it's just people finding it online or whatever,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but they're definitely finding it somewhere.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Mostly, when I go into the companion app

00:07:36 ◼   ► and it has the two tabs where I think you can search

00:07:38 ◼   ► and there's a featured area there,

00:07:41 ◼   ► I go in there mostly just to kind of see

00:07:44 ◼   ► if there's anything new and interesting,

00:07:46 ◼   ► but not as much for myself.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And there is certainly some aspect to it

00:07:50 ◼   ► that the nature of the watch and the way

00:07:52 ◼   ► that it's kind of more of a glancing interaction model

00:07:56 ◼   ► you're not going to be just sitting down and if you're bored browsing around on things

00:08:02 ◼   ► or with your phone, if you're bored, you have some time, you're on a train or something,

00:08:06 ◼   ► you're going to spend a lot of time, you could quite easily be like, "Oh, let me go see if

00:08:09 ◼   ► there's a new game," or something new and interesting to go, or look on the internet

00:08:13 ◼   ► and read Reddit or RSS or Twitter or Slack or whatever it is.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Whereas on the watch, once you have your use case that you are comfortable with, whatever

00:08:24 ◼   ► it's doing. And so for this case, it's like, unless you're really looking to, "How

00:08:29 ◼   ► could I make my watch a better fitness tracker for me beyond the built-in activity app,"

00:08:35 ◼   ► for example, I don't know if you're really going to go looking for that in the same way,

00:08:40 ◼   ► because there's no app store on the watch itself. There's no little watch icon that

00:08:44 ◼   ► you go to the Honeycomb screen and then hit app store and it shows you a bunch of apps.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I think it's probably for the best. I'm not sure if that would actually be a good

00:08:52 ◼   ► interaction but with the lack of that like I don't know how you would find

00:08:57 ◼   ► good watch apps other than just going to the companion app which is a really odd

00:09:01 ◼   ► place to go anyway because it's not part of the App Store like in some ways it

00:09:06 ◼   ► seems like it should be in the App Store like you could replace that middle was

00:09:11 ◼   ► it the what's it now the explore tab the one that's changed like 10 times it's

00:09:15 ◼   ► like if if you have a watch it should be like maybe that should be like you know

00:09:19 ◼   ► a watch or tvOS or all these other secondary platforms that are harder to find apps for.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Maybe it should be fine there.

00:09:28 ◼   ► But yeah, I don't know.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It's a weird thing to think how people actually find watch apps these days.

00:09:34 ◼   ► I really don't know.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I mean, to some degree, the value of having a watch app is political with Apple in the

00:09:41 ◼   ► sense that Apple is more likely to promote apps that take better advantage of all their

00:09:46 ◼   ► platforms and all their features.

00:09:48 ◼   ► So Apple is probably happier to promote an iOS app

00:09:52 ◼   ► that has a nice companion watch app

00:09:55 ◼   ► than they would be to promote a similar iOS app

00:09:57 ◼   ► that has no watch app.

00:09:59 ◼   ► And so in some ways, the reason to have a watch app

00:10:03 ◼   ► and to take advantage of new watch features

00:10:06 ◼   ► is to increase the likelihood of Apple

00:10:08 ◼   ► featuring your iPhone app.

00:10:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:10:11 ◼   ► But that doesn't really help you

00:10:13 ◼   ► if you're trying to figure out how much time

00:10:16 ◼   ► to put into your Apple Watch app

00:10:17 ◼   ► and how to make it more useful.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And I wonder, I mean, I was kind of expecting,

00:10:22 ◼   ► you mentioned that the percentage of pedometer++ users

00:10:26 ◼   ► with the Apple Watch before and after Christmas

00:10:29 ◼   ► did increase, but it didn't increase

00:10:31 ◼   ► as much as I would've expected.

00:10:32 ◼   ► You said it went from like 11 to about 13%, is that right?

00:10:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it went up 2 1/2% from 11 to 13 1/2.

00:10:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that, I would've expected

00:10:40 ◼   ► a bigger jump from that, honestly.

