But that's all about to change. The new software development kit (SDK) allows app developers to finally get access to those features: the accelerometer, force touch, microphone, speaker and video, heart rate monitor and digital crown. What these apps will be used for, well, that's up to whatever people can think up. Apple's Kevin Lynch demoed a VW app that lets you unlock your car and control the car's temperature from the watch, loading more quickly than any existing third-party Apple Watch app I've used. Another, from Vine, showed looping videos and audio on the tiny Apple Watch display.

This is a huge deal, Sure, a lot of these apps could still end up feeling weird, or pointless, or like novelties, but they should all work better, do more, feel cooler, Many of them, like fitness apps, will do things with the Apple Watch that you might have e reader iphone case thought were already possible -- companies like Jawbone and Fitbit, for instance, should be able to offer Watch-native versions of their health apps, Remote apps, games, calculators, voice memo apps., who knows? It should all be possible now, but we'll have to wait and see..

The big takeaway, though, is that the Apple Watch now has the runway needed for a real killer app -- something that was sorely lacking with the Watch's debut. We've become accustomed to Apple's annual operating system upgrade cycles -- that's really what WWDC is all about. But today's announcement of Watch OS 2 is something of a stunner in that it will be hitting about half a year after version 1. That shows a desire to advance the wheel of progress on Apple Watch, fast. But based on what was shown at the WWDC keynote, those promises seem backed up.

The bigger deal is "complications," Apple's system of serving up bits of info on the watch faces themselves (following in the tradition of the mini-dials and active calendars on analog watches), The current faces show weather, stocks, alarms, and a few other bits of info, but third party apps will be able to hook into these too, You'll be able to see sports scores from your wrist at a glance, Or tweets, Or whether your lights are on, A new added watch face function called "Time Travel" can be used to skip forward or back and see upcoming events, or previous ones, That type e reader iphone case of living timeline was cleverly employed by the Pebble Time watch, and Apple's using a different approach here..

There's more: a new mode when charging that turns the watch into more of a bedside alarm clock, and improved fitness app enhancements that can fold in data from other third-party apps on the watch. There are still some parts of the Apple Watch I'd love to see improved sooner or later. The most glaring is its one-day battery life, which still feels short. Apple today announced software tweaks to iOS 9 -- including a power save mode -- that the company claims will improve the battery life on existing iPhones; that's exactly the sort of improvement that should be fast-tracked for the Watch as well.