Apple Watch app designers scramble ahead of launch

Apple has invited small groups of developers to its Silicon Valley offices to help them prepare their apps for its Watch, as it gears up for the launch at the end of this month.

Observed by security guards and instructed to cover up the cameras on their iPhones, a few dozen handpicked designers and engineers have each spent a day at Apple's labs in Sunnyvale, California to test their apps on the device. 

Thousands of developers are scrambling to finish their work before the first customers begin lining at Apple Stores to try out the Watch on Friday, when people can pre-order. 

Their creations range from exercise trackers and car-hailing services such as Uber, to a digital version of a painter's palette board and an app for sending a tweet to astronauts passing overhead on the International Space Station, all from a user's wrist. 

In addition to its own messaging and fitness services, Apple is hoping a vibrant App Store will help persuade customers to spend between $350 and $17,000 on the Watch, its first new device since the iPad. 

Developers say the technical and creative challenge is greater than when they had to rejig their iPhone apps for the iPad five years ago, due to the Watch's tiny screen and control scheme. 

However, due to the secrecy surrounding its launch, most developers have had to work on their apps without ever touching one of the devices, relying on a Mac-based simulator that Apple released as part of its Watchkit development tools last year.

Some developers are able to draw on their experience with other smartwatches, such as the pioneering Pebble or Google's Android Wear. Many are using much more rudimentary techniques, such as taping paper mock-ups to their arms, to figure out what might work best on the Watch's 38-42mm screen.

"Just from printing it all out and putting it on your wrist, you instantly realise, wow, this is a really small form factor," says Kyle Yugawa, mobile design lead at Strava, an app for tracking running and cycling. "It's hard to judge that if you're starting and ending [design work] on your computer."

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Even after the Watch has been unveiled, security at these sessions is said to be "immense", with each developer required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Apple declined to comment on the meetings.

App makers are betting that Apple will succeed where other smartwatch makers have failed to sell in the many millions. 

"Apple really thinks things through," says Azmat Yusuf, chief executive of Citymapper, a mobile guide to public transport. "As much as we would want to think twice about how much time and energy to spend on something before it's out on the market, it works so well with our use case." Citymapper's Watch app will give the wearer step-by-step navigation on buses and trains, and "tap" them on the wrist when they reach their stop.

Jamie Hull, vice-president of mobile products at Evernote, said creating a Watch extension to the note-taking app was a "medium-sized effort", even though her team had been thinking about it since before the device was unveiled.

Evernote for Apple Watch will allow users to dictate notes or search for previous entries. "It is more convenient with the Watch - you don't need to shuffle through your bag and unlock it to make it work," she says. "We are looking for ways to anticipate what you are looking for."

As with the iPhone, Apple lays down rules for how Watch apps should be designed, including warnings over how often an app should send a vibrating alert and other restrictions to preserve battery life. Some developers complain these are too prohibitive, but others welcome the guidance in this new field. 

"There are constraints that are put into developing for the Watch specifically so the user has a great experience, no matter what," says Mr Yugawa of Strava, whose app will show live information about a run or ride. "Having some of those priorities set for us [by Apple] is actually quite useful."

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