If you want to develop Apple Watch applications, you must overcome these hurdles first

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Apple's Apple Watch smartwatch will be officially released on the 24th of this month. Although consumers may be impatient, app developers are facing a strange challenge. They need to develop apps from scratch on this completely unfamiliar platform, and many people are not sure what consumers really want. So what are the problems developers face in developing Apple Watch apps? Technology website Business Insider recently summarized this.

The Digital Crown is limited and may be overstated

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The digital crown is one of the key features of Apple Watch. It is called a "major breakthrough in the user interface" and is as important as the scroll wheel of the iPod and the multi-touch of the iPhone. However, Kevin, the designer of the Tick application, believes that there is a discrepancy between Apple's publicity and their current evaluation of this mechanism. The lack of trial experience also makes it difficult for them to figure out how to use this control element. "In addition to basic scrolling, the (Apple Watch) SDK does not provide any (other) interaction methods." He said, "We have no idea what it feels like to turn the digital crown."

In addition, although Apple Watch has introduced a new touch screen technology called "Force Touch" that can detect how hard the user presses the screen, the Tick team can only learn how this technology works from media reports.

Developers rely on media coverage and second-hand code

Since the relevant product information is still very limited, developers have to look for other developers' codes on the Internet to understand how the Apple Watch works as a whole. Developer John complained that in order to learn how to write code for this smartwatch, he simply searched for codes uploaded by other developers in Github.

In terms of user experience, developers rely heavily on the trial experience written by reporters who have tried the Apple Watch at the press conference.

Troubleshooting is even more difficult

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In order to improve their own applications, developers need to conduct a lot of testing before officially releasing their works to find and fix the possible vulnerabilities. Currently, they can only use the Apple Watch "simulator" provided by Apple to achieve this. But no application is perfect, and Apple's own applications are no exception. "When a vulnerability is found, we have to figure out whether it exists in our application or is a problem with the simulator itself," said Alban Brooke, president of Tick.

Only digital models can be used

Since there is no real device to test, developers can only come up with other ways to figure out how their apps run on the "wrist". A third-party application called Bezel can connect to the Apple Watch simulator, allowing developers to add custom frames and straps. By using this application, developers can also observe how their apps run on different models of Apple Watch.

Limited functionality

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Developers have previously pointed out that Apple has significantly limited the functions of the Apple Watch in order to improve battery life, including a large number of key functions such as heart rate sensors and gyroscopes.

Tick's team also encountered this problem, especially in interface animation. "The software and applications displayed by Apple are very beautifully designed, and the animation effects are also very elegant," Kevin said, "which also surprised us when we found that the animation effects in the SDK are severely limited." Alban also mentioned that there are a large number of application functions that are not open to developers.

According to them, the Apple Watch application interface only has two display modes: "hierarchical view" and "page view", and the interface transition effect that combines these two modes that we have seen in simulations and videos is actually impossible to achieve.

Purpose is unclear

Before its release, there was no "killer app" that could define how ordinary users would use the Apple Watch, and this was also a question that developers had been thinking about repeatedly.

Summary: “It’s like solving a puzzle”

Of course, these problems will not last forever. As Apple Watch is released globally, developers' application development work will become simpler and more efficient.

Kevin also said that the initial development experience was indeed frustrating, and their challenge was to understand these limitations and why they existed. "It's like solving a puzzle," he said. "To make real progress, you have to define the overall framework. After that, you have the opportunity to use your creativity and think about concepts that are really meaningful."

“It’s an interesting challenge.”