{"id":63295,"date":"2018-04-17T06:57:33","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T06:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=63295"},"modified":"2018-04-17T06:57:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T06:57:33","slug":"apple-watch-beta-may-hint-third-party-faces-later-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/apple-watch-beta-may-hint-third-party-faces-later-2018.html","title":{"rendered":"Apple Watch beta may hint at third-party faces later in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 18pt;color: #000000\">Apple Watch beta may hint at third-party faces later in 2018<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Stray lines of code in new Apple operating systems sometimes provide hints as to what the company is working on, and the latest watchOS 4.3.1 beta may have leaked something exciting: support for third-party Apple Watch faces.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">As discovered by 9to5Mac, the NanoTimeKit developer framework contains a message reading, \u201cThis is where the 3rd party face config bundle generation would happen.\u201d The language seems fairly clear, describing a not-yet-implemented \u201c3rd party face\u201d feature without further support in the beta.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Apple\u2019s decision to launch the original Apple Watch without downloadable watch faces was only a little less perplexing than its continued lack of support for the feature. Competing watches have supported third-party faces for years, generating robust and sometimes beautiful alternatives. The ability to customize a fully digital watch with a face of one\u2019s choice seemed like a given.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">However, Apple\u2019s limited face approach let it use new watchOS and hardware releases as upgrade incentives. Special faces are included with the Apple Watch Nike+ and Herm\u00e8s variants, but cannot be downloaded to otherwise physically identical Apple Watches.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Most watchOS 4.3 users today have access to 18 different faces, including Photos, which fills the screen with a static image of your choice from your iPhone\u2019s photo library. Users can also tweak \u201ccomplications\u201d \u2014 tiny on-screen elements containing numbers, text, or icons \u2014 to change, say, a persistent display of temperature to a remaining battery or alarm indicator. Apple has added several new faces to the Apple Watch with annual major releases of watchOS.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The prospect of third-party faces implies a watch face store, and if the App Store and iPhone ringtones models are repeated, an effort to sell rather than give away the next round of user-selected content. Should the feature debut, it is highly likely that Apple will treat the watch faces as miniature apps, complete with a new SDK for developers. Some have speculated that Apple will use third-party faces as a tentpole feature of watchOS 5.0, which is due in June.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">But well-known iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith cautioned this morning that the code string might not be what it seems. With Apple\u2019s annual developer conference WWDC less than two months away, we\u2019ll have a definitive answer on this soon enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 8pt;color: #000000\">Source:-https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2018\/04\/16\/apple-watch-beta-may-hint-at-third-party-faces-later-in-2018\/<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/apple-watch-beta-may-hint-third-party-faces-later-2018.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple Watch beta may hint at third-party faces later in 2018 Stray lines of code in new Apple operating systems sometimes provide hints as to what the company is working on, and the latest watchOS 4.3.1 beta may have leaked something exciting: support for third-party Apple Watch faces. As discovered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[131807,692,14505,12073,14823],"class_list":["post-63295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-watch-beta-may-hint-at-third-party-faces-later-in-2018","tag-latest-technology-news","tag-technology-news-headlines","tag-technology-news-today","tag-technology-news-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}