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Spinning wheel? Apps are so slow!!
- Thread starter ysquare
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I find the Shazam app useless on my watch lately. I am in public and I hear a song I like, I open the app only to be greeted by a spinning wheel, or the app would crash. By the time I pull out my phone, the song is over.
Seems like most built-in apps work fine. 3rd party apps are extremely slow. I like the workout app best.
3rd parties have to offload a lot of work to the phone and the transfer, activation, crunching, and then back to the phone takes a second, especially in the beginning.
I think things will improve, especially after native apps are introduced. But it will take a little time.
Instagram is slow and I installed it onto the watch but I think that is because it needs to tether the Internet from th iPhone.
It is surprisingly slow! Hence why I tend to only use it as a method of alerting me of a notification. I then usually pick my phone up and do what I have to do on there!
Hopefully Apple do fix this though as I'd like to respond directly from the watch
Hopefully Apple do fix this though as I'd like to respond directly from the watch
They will need to fix this if they want this to succeed. Find a way to make it work.
3rd party apps are ridiculously slow and glances from 3rd party apps are just about useless, but I expect both of these things to improve greatly in a short amount of time.
I think part of the problem is the developers. They import the paradigm they use on iOS devices to the watch which results in overly complicated apps that loads way too slow.
No. Developers are required to use the WatchKit API which works like this:
1. Watch app opened on watch
2. Bluetooth connection started to talk to phone
3. Phone application needs to load on phone
4. Once application is running on phone, it then communicates back to watch with what to do
5. Watch then runs commands specified by the phone.
It's not simple at all. There is no such thing as clicking a button on the watch in a 3rd party app and it can just do something. Everything is round tripped back to the phone using Bluetooth.
I know that.....
The problem here is something like hierarchy are not very good on the watch. And too many UI elements makes loading incredibly slow. they are essentially putting in too much features into an app.
Perhaps those wishing to target the watch, will, in the future, find ways to decrease load times for the apps. Its been a while since I tinkered with iOS programming, but they should be able to open a lite version to start operating and then finish loading assets in some fashion for the more polished iPhone operation.
This is without utilizing the anticipated native app ability.
It's not up to the developer. A developer can't make their app stay active on a locked phone. iOS decides what apps stay active, and what apps are shut down.
Android developers have full control of android - iOS developers are reliant upon how Apple designs their OS
Mine is the same. Even 3rd party apps like Starbucks and Citymapper load rather quickly. I only noticed the watch taking longer to open apps when I'm further away from my phone, likely with a weak bluetooth connection.
For me it's only slow if my phone has barely any service. But that's not the watch's fault.
I experimented with this, but was not able to confirm your results. Instagram took 42 seconds to load even though it was open on the phone. Re-opening it, however, only took seconds thereafter. Not sure what goes on during that first handshake, but it is very slow in pretty much all circumstances that I can see.
Already happening. The Nike Running app updated this week and one of the features was a hugely decreased startup time.
I stopped using the apps a week after launch. It's just not working for me.
The most I hate apps that are giving the spinning wheel for a couple of seconds and after that saying "Before using this app, open the app on your phone"
MusicMatch (Shazam like app) and TuneInRadioPro are doing this. Make me mad.
I am now mostly using the watch as a pebble
The most I hate apps that are giving the spinning wheel for a couple of seconds and after that saying "Before using this app, open the app on your phone"
MusicMatch (Shazam like app) and TuneInRadioPro are doing this. Make me mad.
I am now mostly using the watch as a pebble
I was addressing load times. Certain apps, even from completely closed, start right up quickly. Other apps that start slow on the phone, either are connecting to something online or loading large and numerous UI assets.
I was saying a developer could potentially increase load time by first initiating a small asset UI to get a fast load and then finish loading larger assets to polish out the phone portion of it. This might make access to info from the watch quicker.
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I knew there was a developer work around for this. It was never much of an issue on the phone, but this new tech has made developers have to think outside the box and design things with a new perspective.