Over the course of the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about the Apple Watch. I don’t know what exactly triggered this line of thought, but I’ve found Apple’s most personal and healthiest device yet pushing its way to the front of my mind more often than not. One night a few days back, I had an epiphany. Despite the fact that Apple should make the Apple Watch available to Android users, it’s never going to happen.
Once upon a time, I was an Android user after many years on iOS. I had a desire to see what it was like on the other side. One of the things I did during this time was get a smart watch that ran Android Wear, which later became wearOS. I also picked up a Samsung Galaxy Watch Active, which ran Tizen. In and of themselves, neither of these watches were bad…but they were no Apple Watch. What was it that was holding them back? The software.
I could probably write an entire thesis about the drawbacks of each of the Android wearable operating systems. There’s watches that were just announced that run a new hybrid operating system that’s a combination of wearOS and OneUI…I’ve seen the press say that this will give Apple Watch some serious competition on the Android side of things.
The truth is at this point, I don’t see there being an Android wearable that can equal or succeed the Apple Watch. Apple’s device is just too damn good. I really believe that if Apple chose to make their watch compatible with Android devices, they’d make bank as Android users would hopefully flock to the wearable that has the best software, fitness tracking, and user experience. It would be a win-win situation.
But Apple’s ecosystem is what stands in the way of that.
This is what I realized the other day: the Apple Watch is so reliant on iOS that making one that works on Android would be “impossible”. I use quotes around that word because if Apple wanted to invest the time, money, and person-hours into ripping every iOS reliance out of the watch and replace it with an Android equivalent, they could. They’re big enough. But the reality is that the job would just be too large to make it worthwhile.
Apple would have some hard choices to make for users as well — choices that Android users wouldn’t want made for them. I send a lot of messages from my Apple Watch. It’s easy enough as the app is the same on the device on my wrist and the one in my pocket, but Android doesn’t have that simplicity. Sure, Android Messages (I think that’s what it was called) is the default (I’ve heard this is true on Samsung devices now too), but that doesn’t mean every user chooses that app. Some use Samsung Messages. Others, who like to live dangerously, like to funnel all their texts though Facebook Messenger. There’s just too many choices for Apple to make an adequate choice for everyone.
The same with music, reminders, photos, calendars, and health. For any of those given categories (save for music), the corresponding iOS app isn’t available on the Google Play Store and the choices users make will be too varied.
But Apple Watch’s reliance on the iOS framework goes even deeper. What about a virtual assistant? There’s currently no way to install Siri on an Android device and I can’t imagine that Apple would bother to make a Siri app availability on the Play Store. As much as I do love Apple, I’ll be the first to admit that Siri sucks compared to Google Assistant. The difference, to me, is night and day.
But the biggest holdup on getting the Apple Watch to work on Android are the apps themselves…or more specifically, third-party ones. Remember, getting additional apps onto Apple Watch is impossible without Apple’s App Store. While I’m not 100% sure how app downloading works on a cellular Apple Watch that is set up without the owner of the watch having a phone, I can imagine that needing to replace the App Store with the Play Store on the device (and getting iOS developers to upload to the store) is a pretty tall order.
All of that combined tells me that despite wishes by some, there’s no way Apple is putting Android support on the Apple Watch anytime soon, if at all.
What do you think of Apple’s current product line up? Is there something you’re excited for or hopping to see announced? Sound off down in the comments below!
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Dan Stransky 