Apple is opening the iWatch to third-party developers

Ahead of Tuesday’s big reveal of the much-anticipated Apple smartwatch, 9to5Mac brings us new details of what that iWatch might have on its homescreen: Wearable-optimized apps, downloadable from an iWatch section of Apple’s App Store. Hope the icons are legible on that tiny screen. Over at 9to5Mac, the steadfastly reliable Mark Gurman says that an iWatch-specific SDK was very recently handed out to high-profile iPhone and iPad developers. Gurman explains how the iWatch apps will cooperate with the wearer’s iPhone: The new SDK will likely have deep ties to iOS 8’s Extensions, HealthKit, and HomeKit APIs. Additionally, the Apple wearable device’s SDK will make good use of the new Continuity, Handoff, and Widgets features for iPhone users to be able to easily transfer content from the smartphone to the wearable and vice versa.

Apple’s upcoming wearable device, based on iOS, will run third-party applications and, furthermore, may come equipped with an App Store, according to two sources with knowledge of the new device. A small handful of high-profile social network and services companies with apps on the iPhone and iPad App Store have already been seeded with a pre-release version of the Apple SDK (Software Development Kit) for wearables under strict non-disclosure agreements. The SDK was seeded “very recently” to these developers, and Apple likely wants to demonstrate some third-party wearable apps at Tuesday’s event, according to one source. Apple, in the past, has provided select developers with early versions of SDKs in order to boast new apps on the keynote stage. For example, several apps from companies like AOL were shown off with the first public demonstration of the iPhone SDK, fancy gaming and drawing apps were demonstrated alongside the first iPad in 2010, and the iPhone 4S’s dual-core A5 chip was launched alongside a graphics-intense video game. The new Apple wearable will launch early next year, which will give developers of all kinds ample time to design, build, and polish their own apps by the time the new hardware actually hits the streets. The new SDK will likely have deep ties to iOS 8’s Extensions, HealthKit, and HomeKit APIs. Additionally, the Apple wearable device’s SDK will make good use of the new Continuity, Handoff, and Widgets features for iPhone users to be able to easily transfer content from the smartphone to the wearable and vice versa.