With New Dev Kit, Apple Gives Us a Glimpse of How Its Watch Will Work

Along with the beta release of iOS 8.2, developers also got access to WatchKit. Here's what the SDK reveals about how apps will run on the device.
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Alex Washburn/WIRED

The Apple Watch is nearly here. Parallel with Monday's launch of iOS 8.1.1, Apple released iOS 8.2 beta to developers, and with it, WatchKit. This gives developers a chance to prep versions of their apps for the Apple Watch using WatchKit's SDK. It also gives us a glimpse at what the Apple Watch experience will be like.

Apple unveiled the wearable at its September media event, showing off how it will look, offering a glimpse at its interface, and giving an overview of how it will function. We got to check out a demo of the watch and try on some different models, but as it likely won't go on sale until early spring, hardly anyone outside Apple has had a chance to use a real, functioning version yet.

The new SDK gives us a more complete picture of how apps will run on the device. They will be simple, have a unified design scheme, and will use the iPhone as the backbone of the experience.

iPhone Reliance

For starters, apps on the watch will function much like they do on Samsung's Galaxy Gear line or the Pebble smartwatch. Apple says apps designed for the Apple Watch should be lightweight, "the interactions brief, and the interfaces simple."

Most of the processing will take place on your iPhone, rather than the watch itself. The watch will really only handle rendering the UI. Thus, the Apple watch relies on a connected iPhone to function properly.

The Look

The Apple Watch, for those who have forgotten, will come in two different sizes: 38mm and 42mm. On the smaller one, the screen dimensions are 272 x 340 pixels, while on the larger, the resolution is 312 x 390 pixels.

Apple has outlined some guidelines for how third party apps should look on the Apple Watch. Specifically, the company will keep a sense of continuity throughout the experience by having a standard black background on all apps. Developers can, however, add a degree of branding by using their app's key color for titles and status notifications. Because space is limited, Apple is advising that logos should be used sparingly.

The company has developed a new font called "San Francisco" for the Apple Watch, which developers can adopt (fun fact: San Francisco was the name of one of the original typefaces on the Mac). They don't have to use the font, but they'll have to do more work if they want to implement a custom font scheme. Apple prefers text to be left aligned.

Developers can also use subtle animations to enhance their app. Animations can give the user some sort of feedback for an action, or indicate a status in the app.

User Interface

Navigation through an app is standardized. They can either be hierarchical, allowing the user to make one choice per screen until they get to their destination, or the interface can be page-based, so the user can swipe horizontally to get to different pages of the app. These two styles can't be combined---developers will have to choose the one that best suits their app.

There are also different ways of interacting with the app. A single tap is the main way users will navigate through the Apple Watch experience, but developers can also add gestures like vertical and horizontal swipes, and a left edge swipe to return to the main app page.

The Apple Watch display doesn't just sense touch though, it senses pressure. So apps can also use Force Touch to display onscreen menus. And the Digital Crown, the twisting knob on the side of the watch face, can be used for scrolling.

Notifications

There are two ways users can quickly access information from an app: glances and notifications. Glances are quick snapshots of information—things like sports scores, your alarm system status, or the next step of a favorite recipe. Information in a glance is timely, relevant, and fits on a single page, and users will be able to hop into an app by tapping on a glance. Developers can also use Handoff so Apple Watch owners can pick up exactly where they left off once they open the app from a glance.

Notifications come in two varieties: a short, single screen that shows the app icon and a brief description of the kind of notification (for example, "New Comment"), or a longer version that includes content from the app, some actions the user can take, and an option to dismiss the notification. Apparently by raising your wrist, you'll be able to transform a short notification into a long one, which is clever.

The Future

As developers dig into WatchKit, we'll learn more about what the device, and the experience, will be like. For now, first impressions are positive. Apple's developed a simplified, constrained ecosystem for developers. This should prevent the experience from becoming too arduous for devs, and too complicated for users. This also offers plenty of opportunity for feature and design expansion as people start using the product. We'll probably see the results of that at next year's WWDC.