Improved Apple Watch SDK Will Drastically Improve Third-Party Apps

It has been common knowledge that Apple would release a native SDK for the all new Apple Watch, something developers can get their hands on to make more useful applications than the default Apple applications.

Apple is going to provide a beta version of the SDK a week after its Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 8, which means that we’ll probably get more information about it during the keynote. A final version will be distributed in the fall, which is when we’ll hope to begin seeing our first native watch apps from developers.

While WatchKit applications and Glances are at the moment, limited and mostly static screens that rely entirely on the connected iPhone for processing, native third-party apps should be a bit more flexible. Apple say that native apps will be able to access the watch’s sensors (which would hopefully include the heart rate sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, and barometer) and the Digital Crown, and that the native SDK would include more tools for game developers. Game developers are already experimenting with WatchKit, of course, but it seems that Apple’s limitations are proving challenging

What we don’t know is whether native apps will be able to function when out of range of the paired iPhone or keep data on the watch’s internal storage, something that Apple’s first-party applications support to varying degrees.

Thank you to Ars Technica for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of Ars Technica