Apple Watch Development: Myths and Facts

Friends! This post is about developing for Apple Watch in terms of project management. In terms of goals, objectives, expectations and results. I note: from the point of view of a single team. Subjectively.



Details about the features of the development have already been written. For example, a good post from Mail.ru Group on Habré .







In February 2015, while working on the application-timer, our designer suddenly gets the idea to combine the super-duper trend and fashionable theme of Apple Watch with our application.

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The idea is simple, but at that time this thought seemed simply ingenious. The fact is that until now it’s never occurred to us what can be done useful under this watch. And here such a confluence of circumstances is the best solution for a watch and not to think up than a timer application.



Having caught fire with this idea, I began to imagine what it would give us and how much time / effort / money to implement. I discussed it with my colleagues, read articles, announcements, succumbed to the hype and believed Tim Cook. Making the future. Happiness secured.



The watch was announced for “early spring”, which means: you need to start immediately.



Below I give theses from my plan-expectations from this venture and the actual result to date.

Yes, I ask you not to judge strictly: I am writing with a fair amount of irony.

As soon as the watch goes on sale, the excitement will immediately begin around the applications. People will begin to search with all their might, what can be installed on them, and there will be few options. Well, here we are so beautiful with our productivity.

It's funny to even remember such a forecast, but he was. In short, nothing really happened. Just appeared in the information about the compatibility of our application and hours.

The clock is small, which means doing nonsense there. Time does not take much.

This item alone is a delusion of what to look for! Self-deception literally. Design reworked several times. After the third attempt was a stupor. The tiny screen, the mass of restrictions, features and requirements made this task very difficult. My expectations from the clock functionality were also based on guesses and fantasies. When the official and detailed information appeared, it became clear that half of the plans could not be realized. Control of sounds, vibration, notifications, animation - everything went under the knife.



Errors in xcode, the lack of live hours and the torment over the "user interface" finally killed the hope of creating a super application in a couple of weeks.

We are doing something that Apple needs right now and looking forward to support.

There are many examples of support and good interaction between the aytyuns caliper and the developers. Alas, in our case everything was on “general conditions”. No support, no expedited review application. I'm not saying that we were not invited to the round table in Cupertino.



Yes. To be completely honest, in the most rosy dreams I imagined myself to fall into some sort of feature (feature), as a unique and especially useful personal productivity application developer, who guessed to support Apple Watch.



In fact, there are a million times more such clever men than hours. And a billion times more than the demand for personal productivity applications among watch owners.

We stand at the origins of the new boom. Apple creates another huge market and the first lucky developers will remove all the cream.

I did not strongly believe in this forecast. But, he also had a place to be. Bloggers, fanatics, journalists and other authors of opinions spread the forecast for a miracle. Not less. I do not know what will happen next, but now nothing of the kind is observed.

Another argument. According to the forecast, it was a real trump card. Called "information about the occasion."

It seemed as if all you have to do is hint at any journalist that you have created applications for the new Apple product and will rush to write about you! In fact, it turned out that everyone needs an informational occasion, including monster companies like Beeline. And the information space turned out to be literally clogged with information about how someone created something for a watch.



By the way, watches in Russia are not officially sold. And large Russian (in the sense of with customers in Russia) companies make these applications and blow the whole world about it. A good informational reason is more expensive than money.

Conclusion

Such is the funny plan-fact list. Who has successful experience, please share in the comments?

In fact, I don’t regret this experiment at all and it’s not all that bad. It was interesting to try and learn a lot of new things. Now we understand a little in development for Apple Watch and are optimistic about the future.



In addition, I am still sure that our application is really useful and has a place to be on the clock.



Anyone who wants to try the development for hours, I sincerely advise you to learn as much as possible and carefully read the recommendations.