That's a huge amount of data & images to throw down a narrow pipe to the watch. It kind of looks like it goes agains Apple's stated policy for watch apps which is to keep it simple, lightweight, and fast. I haven't used this app on the watch yet so I can't speak for the speed in loading the images.
@paranoidroid, you mention that it was an engineering challenge to address performance. Do you think people will have the patience to wait for your images to load? All I hear right now about third-party watch apps is how slow they are and how people are deleting them because of this.
@fbara It's not nearly as data heavy as the app screenshots from iPhone & iPad would suggest however there are a handful of optimizations done to make performance on par or better than other third party watch apps. The imagery data loads asynchronously from the main interface and comes in quite fast in practice. I've found the main issue with third party watch apps is load times and not as much bandwidth for data. If you've tried out the Instagram Watch app, the app loads the full screen images very quickly after the initial launch.
Hey Product Hunt! I'm a independent app developer and just released Living Earth for Apple Watch.
Living Earth is a world clock and weather app with live satellite cloud imagery, an accurate rendition of our planet, and dynamic notifications of tropical storms. It supports over 3+ million cities (over the 300 or so built in cities on iOS and Apple Watch) and syncs between Living Earth for iPhone, iPad and Mac. I think it works really well in the watch use case, and is also fun and well designed.
The app for Apple Watch was an engineering challenge for performance as many layers of data needs to be rendered to give the accurate depiction of our planet and sent to the watch. The design was optimized for how little time people are expected to spend in watch apps and I hope some of the unique design aspects such as colored temperature bars help give a quick visual picture of hourly or week weather trends. Thanks and let me know if there's any thoughts or questions!
Living Earth has become my go-to weather app on both iOS and Watch. It's well thought out and concise. Has everything I need on launch or one tap away. It manages to be information dense while being gorgeous at the same time.
Living Earth for Apple Watch
Living Earth for Apple Watch
AR Fidget Spinner
Living Earth for Apple Watch