00:10:42 ◼   ► And I've heard from a few people here and there,

00:10:45 ◼   ► I've picked up a few other little tidbits of app sales

00:10:49 ◼   ► for watch people, and almost all of them

00:10:51 ◼   ► reportedly noticeable jump on Christmas Day

00:10:54 ◼   ► and the day after, compared to what it was previously.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So I think it's clear that there are a lot of watches

00:10:59 ◼   ► out there, and that there are a lot that were given

00:11:02 ◼   ► as gifts for Christmas this year.

00:11:03 ◼   ► But I would have expected the jump to be bigger.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And so in terms of absolute numbers here,

00:11:11 ◼   ► I mean obviously nothing's gonna be as big

00:11:13 ◼   ► the iPhone install base on day one, or even in year one, or even in year five for that

00:11:17 ◼   ► matter. But I wonder, are there enough watch owners out there to make this worth doing

00:11:25 ◼   ► yet?

00:11:26 ◼   ► Maybe the best thing to answer to that is I can't think of anyone who I'm aware of who

00:11:32 ◼   ► has had a runaway success on the watch. With most of the new platforms, I mean, we have

00:11:38 ◼   ► a little bit of this problem on the TV as well, but with the iPhone and certainly with

00:11:43 ◼   ► the iPad. There were stories of people who put a lot of time and effort, really made

00:11:48 ◼   ► a good app, and there was enough uptick on the customer side and a strong enough financial

00:11:55 ◼   ► part of that, that it was like, "Wow, they have the overnight success." And I'm not aware

00:12:01 ◼   ► of that on the watch at this point. So I think it's a good thing to do in terms of if you

00:12:08 ◼   ► want to build a fully featured robust, fully rounded app, part of that bar now probably

00:12:16 ◼   ► includes a watch app. But I'm not sure if there's a strong direct incentive for it,

00:12:22 ◼   ► that if you build a watch app, your app will be more successful. It's a bit more soft than

00:12:29 ◼   ► that. And if anything, honestly, for me, part of why I got into watch apps is it was an

00:12:35 ◼   ► area that I think is growing, I don't think it has grown yet. And so part of me was like,

00:12:42 ◼   ► I just want to be an expert at this platform that I think in two or three years, which

00:12:49 ◼   ► is a bit of a long game to be playing, but like in several years will be more increasingly

00:12:55 ◼   ► relevant. I'd rather be an expert on it. Like the only way you can have, you know, five

00:13:01 ◼   ► years experience in five years is to have started now. And I didn't want to

00:13:05 ◼   ► describe it so like you know it's the old joke when you people who want like

00:13:08 ◼   ► eight years Swift experience now or something like it's like well you can't

00:13:12 ◼   ► really do that but if you start on day one at the very least you can have as

00:13:16 ◼   ► most than the most that you can and so like since watch OS or watch kit back

00:13:20 ◼   ► then watch kit one was out like it's just something that I think is important

00:13:25 ◼   ► from my fur like I think that I enjoy and it's an important for my business

00:13:28 ◼   ► down the road to continue to be good at.

00:13:31 ◼   ► But in the, like in the here and now,

00:13:34 ◼   ► it's a much squishier, like, it's like maybe it's good,

00:13:37 ◼   ► maybe it'll increase slightly the chance

00:13:39 ◼   ► that someone will download it or that Apple will feature it

00:13:43 ◼   ► or something like that, but it's not a direct,

00:13:47 ◼   ► like, cause and effect, like this will help make your app

00:13:49 ◼   ► more successful, I think, at this point anyway.

00:13:52 ◼   ► - I think though it is, you know,

00:13:53 ◼   ► making it more likely that Apple will feature it,

00:13:56 ◼   ► And I think it also plays into,

00:13:59 ◼   ► like for the chance of your iOS app succeeding,

00:14:00 ◼   ► it also plays into like,

00:14:02 ◼   ► first of all, the people who have watches,

00:14:04 ◼   ► even though it's a small percentage of iPhone users,

00:14:07 ◼   ► it's not a random percentage, it isn't a random subset.

