Apple Watch 8 Spiel: From Perspective of Super App Supports
Apple Watch 8 came out in 2022, and with that, it would render this post out-dated soon as it is published. My point here has little to do with the hardware changes that were made 3 years ago, or the watchOS that were announced 3 years ago. In fact, during those time, I learned it the hard way that I prefer to have biometrics on the physical machine, instead of using Apple Watch to log me in.
In South Korea, where I am at, there are some super-apps you must have, preferably more than one, but at least one, to be part of “normal” society. For those who are not familiar with the concept of super-apps, allow me draw an image. Imagine if Google-like company has created series of apps: one for its bank, one of stock trading, one for its payments, one for its taxi, one for its messenger, one for its search, one for map and navigation, and so on. Don’t forget some of the official documents and notifications (e.g. certified mail) can be sent via the apps. As some of the sci-fi fans have eloquently put it, Korea is a living technological megacorp depicted in most sci-fi novels.
This is where Apple Watch, and to some extent iPad, starts to have issues with settling down. iPad supports running apps with iPhone resolution apps on its bigger screen; developers would have to actively disable it to stop the app from running on the tablet. Whereas, for Apple Watch, developers have to actively develop an app for the tiny screen. It is entirely different UI, that, from my experience, Korean apps have difficult times adapting to. In most cases I’ve seen, they prefer to create a cross- platform UX, which would have made sense on similarly sized bar type smartphones. But on smart watches, optimizations of limited resources, including the screen real estate, are crucial to deliver the contents in concise manner. If anything, they had an impossible task at hand, and either they botched it or never bothered to look into it.
The other, bigger problem at hand is its integration to the general infrastructure. When I got my first Apple Watch back in America, my physician recommended I get one in hopes it would call emergency services (should it be necessary) and to be able to collect more health related data. As far as I am aware, Korean hospitals and physicians don’t use datas from patients’ devices. The only exception would be some scans and images forwarded from another medical facility. There aren’t any research programs I can volunteer into either, so there is no point in collecting the data aside for personal mementos. There are medical regulations to consider specific to Korea as well; even if the new Apple Watch which is to be launched today somehow carries more sensors, there is always a question whether or not it will be approved in Korea, let alone used by the real doctors.
Again, the interesting bit is how super apps reacted to the rise of smart medical devices. Some of the super app developers have tried to use health data for whatever purposes they can whip up: some connected it with the health insurance, some created Pokémon GO style ad campaign, some tried to sell their own smart medical devices that work with the app, and so on. One would imagine the developers would look into the existing player in the smart wearable, which definitely includes Apple Watch, to kickstart their opportunity, that wasn’t quite the case.
Because super apps support only the iPhones, and ones that did have an Apple Watch app required active connection back to the smartphone anyway, I ended up carrying both devices at all times for it to work. The other use cases I could find online were users who were tracking their outdoor activities. However, there are more affordable and/or more accurate wearable devices that can track activities and workout sessions. Not to mention, there is Apple Watch Ultra with more rugged specs.
The new Apple Watch 11 is around the corner. Hopefully Apple will also change the product numbering to match its operating systems. But ultimately, for Apple Watch to work in regions with super apps, I believe it has to be beefier — its own independent ecosystem away from iPhone. Right now, Apple Watch apps are often mere widgets or dumb terminals back to iPhone apps. There should be apps that can only run on Apple Watch, and it should have its own advantage of running on smaller, more portable devices. On a personal note, Apple Watch desperately needs a biometrics; entering PIN is not exactly the most exciting thing to do on a tiny screen.