Apple needs to take all these disappearing apps from the watch very seriously as they've lost a lot over the years. At this rate there will be sod all to use in a few years. The watch needs to be far more independent and remove locking it to an iPhone should be one step.
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Facebook Messenger Apple Watch App to Be Discontinued By End of May, Says Meta
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I confess that I almost never use a third-party Watch app. Just rarely found the need. I do use Outlook calendar events and the Okra authenticator daily but that is about it. Even apps that I use daily like Overcast, I'd rather use on the phone. The Watch is for other things.
where is the phrase "sod all" a thing? I've never heard that. Guessing Aussie.
That is funny and gave me a laugh.Facebook? How many Boomers even *own* an Apple Watch?
It also reminded me of a somewhat amusing/annoying event.
I was paying for a coffee at my local coffee shop and used my Apple Watch. The young-ish waiter commented, "So good to see older people keeping up with technology." A little bit offensive, a little bit complimentary? Depends on your take on it I guess. However, I was a bit miffed and replied, "Yep, well, I'm younger than Steve Jobs would have been had he not died too young, I'm younger than Steve Wozniak and I spent the last 30 years of my life workingg for tech companies and banks writing the code and then developing the corporate strategies that enabled the payment I just made."
Boomers are often painted as "out of touch" or old-fashioned (and I guess some are) but on the main they're the very people that invented and built much of the stuff younger people take for granted today.
My guess is that the “big changes” and supposed overhaul of WatchOS is partly to create a UI that’s easier for third party developers to make apps for.
Or rather, have developers stop making Watch apps and just do some kind of widget:
-In a sense, most Watch apps just need to mirror a few features that are already present in the iOS app.
Music player focused apps just need to display content on your iPhone and offer a player to control music playback.
Most messaging apps are just need a good interface for typing/swiping and dictation, and to have messages sync between iPhone and Watch.
Like we see with widgets and Live Activities on iOS, Apple should just do “template” Widget interfaces for Watch apps that don’t offer devs a ton of customization but are very easy to develop.
Ideally, devs should just pick between a selection of Watch widgets and then Apple would be responsible for maintaining it.
As Watch never has and probably never will be an independent device, I don’t see why all Watch apps couldn’t just be streamlined widgets instead. After all, the apps that do work well on Watch really are just widgets that you access via your Apple Watch instead of the Today View, Home Screen or Dynamic Island.
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Can’t believe Slack doesn’t support Apple Watch. Glad my company doesn’t use it any more. It’s nice having a company messaging at that works with the Watch. That way people can get ahold of my while I’m working out or not next to my phone.
It’s sad for me because I’m using Messenger App on my Watch from years. I use it on Watch because I cant use my phone in work.
Nah, its a bigger overall strategy to move away from supporting Apple as everyone believes they've got far too powerful and dominant. It's just a case on who's the bravest to actually do it right now. GM are doing it by ditching CarPlay and support is dropping here and there for other apps and services. It seems everyone wants to embrace Google/Android as its more open and their software doesn't suck. You can see their point really. Apple got far too greedy and their software is abysmal and restrictive. It's holding other businesses back.
Well, when I think about it, I am not surprised. Apple's own message app is a trash app on the Watch. After many years it still does not sync with iCloud, so it is never in sync with what I have on Mac and / or iPhone.
In my opinion it was the poster who mentioned about ad's not appearing on the watch as the main reason for why companies are discontinuing their watch apps. What is my reasoning? well it's to do with ad's appearing on ios. Nearly every app, even some paid ones, have ad's in an app and the screen time of these app's can be measured by the app itself but if the app has support for the AW (Apple watch), whilst the app is functioning on the watch, the ad's are not being seen because it would normally be seen in the app on the iphone thus this will have a big impact on the advertiser who has paid to have their ad's in the app.
The AW has very good potential to be an extension of the iphone BUT it's biggest flaw is that the AW cannot display the ad's that run in the iphone app and there is no way advertisers are going to continue to pay app developers if the ad's cannot be seen. This is the way of the world today, if advertisers cannot extract as much info and screen time from users/consumers then the app/software program will be deemed unviable and thus earmarked to be discontinued.
The AW has very good potential to be an extension of the iphone BUT it's biggest flaw is that the AW cannot display the ad's that run in the iphone app and there is no way advertisers are going to continue to pay app developers if the ad's cannot be seen. This is the way of the world today, if advertisers cannot extract as much info and screen time from users/consumers then the app/software program will be deemed unviable and thus earmarked to be discontinued.
The Apple Store app pushed me ads on holidays (last did it on Valentine's Day) until I turned off push. App Store sent me notifications bugging me to try Apple Arcade games (I have a subscription, still sends the ads) until I turned off Push for that too. Never opted in to ads on either one, and there's no option to turn them off.
It used to be against their policy to do that. Now it's allowed after they decided they wanted to do it. It's not completely egregious yet but they are absolutely going in the wrong direction.
Exactly why I think Apple is revamping the Ui in the next iteration… To spur on continued development.
Meta just wants to Messenger to achieve feature parity with WhatsApp, and this is the most cost effective way of getting there and allows the team to still collect their bonuses
I am also I do use it a lot on my devices and its nice to have it there with imessage and mail.
Ha ha good one (as a 72 year old boomer, die hard apple stuff all the way retired geologist, paleontologist who also did IT work for our large Church for a decade in apple tech). Yeah a lot of us are not old fashioned or out of touch for sure
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
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No way! Never MacRumors. MacRumors is life. ✨
Fun fact: MacRumors existed way before Facebook or even MySpace. 🫨
@TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ I agree Macrumors is one of my three apple sources I follow daily. I recall when on MySpace how the younger generations were moving to this new thing called facebook because they did not want to be on MySpace with us baby boomer parents LOL
I do not have that problem. The imessage on MacBook is the one that is often partially out of sync with my iOS devices and cannot figure out why.
Yep seems apple is following the trend to just another Fitbit, if this continues I may not upgrade either but I have lates AW Ultra so that will be ok. I use lots of third party things on watch yet but worry this trend will continue.
Yeah I turn some features off. I have had on my AW7 at least two possible Afib events, and once on my AW Ultra so I usually turn this off (this is over couple years no health issues here and I see doctor every 6 months). So yeah some of this stuff does induce anxiety for sure. I like the calorie counting with watch/iphone, walking activity measurements though
I find the watch sufficient for lots of interactions that allow the glance or check of the app on the phone (like my weather apps as a storm spotter for example). Often many texts just need a short reply But iphone is there if they need more. Never without it so not a problem but saves many times taking iphone out when I can respond or see notification on watch first.