00:14:09 ◼   ► It is like, it is kind of like the early adopters,

00:14:14 ◼   ► the people who are willing to spend,

00:14:15 ◼   ► who wouldn't spend more money probably,

00:14:16 ◼   ► and able to spend more money.

00:14:17 ◼   ► So like, it is a market that I think is,

00:14:21 ◼   ► has outsized relevance compared to its actual numbers.

00:14:24 ◼   ► And also, it can be used as a feature comparison.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So like, if I'm looking at two different

00:14:30 ◼   ► pedometer apps in the app store,

00:14:31 ◼   ► and I have an Apple Watch,

00:14:33 ◼   ► and one of them has a Watch app and one doesn't,

00:14:36 ◼   ► then even if I don't intend to use that Watch app,

00:14:39 ◼   ► or even if I think I'll use it,

00:14:40 ◼   ► and in reality never would,

00:14:41 ◼   ► and therefore wouldn't show up in those numbers,

00:14:43 ◼   ► I think I'm more likely to pick the one with the Watch app

00:14:46 ◼   ► because, you know, it's like people who buy

00:14:50 ◼   ► like a giant SUV because they might

00:14:52 ◼   ► someday go off-road with it.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And even if they never do, which most never do,

00:14:57 ◼   ► that is a selling point to them up front,

00:14:59 ◼   ► where they might choose, so people might choose your app

00:15:03 ◼   ► even if they have no plans to ever use the watch app.

00:15:07 ◼   ► They might choose your app simply because it has a watch app

00:15:09 ◼   ► over someone else's that doesn't.

00:15:11 ◼   ► So there is more value to it, I think,

00:15:14 ◼   ► up front for an iOS app, but that argument becomes

00:15:17 ◼   ► less relevant when you're talking about apps that run only

00:15:20 ◼   ► or primarily on the watch, like Sleep++,

00:15:22 ◼   ► like apps where the iPhone app is basically non-existent

00:15:26 ◼   ► or unimportant.

00:15:27 ◼   ► I think it's hard to argue today

00:15:32 ◼   ► for spending a ton of time with a watch app.

00:15:33 ◼   ► It's easy to argue for having a watch app

00:15:37 ◼   ► for your existing iOS app if it's relevant to have one,

00:15:42 ◼   ► but it's harder to argue for spending

00:15:44 ◼   ► a whole lot of time on it.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:15:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:15:48 ◼   ► And it's also probably keeping in mind

00:15:50 ◼   ► that a really good watch app is by its nature very simple.

00:15:55 ◼   ► And so on the, like one thing that if it's like,

00:16:02 ◼   ► it's important to make sure that you don't think

00:16:04 ◼   ► of a watch app as a fully fledged,

00:16:07 ◼   ► like really complicated, sophisticated thing.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Like it's for it to do well,

00:16:11 ◼   ► it should really only probably have like one or two actions

00:16:15 ◼   ► that you can take or like what, like sleep plus plus,

00:16:18 ◼   ► for example, has one button in the entire app, and that's it.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And I think that works well for it, because all it does is you say, "I'm going to sleep.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I'm waking up from sleep."

00:16:28 ◼   ► And it's just a toggle button on and off.

00:16:31 ◼   ► And pedometer++ is the only—from an action perspective, it's the same thing.

00:16:36 ◼   ► You can say, "I'm going for a walk," and it'll start a workout where it tracks your

00:16:40 ◼   ► heart rate and all kinds of other stuff, and then you get to the end of your workout and

00:16:43 ◼   ► you hit stop.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And so it's nice in that sense of having a basic watch app is a good thing, rather than

00:16:51 ◼   ► being a detriment, it's actually probably a plus.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And so trying to hit that basic level is easier than it would be if you compared it to having

00:17:01 ◼   ► an iPad app, making your app universal.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Having an iPad app that is useful and fits on the platform is probably a lot more work

00:17:11 ◼   ► than a watch app.

