Many question marks about the purpose of the device popped up shortly after the launch of the Apple Watch on April 24th. The App Store opened its gates containing over 3000 Watch enabled apps and people started asking: “What should I download, what’s the best app?”
I have a personal question for you: what’s your killer app on iPhone? Is it an email client for a remote work? Facebook app to stay up-to-date? WhatsApp messenger to chat with others? Or any camera app, Google Maps, even a game such as Clash of Clans or Candy Crush?
It’s highly possible that every person will answer the question differently. iPhone grew from “Phone, iPod and an internet communicator” to a multipurpose device which is a digital extension of our real everyday lives. And because Apple Watch is so tightly connected to iPhone and to our body, there won’t be a single killer app as well.
10x faster and simpler
We started thinking about Apple Watch apps back in January. The situation was familiar to us, we had the same “mental exercise” 18 months ago when we started the development for “Leap Motion” (which – by the way – failed to define its mass market purpose and sucked the virtual reality breast and hype around “Oculus Rift”).
We’ve found that using the Apple Watch app should be 10x more convenient than doing the same task on your iPhone. By convenient, we mean faster and easier. Lots of our ideas are already created by other developers, specifically “Citymapper” for public transport, “Knock” which is for unlocking the computer, and “Camera Remote” to mention just a few. All of them are about speed and/or ease of use. Each user will find their own way about how to fit the Apple Watch into their own daily routine. My friend, Lubo Smid, loves the speed of Apple Pay. Filip Molcan appreciates the fact that he can leave his iPhone 6+ in his bag for most of the day and and happy that he can track his bike rides in “Strava” without taking the phone out from its waterproof case hidden in his bicycling jersey.
Why we created Arrive
I have to admit one bad habit: I’m often late whether its for a meeting, for dinner, for picking up my friends on the way to weekend races or whatever. Usually it’s not much, just 5 to 10 minutes, but I just can’t make myself leave the office or home early enough to arrive on time. The thing is, I also hate to make other people feel bad. You probably think that this doesn’t match my bad habit well and you’re right. We assume there are plenty of people like me and for that reason we’ve created Arrive as our first Apple Watch app.
Arrive lets you privately share your location with friends and family. You send a unique map link by SMS to a selected contact and the recipient can view your location in any browser: on Apple Watch, iPhone, Android or even on the desktop computer. Arrive delivers peace of mind and I believe it’s better than repeatedly texting or calling and asking how much more time will it take me to get to the meeting.
Time to time I used an app called Glympse, which has a similar functionality but a different approach. When I’m late, I’m horribly stressed. I rush to close the time gap and it’s an adrenaline race against time as well as bad conditions in regards to traffic jams. In comparison with Glympse, we’ve designed Arrive with simplicity in mind. Just core functionality, big buttons and no unnecessary settings. I have to be able to share the location with shaking cold sweaty hands while running to the bus through a massive crowd of pensioners. It doesn’t matter if Arrive will be a massive success or not as I’ve created my own killer app. My wife stopped asking me where I am and the kids are now waving at me from the balcony when I arrive home because they have fun tracking my “red dot” on the map.
If any Android user or Watch hater will ask you about the “killer app”, tell them to dig deeper in the App Store and try some different stuff. There isn’t just one universal app for all which will justify the existence of the Apple Watch.
Arrive on the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arrive-private-gps-location/id981504763?ls=1&mt=8
