This is probably the biggest news that was announced at this mornings Apple World Wide Developers Conference. Why?
Currently, the application logic for current Apple Watch apps run on ones paired iPhone. The next version of watchOS will allow developers to create native apps where that logic, runs directly on the Apple Watch. This is the current issue with all smart watches; where the vast majority of its functionality requires being paired to a smart phone. This aspect won’t change with the Apple Watch for the foreseeable future.
What this does do however is it paves the way for the future especially when the hardware capabilities (as a result of continual downsizing and performance increases) do mature where some future Apple Watch iteration will functionally operate with much less tethering to an iPhone except for tasks like making calls.
Native Apple Watch apps are akin to when Apple unveiled an actual iPhone SDK. The original iPhone OS had no native third party applications (only Apple’s built-in ones were actual binaries) and relied on web based applications. Native apps however paved the way for really driving the iOS ecosystem; the watch being its own platform will also benefit from native binaries.
For myself, an Apple Watch isn’t something I will likely get until it can function mostly untethered from an iPhone. And that kind of system on a chip (SOC) shrinkage isn’t likely to take place for at least the next 2-3 years. For comparison, it wasn’t until the iPhone 4S that I finally felt the device was in a place where it fit my needs (essentially 4 years out from the initial iPhone launch). And if one looks at the evolution of the iPhone over that time, one can see the SOC shrinkage, performance increases, the shrinkage in the form factor, and the operating system evolving. An Apple Watch 4 years from now will go through this same transformation, as will the kind of native apps that do take advantage of its capabilities.