00:17:12 ◼   ► So if you're looking for something to like

00:17:14 ◼   ► extend out your app a little bit,

00:17:15 ◼   ► like you've got that basic feature set locked down

00:17:17 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, how could I make,

00:17:20 ◼   ► like add that little like 5% boost?

00:17:22 ◼   ► Like you might be easier to add it on the watch

00:17:24 ◼   ► than it would be to like go to the iPad

00:17:27 ◼   ► or a platform like that,

00:17:28 ◼   ► that it just would require a lot more of you.

00:17:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:17:31 ◼   ► All right, this episode of Under the Radar

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00:19:23 ◼   ► So I wanted to spend the second half of this now, you know we talked in the first half

00:19:27 ◼   ► about the Apple Watch, kind of the reality of being an Apple Watch developer today from

00:19:33 ◼   ► your perspective, and you really are one of the world's most prominent Apple Watch developers,

00:19:38 ◼   ► honestly. The Apple Watch today, I think we've figured out, is not a great app development

00:19:45 ◼   ► platform yet. What do you think could make it a great app development platform?

00:19:51 ◼   ► There's two aspects to that. There's the hardware side and the software side. And on the hardware

00:19:57 ◼   ► side, obviously the watch will get better and better and better, and the more it gets

00:20:02 ◼   ► better, the more capable it will be. There will be more things that it will be able to

00:20:08 ◼   ► do. Because as it is right now, the watch is pretty slow, it doesn't have a lot of memory.

00:20:15 ◼   ► As a result, some of the way the apps are structured has to be kind of funny and different

00:20:19 ◼   ► than what you might like. And those types of things will just come. And when I look

00:20:25 ◼   ► at those, I'm less worried about the choices Apple will make there. Because I imagine,

00:20:30 ◼   ► by Moore's law and their history.

00:20:33 ◼   ► It'll keep getting faster, better,

00:20:36 ◼   ► have longer battery life.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Battery life is a big one, I think, for me,

00:20:40 ◼   ► 'cause one of the hardest things I have for C++

00:20:43 ◼   ► is telling people, oh, you wear it overnight

00:20:46 ◼   ► so you don't charge it overnight.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Things like that are way much easier sells

00:20:50 ◼   ► if the watch had, I don't even know, a week's battery,

00:20:54 ◼   ► just to be able to run all the time or things like that.

00:20:56 ◼   ► and hopefully over time also,

00:20:59 ◼   ► as the hardware gets better and it's more compelling

00:21:01 ◼   ► and it's been out for longer,

00:21:02 ◼   ► there'll be a bigger, more people with it,

00:21:05 ◼   ► and that's a helpful thing from a marketing perspective.

00:21:09 ◼   ► But I think the biggest and more interesting things

00:21:11 ◼   ► are assuming that basic level of the hardware each year

00:21:15 ◼   ► will get better.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And the Apple Watch that we have now

00:21:21 ◼   ► is fairly old in so far as they announced it,

00:21:25 ◼   ► what is it, September of 2014?

00:21:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a year and change old already.

00:21:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, because obviously it didn't ship

00:21:34 ◼   ► until April 2015, but the hardware,

00:21:38 ◼   ► from at least what they were showing

00:21:40 ◼   ► and what its feature set was and how capable it was,

00:21:43 ◼   ► was locked down way back then.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And so I'm hopeful the next one, which who knows,

00:21:49 ◼   ► maybe it'll come out in the spring,

00:21:51 ◼   ► I think seems to be where the most,

00:21:53 ◼   ► sort of the best, even the best money right now would be like sometime in spring there'll

00:21:56 ◼   ► be a new one. Like, it could have a larger than like a one-year performance gain. So

00:22:02 ◼   ► like, assuming those, like that'd be great. I really hope that we see a lot of changes

00:22:08 ◼   ► around just making it more capable, which is a weird thing to say, but like, things

00:22:12 ◼   ► like complications, for example, which I think are, are like the watch face in general. Like,

00:22:17 ◼   ► Most in my own personal use, almost all of my use happens on that watch face.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I would love to see that just get better and better and better.

00:22:28 ◼   ► The way it's structured now is very much designed around battery life.

