With watchOS 2, the Apple Watch comes into its own

The Apple Watch is easily the best and most successful smartwatch on the market, but since launch, it has had one glaring weakness: third-party apps. There are a lot of them (10,000, Apple says), but they would load slowly and didn’t really do much. None of them took advantage of the Apple Watch’s impressive hardware. That all changes with Apple’s watchOS 2.

I just wish I could tell you more about it.

I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch (gold finish over aluminum alloy, $399) running watchOS 2 for the better part of a week and while it is an improvement, there were virtually no third-party apps ready to test on it. Of Apple’s own Watch apps, only two — Stocks and Weather — are now “native," and I have to admit, the change wasn’t particularly noticeable. Read more...