Thousands of Apps are Ready for Apple Watch

The Apple Watch requires an iPhone to fully operate, partly because the brains of apps will live on the iPhone. And as reported in March, the app shopping experience is a bit different for the Apple Watch. For third-party Watch apps, you will actually be downloading iPhone apps that have built-in “extensions” to support the Apple Watch.


In other words, you will look for Watch apps to download using the iPhone, not the Watch. Apple on Friday hit the switch for the Apple Watch app store. Apple’s iPhone customers can search for Watch-compatible apps by opening the Apple Watch app and selecting the tabs labeled "Featured" or "Search". The store currently contains several thousand apps.


Watch users can do a tremendous number of things from their wrists already. They can unlock Starwood hotel doors, read New York Times news headlines, shop, navigate the outdoors, check into Foursquare locations, stay on top of Expedia reservation updates, track packages, and many, many other things.


If that’s not enough, the IFTTT service (short for "If This Then That") just integrated the Do Button and Do Note apps for the Apple Watch, giving users access to as many as 170 more apps. According to an IFTTT rep, "people can easily run their favorite recipes with just one tap, right from their wrist."