Did the March Apple event deliver for Apple Watch owners?

Where’s the innovation? The latest Apple event has left me a little bit disappointed, but not for the reason you might expect. I was not hoping for an new Apple Watch. In fact, I hope the ‘Apple Watch 2’ is still many months away, since I don’t have any desire to drop another $600 at the moment. I just feel like Apple has put the Apple Watch on the back burner.

Leading up to the event, the flow of excellent apps released for the Apple Watch slowed to a trickle. This was understandable, given that we all thought that some major announcement regarding the Apple Watch might be coming this month. Not necessarily a new Apple Watch or even watchOS 3, but some kind of the change that would open things up for developers and spark new app development. But no. Tim Cook spent only a few minutes talking about the Apple Watch. New watch bands, great. They look nice and offer some new options for people getting bored with their old bands. A price drop on the Apple Watch Sport, also great, maybe. This may get the watch into the hands of more people. On the other hand, price drop might just mean a last-ditch effort to sell a product that’s not selling well.

Apple’s Woven Nylon bands are new and unique.

No new watch faces? That’s a disappointment. I think it’s safe to say that most Apple Watch users would like to see Apple release some new faces, or even better: open it up to developers and allow them to create third-party faces. There is money to be made if Apple would do either of these things. Many people are willing to pay a buck or two for cool new faces on their Apple Watches. If Apple plans to someday release new faces but only for buyers of the next Apple Watch, that would be disappointing.

No big new watchOS update? Sure, we got watchOS 2.2, but it seems to be pretty much just bug fixes. Even iOS devices got a neat new feature, Night Shift, in the iOS 9.3 update. But there was nothing new in watchOS that would change the way developers create new apps or help them make better, faster apps.

I do still very much love my Apple Watch, and remain hopeful that Apple has some plans to reveal soon that will renew general excitement about this product.

In the meantime, it’s up to developers to come with truly unique and innovative uses for the Apple Watch. If you are a developer with a terrific new app for Apple Watch, drop me a line, I’d love to hear about it.