fair enough, there's more than health/fitness, but I stand by my statement that it is not an interactive device, yes, limited interaction is possible but it's a p.i.t.a. for anything other than a reaction or 1-2 word reply.
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Facebook Messenger Apple Watch App to Be Discontinued By End of May, Says Meta
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Yeah, it's been going on awhile. the first app I lost was Microsoft Authenticator, and that has cut my Apple Watch's usefulness for me by half. It was so nice to be able to auth without taking out my phone, unlocking it, then responding. I wanted more apps, not less. If they take away the alarm app and garage door control, I'll seriously be thinking of going elsewhere, and my watch is my favorite apple device!
Does anyone know if there are any messaging apps that work standalone on the watch then? This was the last one I knew of and it was useful when I leave my phone behind and need to message my partner who doesn't have an Apple device.
sure, I also use for notifications, quick delete and the occasional 1 or 2 word response.
But, honestly, AW needs to bring more innovation to health tracking, ECG came with S4, SpO2 with S6, temp with S8. and temp is not really that useful except for the population that performs cycle tracking. I expect Apple to focus on the next level of that, not making the AW more "interactive" with widgets etc.
I've had AW since late 2015, tried many apps, none provided real benefits ...
I never really understood how anyone expected the Watch to replace an iPhone. The tiny screen makes anything but the simplest of tasks extremely tedious. Even if all other shortcomings get addressed (ie: poor battery life), it's impossible to overcome the screen size issue.
I don't wear my Watch all day, but I find it a great tool for when I'm hiking, skiing, or working out. I'm not interested in obsessing over my health data, but the Watch helps me stay within my target heart rate zone when working out. I like that I can answer the phone or reply to a text when I'm skiing without having to get my iPhone out of my pocket. Being able to control audio when working out is great too.
Beyond that...I see no real appeal to the Watch. I've tried a lot of apps and they all suck on the small screen. You have to be a bit of a masochist I think to favor the Watch over using the iPhone.
Apple would happily allow the ads. The issue is that for ads to work you have to be able to go to a website and complete a purchase or signup for a service...which just isn't going to happen on an apple watch. So yes, follow the money, but in this case it is just an internal meta decision and not any kind of apple policy issue.
It is sad though, hopefully Apple figured out their plan for developers to support the headset beforehand, unlike with the Apple Watch. The original SDK was horrible, literally requiring two way communication to the phone to transmit that a button tap happened. WatchOS 2 was a slight improvement, but building apps was still a frustrating experience. Now many years later, you can actually build decent apps with SwiftUI, but users/developers have been shuffled away from the platform from prior bad experiences.
I think it does thankfully leave some room for indie devs to pick up the slack, as for major corporations the value in supporting the watch just doesn't exist. But a few thousand users on an indie app is potentially a sustainable market for the right niche.
I guess I am too, I don't use it for health much at all, it's a watch, a phone with texting, and apps to me. And I'm almost a boomer at 63 years old.
This move away from watch apps is disappointing. My guess is it’s because it’s WAY harder to monetize. I work in IT and shifting to the watch has greatly reduced my device usage.
I use my watch mainly for messenger, pay for Starbucks, use the Wallet and to pause my music using the Music app. Now I need to pull out my phone for messenger. The voice text does suck using the watch at times as it misspells words
I’m hoping the next model with a rumored A15 based chip changes this entirely. Overhauled UI expected too. Could be huge. But - to be clear - THIS particular app is leaving because Meta wants more ad revenue. The limitations in this case is a lack of ads on the watch.
Many businesses, around the world, use Messenger for internal communications because it’s cross platform. Many people that aren’t active on FB use Messenger. While the watch app was somewhat limited, not having it on the Apple Watch, even if for notifications, is a loss. It could also be pointing in the wrong direction for app development.Facebook? How many Boomers even *own* an Apple Watch?
Yeah, I understand. As I mentioned to someone else, I should have put more smileys on my post - it was tongue in cheek, perhaps funny only in my head.
No it’s not. They can’t compete with Apple Messenger and never have been able to do so.
Meta is a house of cards and after their meta verse where they hope to turn into a full time Fortnite asset purchase addiction fails their company will restructure and focus on backend cloud services they have heavily developed and invested in over the past decade and start competing with AWS and Google Cloud Services.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lots of apps either don't exist or are poorly designed, so people don't use them.
When I got my watch I tried to use some transit apps, but most required me to set up the journey on the phone and only offered the most basic of functionality in the app.
When my wife travelled internationally recently I wanted to keep track of her flight on one of those flight tracker apps, but not only did it require setting up the tracking on the phone app, it also got all of its information through the phone so you had to regularly open the phone app or it would just stop.
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are among the most widely used messaging platforms in the world, far outcompeting Apple.
What? Apple doesn't have a "Messenger" app. They never have. They have iMessage and Messages (and previously iChat). Yes, it's all the same ball of wax, but calling it "Apple Messenger" just feels dirty and wrong!
And way more people use Facebook Messenger than iCloud. In countries like the Philippines, Facebook has forged agreements with carriers where Facebook is available for "free" on mobile phones without consuming any data. Yes, the consumer is the product.
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
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Does anyone feel like Apple Watched was launched with more apps in the beginning and now it doesn't have that many apps anymore? What is happening???
Still, it's better than no watch... I do find it very useful to get notifications at any time, and listen to music at night when going to sleep.
Why would you need a Watch app to reply to an incoming Facebook Messenger message? WhatsApp has no Apple Watch app, but you can reply to incoming messages on the Watch just fine.
It's just that you can't send a new message to a random contact unless they message you first.
Good question... perhaps people are refraining from running apps that would drain their batteries faster.
Primary use may be to take some calls, exercising, health features, etc.
Yep, cause apps on the AW don’t provide value, hence people stop using them … and my take is that apps typically require interaction and AW is not good at that.