Tired of sluggish apps that take forever to load because it is fetching information from your iPhone? It looks like Apple is finally doing something about it. The Cupertino company published a note to its developer website, telling all developers that starting 1 June 2016, all Watch apps must be native.
With native apps, it means that these apps can work without an iPhone, allowing them to be much faster. Non-native third-party Apple Watch apps are usually very slow because the software will run on the iPhone first and the data will be transferred to the Watch. This will help with the battery life but it also means that apps would be very slow.
Apple launched watchOS 2 in June last year, shortly after the Watch went on sale. The watchOS 2 SDK allowed developers to create their own custom watch face, and access Apple Watch hardware elements such as Digital Crown, Taptic Engine, microphone and loudspeaker. The final version of watch OS 2 was rolled out last September with a bunch of improvements.
Apple will be hosting its WWDC 2016 in less than two months time, so let’s hope that its new requirements for Apple Watch app development is a sign that the Cupertino company has some exciting updates for its wearable.
(Source: Apple via: The Verge, Apple Insider)
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