00:22:33 ◼   ► The watch face is only visible when you flip your wrist up, for example, which is frustrating

00:22:40 ◼   ► sometimes.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Obviously I know you can't have it on all the time, but even having something there

00:22:45 ◼   ► more persistently or being able to be more aggressive about lighting up the screen. Things

00:22:50 ◼   ► like that could be really helpful. And as a result, complications don't update very

00:22:55 ◼   ► frequently, which I think from my own tests, you can update a complication at most maybe

00:23:01 ◼   ► about 40 times a day.

00:23:05 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:23:06 ◼   ► Like, for pedometers, I note that the most because the data is real time, so every time

00:23:15 ◼   ► you take a step, your step count goes up by one, but I can only update the complication,

00:23:20 ◼   ► whatever, like 40-ish times a day, maybe about every half hour, say. And I'd love to see that

00:23:27 ◼   ► get better, to be more frequent, to be more semi-real time. Obviously, there's timing things.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Part of why Apple has the complications structured such that you send data and it's baked in for a

00:23:41 ◼   ► particular period of time is so that it's instantaneous when you raise your wrist, the

00:23:45 ◼   ► data's already there, rather than like raising your wrist and then loading the data. Like

00:23:50 ◼   ► that's fair enough, but making that much more frequent.

00:23:54 ◼   ► And that's kind of how like the entire watchOS has kind of developed that way. It kind of

00:23:59 ◼   ► feels like the old Mac OS X dashboard, where like everything is kind of in the state of

00:24:04 ◼   ► suspended animation until you go and look at it, at which point you see old data, and

00:24:09 ◼   ► And then a few seconds later, new data flashes in.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Or you go in and you see nothing, and then a few seconds later, new data.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So it's like, either way, I don't love that as a user or a developer, and I recognize

00:24:21 ◼   ► why they have to do it, because it does save a whole lot of power, and this is really a

00:24:26 ◼   ► very power and especially CPU constrained device and memory, so they can't keep all

00:24:34 ◼   ► this stuff in memory, they can't keep refreshing it constantly.

00:24:38 ◼   ► But over time, I hope they can with hardware improvements because the idea of having to

00:24:45 ◼   ► go to a glance and then wait a second or two for it to update and then seeing new stuff

00:24:49 ◼   ► pop in, it's clunky.

00:24:51 ◼   ► And it's better than nothing.

00:24:53 ◼   ► So if that's what they had to do to get this product out the door this year with today's

00:24:56 ◼   ► technology, that's great.

00:24:58 ◼   ► I'd rather have it than not have it.

00:25:00 ◼   ► But it is really clunky.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And so once it becomes possible to have basically real-time updates and to have things always

00:25:08 ◼   ► be running and being updated on a much more frequent basis, I hope they choose to take

00:25:15 ◼   ► advantage of that and to allow that rather than to just kind of bank the power savings

00:25:21 ◼   ► and keep making this thing thinner, or something like that.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Because it would totally transform the usefulness of apps and using apps on this platform if

00:25:31 ◼   ► if we could have things be refreshed more frequently and have things be more real-time.

00:25:35 ◼   ► >>

00:25:38 ◼   ► And there's certainly a limit to it. In the positive way that I think Apple could probably

00:25:40 ◼   ► get there is, there's obviously, it doesn't have to be like, update every 30 seconds.

00:25:46 ◼   ► There's probably some functional limit that below which, like, once they're, if they can

00:25:50 ◼   ► get, rather than being updated every 30 minutes, if I could update every, I don't know, five

00:25:56 ◼   ► minutes, three minutes. At a certain point, it's good enough, and that kind of an improvement

00:26:02 ◼   ► makes me more hopeful that we'll get there, because the battery life improvement that

00:26:08 ◼   ► you would imagine you'd have to have to compress it just that much is more likely than if it

00:26:17 ◼   ► was something where you have a constantly running socket connection from your watch,

00:26:22 ◼   ► is probably not realistic,

00:26:25 ◼   ► but hopefully we can get something like that.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And then also I just hope that we can do so much,

00:26:31 ◼   ► I can't wait that we can do custom watch faces

00:26:34 ◼   ► is something that I would love to see as well.

