Coders – Episode 8: Developing for the Apple Watch; Microsoft Build Summary

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This week on Coders I speak with Brian Mueller, the developer behind the Carrot line of apps for iPhone and Apple Watch. His line of apps are named Carrot from “carrot and stick,” and the humorous content in the fitness, to-do and weather apps have garnered some success for the screenwriter-turned-developer. His latest achievement includes being one of the apps available during the launch of the Apple Watch. He discusses what is needed to create Apple Watch apps.
As Brian notes, Apple Watch apps are created using Xcode, but he recommends testing them on real hardware. The simulator doesn’t accurately reflect real world performance, given the limits of the hardware. Also, the Watch lacks a native SDK for now. This should be available at some point, enabling apps to run entirely on the Watch — but for now they must complete a circuit between iPhone and Watch. In essence, the Watch is just another screen to display iPhone data.
Watch the video for highlights of Microsoft’s Build conference, but one that bears particular note for mobile developers is the release of Visual Studio for Mac and Linux, which allows Android and iOS apps to be ported with relative ease. That “relative ease” will no doubt be tested as this “Studio lite” version rolls out to testers and developers see how easy it is to port their C++/Java (for Android) or Objective-C to deploy Windows apps.