Not quite sure why this is the case. All apps now have to run natively. Perhaps it's because Apple Watch isn't powerful enough. Even opening default apps can take a while, this'll change with Apple Watch 2 though, I expect this will change once the device hits our shelves.
WatchOS has been optimized in such a way that, EVERY policy decision from A to Z has been biased to favor the energy-saving choice over the performance/snappy UI choice. This was probably the right choice for the first year, given people's paranoia over battery life and their lack of anything to compare against.
But I am guessing that it's no longer the correct choice --- people are now aware of how long they can expect the battery to last, they are used to charging every night, and they are now more demanding of a snappy UI.
My guess is that WatchOS 3 will bias policy quite a bit more to more responsiveness, and that battery will take a hit --- but that this will not be a big deal. People will now charge their watch every night at 10% battery left rather than 30% battery left, but will have a better experience during the day.
Of course new HW will also help dramatically, but that's a different story. It's worth remembering that iPhone 1 only got iOS updates up till iOS 3. My guess is that Watch 1 will get this year's update, but maybe not next years. Which is fine by me. Now that Apple has some idea of how watches are used in real life, they can modify the hardware appropriately, and it would be silly to hold the OS back to force it to fit onto what was essentially experimental rev-1 hardware. The current Watch SoC is manufactured on 28nm. If the next one is manufactured on 14nmFF the difference in power usage will be absurd. Radio and screen will still cost power and have to be rationed, but CPU activity, the sort of thing that causes the random slowness today, should be in much more plentiful supply.
As for new health sensors, this is the sort of thing we can look forward to:
http://www.darkdaily.com/princeton-...hat-uses-imaging-technology-119#axzz4AGH6XTO0
Not next year! The QC lasers that drive this cost at least $thousands each, and the supporting packaging stuff (electronics, power supply, cooling, etc) take up a fair bit of space. But make no mistake --- the people working on this are well aware of just how desirable this sort of product is. With luck we'll see dedicated professional (hospital/doctor's office) models by maybe early next year (whole device is handheld, about the size of an iPhone), with the watch model maybe five years after that...
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The biggest problem with the Apple Watch is the high price. Apple needs to address that. Because the watch is not that useful, there is a limit to how much people are prepared to pay for it.
The argument "X costs more than I am willing to pay" is not very interesting. It was not interesting when applied to Macs, it was not interesting when applied to iPhones, and it is not interesting when applied to Apple Watch. You can buy an Apple Watch and get the Apple package (a general level of hardware quality, software polish, and integration with the rest of your Apple devices) or you can buy an Android watch for less, and take your chances regarding all these issues. Or you can buy a Pebble for a LOT less, and get quite a bit less functionality. Or you can buy a FitBit. Or ...
Apple is not going to change their prices for you, and you are not adding anything to the discussion by complaining about this.
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A far less limited development environment and one that allows them to charge money for apps is more appealing to developers than one that's very limited and doesn't allow charging for the apps? No way!
What are you talking about? Of course you can charge for Watch apps.
Sleep++, for example, charges $1.99 to get rid of ads (worth it, IMHO --- I paid). That is a "Watch app", insofar as any app is --- yes it has a companion iOS part, but that part is useless without the Watch part.
Another example is MacID which costs, what, $3.99. That can be used on only a phone, but I bough it for the Watch part and use it pretty much only for the Watch. I can confidently say that I would not have spent that money for the iPhone, app --- I bought it for the Watch app.
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No, I'm not recommending anything. I'm just pointing out that such a small form factor limits what apps can do.
Yes, but that's only a problem if you insist on a certain mental model of the role of "computing".
We saw this when smart phones came out --- there was a MASSIVE idiot contingent that insisted that phones were toys because who wants to work with a spreadsheet on a tiny screen? Who wants to type a document using that ridiculous keyboard? And these are valid complaints; but they miss the point. The point of a phone is not to replace your laptop or desktop for doing the tasks a laptop and desktop are good for. The point of a phone is to give you maps on demand. Or allow you to hail an Uber. Or to send a Snapchat.
These are all things that no-one really though of, or whose full power was not appreciated, if you live in a desktop computing world.
Likewise the point of a Watch is not to run full phone apps; it is to provide one more additional mode of computation. And like phones, it takes time for both developers and users to adapt to this new reality.
What I see in all these threads is a constant drumbeat of people who have not actually LIVED with an Apple Watch, or who have made no attempt to actually try innovative new computing models (like the way MacID allows your watch to unlock your Mac), but they are absolutely certain they know the one true way we should all compute.
People like these have learned nothing from the past. Thirty years ago they were telling us that GUI computing was something new and silly, inappropriate for "real" computers. Twenty years ago they were telling us that the Internet was unimportant because dial-up was so slow, and most people were uncomfortable with strange new concepts like email and web sites. Ten years ago, well, smart phones...
You'd have thought a track record like this would persuade people to at least temper their thinking a little, but no. The one thing I CAN tell you is that, five years from now, they'll be confidently commenting about how they knew all along that Smart Watches were going to be the next big thing, said that on day one...