00:26:37 ◼   ► - See that, I would love custom watch faces,

00:26:39 ◼   ► but I'm not sure they'll ever actually offer it.

00:26:41 ◼   ► That is not a given that Apple will ever allow that,

00:26:45 ◼   ► but I would love that.

00:26:47 ◼   ► That would get me very interested in watch development

00:26:50 ◼   ► if I could make my own face for it. And right now, all the faces and all the complications,

00:26:56 ◼   ► they all have pretty annoying limitations and pretty big limitations or shortcomings

00:27:01 ◼   ► in my opinion or just differences of opinion of how I would do things. And it's kind

00:27:06 ◼   ► of a baseline level of frustration I have with the watch.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Third party faces, I think, are a really big challenge for Apple to enable in a way that

00:27:15 ◼   ► is compatible with power goals and everything else, and security goals and just branding

00:27:22 ◼   ► and consistency goals. It is challenging for them to offer that, but I think the benefits

00:27:27 ◼   ► of offering that would transform the watch as a platform so much that I think that's

00:27:32 ◼   ► a challenge they should undertake, and I think that's a line they should cross. Whether they

00:27:36 ◼   ► will is a very different story, and honestly, I'm not that hopeful.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Sure, I mean even if it was like like it's part of me is like if we don't get custom watch faces at least I want

00:27:44 ◼   ► like

00:27:45 ◼   ► more

00:27:47 ◼   ► like if

00:27:48 ◼   ► Apple wants to make all of them then they need to make more than they have now in terms of like the only one that

00:27:53 ◼   ► Like you have the modular face, which is like it's like the kits like the Swiss Army knife

00:27:58 ◼   ► Face, but what if I want something like sort of in between that like I think for me

00:28:04 ◼   ► What I would love is a watch face. That was big time on

00:28:08 ◼   ► for like two thirds of the display,

00:28:11 ◼   ► and then the three modular complications on the bottom.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Like I think for me that's what I would love,

00:28:16 ◼   ► but such a thing doesn't exist.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Like the time is always the small thing

00:28:20 ◼   ► in the top right corner, and like,

00:28:22 ◼   ► so if they don't give them to us as custom developers,

00:28:24 ◼   ► at least they could give us thousands more,

00:28:26 ◼   ► and dozens more, and then I think I'd be a lot happier.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, but see there's always, it's like the 80% problem,

00:28:32 ◼   ► there's always gonna be something about

00:28:34 ◼   ► whatever they offer us in the built-in faces

00:28:36 ◼   ► that isn't what we would actually want,

00:28:38 ◼   ► and they're going to be blind to certain things or there's

00:28:41 ◼   ► going to be things they would never do that there is a strong

00:28:44 ◼   ► market for that. If a third party developer did it, it

00:28:48 ◼   ► could really, you know, expand the platform and make it more

00:28:50 ◼   ► useful for people and and reach into new ideas and new markets

00:28:53 ◼   ► that Apple didn't or wouldn't consider. And I think third

00:28:57 ◼   ► party watch faces are like that is the software unicorn for me

00:29:01 ◼   ► on this platform. Like I don't know if Apple will ever do it.

00:29:04 ◼   ► As I said, I would bet against it honestly, but if they ever

00:29:08 ◼   ► do, I'd be very excited about that.

00:29:10 ◼   ► >> And I think that's a good place to stop, but I think we'll see.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Hopefully in the next couple weeks or a couple months we'll have some more information from

00:29:17 ◼   ► Apple on this and then hopefully we'll be pleasantly surprised.

00:29:20 ◼   ► >> Yeah, this is a product that I really look forward to wherever it is two to five years

00:29:25 ◼   ► from now.

00:29:27 ◼   ► And I hope in the meantime we can get some good use out of it as well.

00:29:31 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to our sponsor Igloo.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Thanks to everyone for listening, and we will talk to you next week.

00:29:36 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]