Steve Troughton-SmithVerified account

It’s about time the Watch stops being a tamagotchi for iPhone and becomes its own thing.

Actually if it was a real Tamagotchi they’d probably sell even more of them

If the new watch calculator does things I can’t do in PCalc, I’m going to be upset… I’m already building custom UIKit-like controls on top of WatchKit, which is a bit silly.

Oh, I’m sure. Maybe this year will be the one! (it won’t be).

As a Watch developer, I sadly have to agree. So painful to even do something simple. I wanted to show toast messages on a HomeKit scene being run, not possible currently as I’m stuck using basic components. Even HomeRun’s grid was difficult to do well.

As with any OS, you have to stick with what the system does well and easily, and don’t do the other stuff. Life is too short. I’m not looking for programming challenges.

Sadly that’s how a platform stagnates. Someone has to be willing to try and push the boundaries at the end of the day.

I hear you but the solution is for Apple to reboot the Watch OS. (I’ve done plenty of boundary pushing but at a certain point, ya know....)

They don’t need to reboot the OS. Just the developer tools. Give us the same tools they use for their own apps. They don’t even dog food WatchKit themselves.

Probably because their idea down the line was to have "exclusive" watch faces that they'd sell via the app store. Open source and free? In my Apple Garden? Don't think so.

The moment you allow third-party watch faces to the AppStore is going to be filled with poorly made Rolex-esque mockups. That's what happened with Google's platform, Tizen, etc. They just can't afford it, otherwise they'd have to impose ever stricter review process on them.

Apple shouldn't be the fashion police. Watch faces are just glorified wallpapers in the end. I agree that there is a ton of garbage, but they should either curate the store or not. Not allowing building what people want to, and then whining that no one is building... Yea

Apple is certainly going to be the fashion police about their most fashionable device and it makes sense. I also don't see them whining a lot about it and all the necessary apps are already on Watch — not sure what else people want to do with it.

You can already set any image you like as a watch background with no review process. So it’s not exacvtly like tehy’re being defenders of fashion right now. If anything, by blocking properly made custom watch faces they’re puttingg a *CAP* on the quality - not protecting quality

As for "all the necessary apps are already on Watch” You could have said that years ago at the advent of smart phones - what else did a phone need to do? New ideas and new needs emerge, and people find use cases that hadn’t been thought of before - why stifle innovation?

Custom watches are like custom themes for OS — the mainstream solutions don't really have them because they are mostly bad.