Apple Watch has been out for merely 3 months now and it is estimated that it has sold close to 3 million devices already. The exact number is not being revealed by Apple for some reason‚ but it is known that the initial launch sales had exceeded the expected demand and there were delays for new stock.
With this number of sales in the market‚ it makes absolutely no brainer that mobile app developers and brands should be working hard to enable their apps to work along with the Apple Watch. It is a really useful and productive device and can enhance the experience of the users to a large extent.
But if you have missed the band wagon for some reason to create an app for this device‚ we think it is a perfect time for you to start building one. The reason is that Apple has announced and made WatchOS 2 available to the developers. Some new features are being added to WatchOS 2 which can improve Watch apps and provide better experience to the users.
Here are some of those features being implemented in WatchOS 2:
Access to Digital Crown:
The digital crown on the Apple Watch was an amazing feature‚ but it was unfortunately not available for the developers to use in their apps. Now with WatchOS 2‚ developers will get the opportunity to use the Digital Crown‚ the home button functionality of the digital crown will not be accessible to the developers‚ but the ability to use the rotation of the crown for item selection or scrolling through the app will be accessible to the developers. This means mobile app developers can now enable users to use the digital crown in their app and provide a better option selection experience.
Access to microphone:
WatchOS 2 enables developers to implement access to the built in microphone on the Apple Watch to record audio. This could be used by developers to work on apps where it can make life easier for users to quickly take an audio note on the move. This is only one of the ways that we could think of for using this feature‚ but we bet developers around the world will come up with some really interesting and productive uses for this feature.
Access to Taptic Engine:
WatchOS 2 opens up the gates and provides access to the Apple Watch’s taptic engine to the mobile app developers. This would enable developers to create amazing new methods of haptic feedback for various actions being performed in their app‚ giving the users a better user experience.
Access to health sensors:
WatchOS 2 will enable developers to access the health sensors on the Apple Watch‚ which track the heart rate and health related data. Using these sensors mobile app developers can create amazing health focused apps which could improve the lives of the users. Along with this traditional health focused apps can implement this into their data and enhance the experience for their existing users.
Access to CoreMotion:
CoreMotion is the sensor which controls and gets data from the accelerometer available on the Apple Watch. WatchOS 2 will open access to this system for the developers‚ enabling them to provide accelerometer based intuitive control mechanisms in their app as well as retrieve data for the app from activity recorded by the accelerometer.
These are only few of the updates for the WatchKit framework for Apple Watch as part of WatchOS 2. There are more updates to the ClockKit and WatchConnectivity and other updates for the whole WatchOS. If you have any queries regarding this please feel free to ask us @hedgehoglab and we will get one of our awesome developers to answer your questions.
