What should a smartwatch be used for? Apple may have the best idea so far: throw it to the developers.
There's an SDK for Android Wear, but uptake has seemed really slow. Discovery, as with any Android device that isn't a standard smartphone, is a problem; take a look at Android Authority's 31 favorite Android Wear apps and you'll find that three of them are stores or app managers. That reminds me of the Android Honeycomb tablet days, when the tablet SDK was different enough, confusing enough, and uncertain enough that few developers would venture into it. That finally got fixed in the Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean eras, but Google lost some significant momentum to Apple and Microsoft on tablets in the process.
With Android Wear there's also the sense that maybe Google doesn't even want developers. Wear is so Google Now-y that anyone who doesn't plug into Google's predictive framework can feel a little second class. Anyone who does has to wait in line and hope that Google suggests them as relevant information, a little like all of us search-driven websites do with Web surfers and Google.com.
The iPhone grew to prominence on the back of a smooth, easy-to-use SDK that let third parties easily develop excellent apps that would run on a large number of units. The Apple Watch might do the same: I was pleasantly surprised to see Apple talking about native third-party apps for the Watch built on the WatchKit SDK, and not just the Glances, which offer notifications to Watch users.
The apps are, well, very watch-y. Following Apple's guidelines, they're meant to be looked at for a moment or used for a quick transaction. There are to-do lists, email triage, transit times, a way to unlock your hotel room door, and an app to lead you around Target stores. But they're already being put front and center, made to look like critical parts of the Apple Watch experience. That marketing push and institutional focus can make all the difference.
So it looks like the iPhone plan all over again, but smaller. Prime the pump with some first-party apps – on the iPhone, that wasn't just the Web browser, but Stocks and Weather, which showed how you could create experiences rather than just windows onto the Web. But then, let things fly out to developers and celebrate their work.
Apple just made a final version of WatchKit, its Apple Watch SDK, available to everyone. We'll see soon enough whether it's going to be a rerun of the iPad lapping Android tablets before Google gets its act together, or whether the question of "what do you do with a smartwatch?" is too tough for even Apple's famously creative developer community to crack. We'll see, I suspect, when the first Apple Watches make their public debut on April 10.
For more, check out PCMag's hands on with the Apple Watch from the Monday event, as well as Who Will Buy the $10,000 Apple Watch?