Apple today asked developers to begin building, testing, and submitting watchOS 6 apps for inclusion in the new standalone Apple Watch App Store.
Starting with watchOS 6, developers are able to distribute apps built solely for the Apple Watch without a companion app on iOS. Apple was not previously accepting standalone Apple Watch submissions and has also updated its watchOS site for developers.
Apple Watch apps can be installed from the Apple Watch App Store directly on the wrist even when an iPhone isn't available.
With watchOS 6, customers around the world can use the new App Store on Apple Watch to easily discover, browse, search, and install apps directly on their wrist. And for the first time, you can distribute an app just for Apple Watch, without a companion app on iOS. Build your watchOS apps using Xcode 11 GM seed, test them on devices running the latest watchOS 6 GM seed, and submit them for review.
Apple says that starting in April 2020, all new watchOS apps and app updates submitted to the App Store will need to be built with the watchOS 6 SDK and support the Apple Watch Series 4 or later.
watchOS 6 with standalone App Store is set to launch on the Series 3 and Series 4 Apple Watch models on Thursday, September 19. It will be available for Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watch models later in the year.
The Apple Watch Series 5, which launches on Friday, September 20, will come with watchOS 6 installed.
Of course the temptation for 3rd parties to want to really monitor you (who wouldn't want to know your heart rate and give advertisements based on that) for monetization will be even greater - so Apple will have to watch apps carefully.
I hope Strava finally commits to making a decent standalone app compared to the current half assed attempt they've been running since the series 2 launched.
I'm wondering the same thing. for some reason the whole 'running apps on your wrist' seems to be have been forgotten in a weird way, despite them launching an App Store. ... I assume they will get there eventually. The Apple Watch is going to supplant the iPhone for all of the most rudimentary tasks. It's just a matter of time.
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
Of course the temptation for 3rd parties to want to really monitor you (who wouldn't want to know your heart rate and give advertisements based on that) for monetization will be even greater - so Apple will have to watch apps carefully.