A new report for Reuters says that app makers are struggling to come up with the kind of “killer app” that will be a winner for the Apple Watch in the way that Instagram or, more recently, Snapchat was for the iPhone. The report notes that Apple has blocked certain features of the Apple Watch, including its gyroscope and accelerometer, on the initial WatchKit developers’ kit, but won’t reveal exactly why this has been done.
Other aspects of the Apple Watch third-party developers can now yet tap into include the ability to wake up companion iOS apps, using the Taptic Engine, heart rate tracking, Force Touch, and a variety of other innovations.
“The limitations are discouraging,” one engineer, developing a Watch app to control a Tesla Model S, is quoted as saying.
It’s an interesting (brief) read, but not necessarily for the obvious Apple-bashing reason. While it’s easy to think of the iOS App Store as a core part of the iPhone experience, many people forget that Apple didn’t allow the development of native iOS apps until later on in the iPhone’s lifecycle, since Steve Jobs believed this would negatively impact the experience of using an iPhone.
It’s certainly true that iOS developers today can access the majority of iPhone features, but some APIs — allowing fine-grain access to camera settings and Touch ID — only arrived later on, as recently in some cases as iOS 8. This time, Apple is opening up app development far earlier in the device’s lifespan, but (understandably) is controlling the experience heavily; which will likely change over time just as it did with the iPhone.
The most interesting question, however, is about killer apps: a term I’d argue is being misused by Reuters. Early on in Apple’s life, killer apps referred to tools like pioneering spreadsheet program VisiCalc, which was so crucial that it essentially sold computer hardware, just so that people could get their hands on the program. Snapchat may have used the iOS platform to become as big as it is, but it’s not the kind of symbiotic relationship that VisiCalc had: where a majority of people will buy an iPhone just to get hold of Snapchat.
Although his prediction of 100,000 apps being ready for Apple Watch launch day was patently ridiculous, I’d agree with analyst Trip Chowdhry when he suggests that there will be no one killer app for the Apple Watch: a situation we’ve previously argued applies to the iPad as well.
That may turn out to be false (though I doubt it), but in the long term I think the Apple Watch is going to be characterized not by one “must have” app, but by a continually diversifying market of niche apps.
There’s a reason Jony Ive calls the Apple Watch the company’s most personal device yet.
