Developers Share Some Frustrations They’ve Had With The Apple Watch

The Apple Watch had gone up for pre-order on Friday and so far the response looks good. The wearable has seemingly sold out its pre-order inventory with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook stating that pre-orders of the device have been “great”, but it seems that despite Apple’s best intentions, not everyone is particularly thrilled about the device, especially developers.

In a report by Mark Wilson of Co.Design, he spoke to a handful of designers who shared some of the frustrations they’ve had designing apps for the Apple Watch which could be worth taking note of if you’re planning on getting device. For starters these developers have pointed out what some reviews have stated, which is that animations on the watch are annoyingly slow.

According to Matt Bischoff, the iOS Engineering Lead at Tumblr, “You don’t have a guarantee on how fast that’s going to be delivered,” explains. “We use animation to delight our users, and have meaningful transition between states. If you have to wait for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, it’s not worth it.” Another issue developers had was the syncing of data on the iPhone and the Apple Watch which is asynchronous.

Basically information sent and back forth between the iPhone and Apple Watch are done so in short bursts, rather than in real-time, meaning that a timer app might end up showing two different numbers due to the “delay”. Anton Doudarev, developer at UsTwo states, “And if you open the Watch Kit app a moment later, the timers don’t coincide at the exact same moment. The Apple Watch timer might start a split second later, then you have out of sync timestamps.”

There have also been complaints by these developers that there are other developers who get preferential treatment and gain access to certain features and functions of the watch that they don’t, such as Shazam who has access to the Apple Watch’s microphone while the other developers don’t, at least not yet. That being said, this is Apple’s first wearable and obviously there are some design flaws that Apple has yet to work out, like the first iPhone or first iPad, for example.

Hopefully the Cupertino takes note of these complaints and that the next Apple Watch will be a lot more developer-friendly, which in turn will result in a better user experience.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Gadgets
Tags: Apple Watch, Apps, Smartwatch, Wearable Tech