Calling them “apps” is a bit of a misnomer because third-party apps don’t really run natively on Apple Watch – yet. They’re more like extensions or views of apps that are running on your iPhone, but I digress. Watch apps are a little laggy at launch – get used to looking at the spinning flower – but there are times when viewing little bits of information on your wrist can be useful, especially notifications. Most importantly, it doesn’t come with all the baggage and distractions that turn your iPhone into a blackhole of time that you can never get back. After spending the weekend with Apple Watch, here are a few of the initial standout apps.
Redfin, Zillow, Estately (in that order). I’m looking to purchase a house and it’s extremely helpful to open a watch app and see homes for sale near me. Alerts are what will separate the real estate apps – and none of them do it well currently. I’m stunned that Realtor.com got caught flat-footed and didn’t have a Watch app ready on Friday.
Hue. It’s extremely useful to be able to switch my home’s Hue light scene from the Apple Watch. It’s a purpose-built watch app that does just what you need it to do and nothing else.
Apple weather. Apple’s first-party weather app for Watch is my favorite for two reasons: 1) it’s linked from the weather widget on the watch face, and 2) it displays the forecast with one scroll of the crown. Dark Sky has the best notifications and Weather Nerd has the best data-rich screens.
Cufflink browser bills itself as the first web browser for Apple Watch is simple and effective. Search with your voice and get a list of results. It’s a bit of a black box to me, but worked reasonably well.
Read on for 10 more Apple Watch apps that are worth a flick of your wrist.
TripIt, FlightTrack, Trip Advisor and Uber are extremely useful Watch apps for travelers.
Yelp and OpenTable are great for finding nearby restaurants and making reservations.
Robin hood is great for watching financial markets and monitoring a watch list. Etrade Mobile is my runner up.
Amazon let’s you search for items and order them from your wrist, which is flat-out dangerous.
Shazam is fun.
NYTimes, Circa and Digg round out my list.
There are a bunch of apps I’d love to see come to the Apple Watch (I’m looking at you Google Search, Sonos, DropCam and Nest!) but that’s a topic for another blog post.
What are your favorite Watch apps so far?
