Every single person on the planet launched an app for Apple Watch this week. OK, that may be a slight overstatement, but there are seriously, like, a cubic buttload of Watch apps out there. Following
is a quick, and far from exhaustive, roundup of some new apps in the news, sports, and magazine media categories.
Today The New York Times unveiled two free apps for Apple Watch: the
first, called simply The New York Times on Apple Watch, offers alerts for breaking news and one-sentence stories tailored for the small screen. The second, NYT Cooking, automatically opens to whatever
recipe the user most recently viewed on their NYT Cooking app for the iPhone. It also allows users to search the NYT recipe archives via voice commands. Users can then handoff the recipe to their
iPhone for cooking or shopping.
Also this week, The Guardian launched Moments, an Apple Watch app that users can customize to get, for example, summaries of the top story of day,
breaking news alerts,and updates from live blogs the reader has followed on the Guardian app. That includes sports updates.
Moments also showcases highlights of the best photos of the
day, the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast, music and film reviews, and life and relationship advice. Like the other Apple Watch apps, Moments allows you to hand off whatever you’re
interested in to your iPhone for in-depth reading.
Time Inc. launched two Apple Watch apps for Time magazine and Cozi. The newsmagazine’s new app translates its daily
newsletter, “The Brief,” into top headlines and compelling photos, with options to hand off to read the full article or listen to an audio version of The Brief. The Cozi Family
Organizer’s Watch app allows users to manage calendar events and grocery lists directly from the device, so they don’t have to get out their iPhone.
The NBA has also released a
version of its Game Time app for the Apple Watch. The Game Time app offers game-by-game details, real-time scores and scheduling information through Glance, a quick overview function. A number of NBA
teams are also launching their own apps for Apple Watch.
Earlier this week, ABC News debuted its Watch app, with features including “Stories in a Second,” news radio programming,
customized news updates enabling the user to follow particular topics and live video. The latter feature allows wearers to “hand off” the video from their watch to their iPhone for viewing
with the ABC News app.