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Apple to Stop Accepting Updates to watchOS 1 Apps on April 1, 2018

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Apple today reminded developers to update their Apple Watch apps to take advantage of features introduced in watchOS 4 and Apple Watch Series 3, like increased performance, new background modes for navigation and audio recording, direct connections to Core Bluetooth, and more.

Apple also announced that starting on April 1, 2018, updates to watchOS 1 apps will no longer be accepted. All updates must be native apps built with the watchOS 2 SDK or later. Newly submitted watchOS apps should be built with the watchOS 4 SDK or later.

apple-watch-series-2-bb-deal-800x316.jpg

Apple first began requiring new apps to use the watchOS 2 SDK in June of 2016, and now that will also apply to app updates that are submitted. watchOS 1 apps that are not rebuilt using watchOS 2 SDKs or later will no longer be able to be updated after the April 2018 deadline.

Apps built with the native support features that were first introduced in watchOS 2 are able to run more quickly and operate more smoothly on the Apple Watch.

Article Link: Apple to Stop Accepting Updates to watchOS 1 Apps on April 1, 2018
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/16/apple-watchos-1-app-updates-april-2018/
Hopefully WatchOS 5 will drop support for them all together helping clean some of the crud out the operating system
 
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simbo123 said:
Hopefully WatchOS 5 will drop support for them all together helping clean some of the crud out the operating system
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I would guess that's quite likely.

Watch os 1 apps are indeed a joke, and I didn't even realise that updates to them were allowed at all since os2!
 
Lol the watchOS SDK is a joke in general. Maybe one day developers can write decent watch apps and access gestures or animations directly.
 
As a developer who’s written watchOS apps, I don’t know why anyone would be using the os1 SDK. The native SDK available from os2 onward is much more functional. The original SDK was such a nightmare.
 
I still use my initial launch day 1st iteration Apple Watch daily - can't live without it. Besides using the included exercise app, Breathe app.....I don't touch the apps on there.

I'm finally considering getting the Apple Watch 3.

A question for the folks who went from the original Apple Watch to the latest and greatest: What are the benefits? Can you truly sense an improved sense of speed? Do you see yourself using 3rd party apps more?

I know the original Watch is 3 years old now....but still crazy to me that that little thing has the same processing power as the original big clunky iPad which I still have. God that thing is a dinosaur now...ok I digress....

Thank you for your feedback.
 
BvizioN said:
Still using original Apple watch here and love it as much as I did first day it came out.
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I loved my series 0 and had no issues with it at the time but having updated to a series 2 at the start of the year for standalone gps the performance and battery improvements were very obvious and I have absolutely no regrets about doing so. Compared to the 2 the 0 just felt super sluggish.
 
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DaveMcM76 said:
I loved my series 0 and had no issues with it at the time but having updated to a series 2 at the start of the year for standalone gps the performance and battery improvements were very obvious and I have absolutely no regrets about doing so. Compared to the 2 the 0 just felt super sluggish.
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I am sure it does. For me the jump to the forth series would be a huge difference on performance. Resisting the temptation to get the series 3, and hoping that 4 get some design changes too, but without loosing the ability to use the bands we use with current series.
 
Relentless Power said:
I'm actually thinking watchOS 5 will no longer support the first generation Apple Watch altogether.
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That's why i'm thinking of upgrading from my series 0 to the Series 3, also an increase in battery life and the better fitness features would be nice.
 
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Can’t believe this wasn’t done long ago. But I understand that the existiance of those apps was necessary to the development and improvement of the watch.

I feel like the speed difference between series 2 and 3 was just as noticable as the change from 0 to 2.
 
Mascots said:
Lol the watchOS SDK is a joke in general. Maybe one day developers can write decent watch apps and access gestures or animations directly.
Click to expand...

The WatchKit SDK is actually a lot more powerful than most developers give it credit for. It is a relatively new SDK and has come on in leaps and bounds since the first version.

Gestures are available to developers. Maybe not down to the level of individual touches, but good enough for most purposes.

Animations are another matter. They are definitely possible (by creating your own controls using Scene Kit for example), but admittedly far from easy. Hardly a show stopper though.
 
cfc said:
The WatchKit SDK is actually a lot more powerful than most developers give it credit for. It is a relatively new SDK and has come on in leaps and bounds since the first version.

Gestures are available to developers. Maybe not down to the level of individual touches, but good enough for most purposes.

Animations are another matter. They are definitely possible (by creating your own controls using Scene Kit for example), but admittedly far from easy. Hardly a show stopper though.
Click to expand...

I’ve been serving since watchOS 1 and it’s garbage; It’s not fun. We are on its 4th iteration; it’s not new. I gave them plenty of time with watch SDK before deciding they let me down. “Good enough” and “not a show stopper” do not mean good watch app experiences

Try adding a two row group with a swipe gesture: now tell me which row was swiped from that gesture: you cannot. Try to animate cells as they scroll, a common effect on 1st party apps, but nope! Do you really think they’re wrapping album art in Music in a Scene and then animating them on scroll in the music table? Even if you tried, it’s all custom and impossible with our SDK; it gives you the ability to craft the UI for mayve 3 Apple apps: shows how powerful it is if Apple must work outside of the box like that...

I’ll sing another tune when they decide to actually give developers power to do great things on the watch. But at the moment, they’re just making 3rd party apps bland, partially broken, and crap in comparison to their own offerings.
 
I use the locationInObject method to determine the row touched by a gesture and it works fine for me. I would also say that it's perfectly possible to write a table of animating rows using a single Scene Kit object.

We'll have to agree to differ. I have also been coding using WatchKit since the beginning and I would say that it is far from "garbage". I'm sure that Apple's first party apps probably have access to stuff that we don't, but the SDK now provides enough functionality for developers to produce apps that can at least match Apple's apps.
 
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