Apple Bans Time-Telling Apps From Apple Watch

When it comes to telling the time with an Apple Watch, there’s only one king of the roost so far as the company is concerned, which means any other developers trying to enter the App Store with watch apps for the Apple Watch will get roundly rejected.

As you might recall, the Apple Watch is, at its heart, a device designed to tell the time, among a few other bits of glitzy technology. Which means the company doesn’t want any interlopers trying to horn in on its product’s primary function, and as such, has given notice to developers that their time apps aren’t welcome, reports 9to5Mac.com.

The company added a new guideline to the App Store Review Guidelines, as the first clause to single out Apple Watch development.

Basically if your app is designed only to tell the time, and that is it, it can’t be included as a Watch app. As seen in Section 10.7: “Watch Apps whose primary function is telling time will be rejected.”

This had been the case early on for developers, but adding it to the guidelines makes it an official policy, 9to5Mac notes.

If you’re already sick of the face options for your Watch, Apple could be rolling out more first-party face options eventually, as indicated in the device’s Help guidelines:

“Apple Watch includes a variety of watch faces, any of which you can customize to suit you. Check frequently for software updates; the set of watch faces that follows might differ from what you see on your Apple Watch.”

Apple says it will reject Apple Watch apps that just tell the time, more first-party faces may be coming soon [9to5Mac.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist