Watch apps worth making and the enterprise

Everyone, even Apple, still seems to be trying to figure out what people want or need to do on their wrist. Prominent WatchKit developer David Smith muses:

What doesn’t work is easiest to say. Apps that try to re-create the functionality of an iPhone app simply don’t work. If you can perform a particular operation on an iPhone, then it is better to do it there. The promise of never having to take your iPhone out of your pocket just isn’t quite here yet. The Apple Watch may advance (in hardware and software) to a point where this is no longer true but the platform has a ways to grow first.

In response, Federico Viticci:

[…] As I tweeted yesterday, my favorite Watch apps aren’t trying to mimic iPhone apps at all. If the same task can be completed on the iPhone, I don’t see why I would try on a smaller, slower device.

Something you might not hear elsewhere: I’m rather interested in the possibilities of fleets of watchOS devices in enterprise. I’ve heard of a real, albeit crazy, case of a company deploying a fleet of iPhones that workers wear on their wrists to inform them of certain events as they happen. Of course, the Apple Watch would be perfect for this, but it’s been billed and tooled to be such a personal device, I don’t think the platform is quite ready for enterprise needs like multi-user of deploying many of them.

But perhaps one day.