ecode’s already hosted a number of heavyweights at this year’s Code Conference, but Apple’s Jeff Williams was definitely one of the headliners. He took to the stage to speak with Walt Mossberg mainly about the Apple Watch and HealthKit, and while he didn’t reveal much — Apple’s
Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is only a handful of days away,
after all — he announced a few nuggets worth highlighting. First
up: Apple Watch sales. The company’s first wearable is “gathering
momentum” and doing “fantastic,” Williams said, but he declined to
provide specifics. (He told Mossberg that Apple would “rather spend time
making great products” than focusing on metrics, a possible — if
ever-so-slight — nod to the disappointing sales estimates.) Analysts peg shipments at about 2.5 million, far short of the five to six million units Apple ordered ahead of the Apple Watch’s launch in April.Williams was a little more forthcoming about a native SDK for the Apple Watch, which he revealed will drop a lot sooner than expected. A preview version will launch at WWDC, he announced, with a wider rollout to follow in fall. That’s surely welcome news for developers, who’ve by and large blamed the Apple Watch’s sluggish and buggy app performance on gimped access to the wearable’s hardware — right now, third-party Apple Watch apps can only stream information to the watch from a paired iPhone via Bluetooth, not run on the watch itself. The new development tools will not only boost performance by letting apps tap the Apple Watch’s silicon, but also allow them access to the watch’s bevy of buttons and sensors — the digital crown, speaker, plethysmograph, gyroscope, and heart rate monitor, among other accoutrements.
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