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Apple Watch Hacked to Display Custom Watch Faces
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Maybe Apple launched the Watch six months too soon. The fact that they announced it in September 2014 and launching it 7 months later probably means they decided not to wait any more to reveal it — maybe because of the competition?
We know Apple takes its time — look at the App Store on Apple TV —, but maybe for the Watch they felt they couldn't wait any more to reveal it.
The real Apple Watch experience will be with watchOS 2 — The actual logic of running the app on the iPhone is probably a compromise Apple came up with to be able to launch the device in Spring 2015 rather than the end of the year. Same thing for other things like the customizable faces.
As an Watch owner I can say 3rd party watch faces are not on the top of my list for things I want. Native apps, 3rd party complications, 3rd party access to hardware, podcast support are all things I care more about than third party watch faces. Maybe some people want a skeuomorphic Rolex face on their watch. I don't.
Harumph!
Maybe it's time for to start letting people own their devices minus the cookie cutter restrictions. The ability to personalize is an actual reason to buy stuff. Who knows, it might bump sales.
Apple already indicated in the most recent event that Watch OS2 would allow 3rd party watch *complications*. No, not the same thing as 3rd party watch faces, but give it a little time. This is a waste of bandwidth IMO. (n.b., irony noted)
Yep..... didn't take long did it...only two OS releases later..I guess what it shows regardless of how crappy it may look.
Just goes to show if its tech, it will be hacked
(umm... good tag line.. i'll save that one for later)
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This should have been built in from the start. Apple doesn't know what their doing.
It is kind of silly to have this display that can show anything we can imagine and then limit it to only the default faces Apple installed. I did buy an Apple Watch (since returned) and I think it's a sorely missing feature that makes me gravitate towards Android Wear, just a shame the Android watches don't work with iOS natively yet.
The Wolfram App has allowed users to display a clock with arbitrary faces since April; it never got much attention. The app allows for some truly beautiful or truly atrocious watch faces:
The Pi Clock is just bizarre:
The Pi Clock is just bizarre:
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Software obviously wasn't ready for it and they had deadlines to meet. This also gives them a mid-cycle boost in interest when they release the new software. I think they know exactly what they're doing.
This is really a tired trope. There's a lot more to custom faces than an imitation of a luxury watch. Apple has generously contributed to the customization of their devices since the beginning. The watch is so far the first device that does not give users the ability to completely customize the primary screen of their device any way they want.
Chill. The watch is only 4 months old. Who's to say Apple will never allow 3rd party watch faces? They haven't said anything about it one way or the other. For all we know they're coming but other things have taken priority.
Isn't the reason obvious from this article? ...because people will make watch faces that look like the one in the video. Not saying it isn't funny, but you can't believe that apple want something they spent so much time and effort marketing as a high fashion device being seen like that video (which also highlights how small the screen is compared to the watch face).
As an owner of an apple watch, I'm also not interested in custom faces. Custom complications, some additional "sensible" faces, more customisation options (eg colors) is far more important to me. This is also consistent with most other apple watch owners I know.
I want a better user interface, there is a lot of hardware support
- touch screen
- force touch
- motion sensors
- microphone
- digital crown
- home button
- side button
But Apple is not using it efficiently.
One of the best use cases for AW is to change music without the need to take out your phone. What if I with one tap in a corner, a button press, hand shake or whatever bring up a list of my song and select/scroll with the the digital crown, similar to an iPod. Or if I could switch app with the side button, similar to cmd/alt-tab.
The Wolfram App has allowed users to display a clock with arbitrary faces since April; it never got much attention. The app allows for some truly beautiful or truly atrocious watch faces:
The Pi Clock is just bizarre:
I actually think the π watch face is novel.
I suppose so. If you really want to be radical, you could have it render an OCTAL or HEX representation of Pi very easily. That would be uber-geeky.
Wolfram has been very low-key with their stuff on iOS and Apple Watch. They demoed their iOS CDF player (essentially the entire Mathematica engine) back in February of 2012, but have never released it. iPads are at least 8-10x as powerful as they were at that time; Mathematica should really hum on an iPad.
Good.
It's stupid for Apple not to open up the ability to set custom watchface designs and give the API to developers in the first place.
Screw the system.
It's stupid for Apple not to open up the ability to set custom watchface designs and give the API to developers in the first place.
Screw the system.
And have people forgotten that iPhone didn't get wallpaper support until iOS 4.0 in 2010?
Because as a new product, they don't want someone to show off their Apple Watch with some crappy-looking watch face they downloaded on it. They want to establish the look and feel of the product in people's minds before (if) they open up faces to 3rd-party developers.
That's not a valid excuse.
That's like saying Apple shouldn't allow custom wallpapers on the next iPhone because it will make the product look bad on people trying to buy it.
There was a little while were you didn't even have the option for wallpapers on the iPhone which was hardware related I believe, so I would expect this decision has a bit to do with hardware limitations as well. An Apple Watch only gets the battery life it does because Apple is pretty strict on what they allow.