Apple Watch Developer Suite WatchKit released

Apple is online with development tools WatchKit for Apple Watch developers. From this tool and related documents, the Verge found some important details.

Apple Watch can hardly be used independently

According to the developer documentation, developers need to develop Apple Watch applications based on existing IOS applications. In addition, the documentation suggests that Apple Watch apps should be a complement to IOS apps rather than a substitute. "If you estimate that the interaction in the IOS (iPhone) application will be up to a few minutes, the interaction in the Apple Watch application needs to be completed in a matter of seconds."

There will be native (Natvie) applications starting next year.

"Starting later next year, developers will be able to create completely native apps for Apple Watch," the document said.

Actual resolution of two sizes Retina display

Apple Watch offers 38mm and 42mm versions of two sizes, with resolutions of 272 * 340 and 312 * 390,ppi slightly different, respectively, 302 and 291. The transverse longitudinal ratio of the two sizes is 4:5.

There may be more sizes of Apple Watch

This is the Verge's guess. Because Apple Watch's interface element is similar to a responsive web design, it can be compatible with a variety of different size/resolution screen layouts.

There are two types of notifications to use

A simple notice called short look appears briefly when the user lifts his wrist, including the application icon, the name of the application, and the short notification content. If the user lifts the wrist long enough (no exact time is given in the document), it automatically switches to the long look notice. The latter provides more information and developer customization. When switching to Long look, the application icon and name are moved up to the top of the screen, and the wearer can slide the interface to complete the action defined by the developer or ignore the message.

No custom gestures

The gestures available in Apple's Watch are tightly restricted: slide vertically to scroll through content, slide across pages, click to select, Focus on (Force touch,hard-pressing) to open the menu, and rotate the crown to scroll through the page at a faster rate. In addition, the left row from the edge of the screen returns to the previous page or parent directory, and the Glance view is opened from the edge.

For a definition of the key hit (Force touch,hard-pressing)

Focus on the screen as the Apple Watch system-level gesture is used to open a simple menu. This menu contains one to four options and supports AirPlay.

Map controls are not interactive

The map controls that developers can use cannot interact with the user, except that they are basically fixed pictures in addition to the red, green, violet, and custom images. Users cannot drag directly into the space to view the surrounding content, but clicking the control will open the Apple Maps application.

Can't play video

Applications can cache up to 20M of pictures, all content must be read/transmitted from the IPhone at the first time. However, developers can use a series of existing images to configure a simple animation supply to load (like GIF). Apple Watch does not support video storage and playback, which is relatively reasonable given the limited screen resolution.

New fonts designed for Apple Watch

The new font "San Francisco" is built into the Apple Watch for small screen typography and interactivity, for free use by developers. New fonts compress complex letters (such as "G" or "Y") to save vertical space in large-font typography; The small font size will allow more space between the strokes to ensure that users see the bottom of the user's identification costs, while the size of the punctuation is also relatively large. When the font size or text area changes, Apple Watch dynamically adjusts the character weight and font size to ensure the best reading effect.

The new fonts are divided into "Regular" and "Display" (Should resemble "Regular" and "UI" of common fonts). According to the documentation, the developer needs to switch between the two modes according to the actual size in use.

Interestingly, the first Apple-built font, once associated with the Macintosh, is also called San Francisco.