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iWatch
Two dozen apps will be available in the new Apple Watch
In a demo of Apple Watch on Tuesday, Kevin Lynch, an Apple vice president who worked on the device´s software and user interface, showed two dozen third-party app icons and a few screenshots of apps. However, Lynch and CEO Tim Cook, stopped short of saying just how many apps Apple Watch will have when it goes on sale in early 2015, at a starting price 270 euros (249 dolars) |
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In his demo of Apple Watch, Lynch showed slides of an American Airlines app that displays a digital boarding pass, a Major League Baseball app that will let you keep up with sports scores, and a Pinterest app that will give you directions to pinned locations.
There was also an app from BMW that will let owners see the charge level of their electric cars and offer directions to their parked cars. Lynch said that Starwood Preferred Hotels is building an app that will let its customers unlock hotel room doors by waving their Apple Watch in front of their room doors.
Apple Watch is both a smartwatch and a fitness band, so there will be health apps too. A Nike+ Running app will let users challenge their friends to a run. And Apple has built its own Fitness app that monitors all your activity and movement throughout the day, and a Workout app that lets you set specific goals for activities such as cycling or running.
Default Apple-built apps that iPhone users are used to will be also available such as Siri, music, weather, calendar, iTunes, photos, passbook, maps, timer, settings, messages and even a built-in phone dialer app.
Apple Watch has to be connected to an iPhone to use all of these apps, and it works with the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6 and 6 Plus — more than 200 million of which have been sold. Apps will be crucial to Apple Watch’s success. Phil Schiller said Tuesday there are now more than 1.3 million apps available in the iOS App Store. The diversity and quality of iOS apps are a major reason why the iPhone and iPad have become such blockbusters.
With that in mind, Apple also announced a software development kit called WatchKit that developers can tap into ahead of the device’s launch next year. Fortunately for Apple, the competition isn’t that far ahead just yet. There are currently only a couple dozen Android Wear apps available in the Google Play app store.
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