Last year the Apple Watch outsold the like of Rolex to become the biggest selling watch of the year. Which is pretty astonishing for a product that has only been on the market for three years and even more so when you consider Apple is not a watchmaker.
It could well be that it is no longer about aesthetics for the watch and its future is 'smart' and IoT. Your regular Rolex isn't going to come with an array of apps for fitness, weather, or organising your workloads and so on, so the Apple Watch is the smart choice indeed.
Since its release, Apple has added more and more apps to the Watch for business professionals. Whether you need the best tools for business productivity, or just catching up on the latest headlines, we've put together a comprehensive list of the best currently available.
There is a range of great apps to get you started or even bolster your line-up, with the Apple Watch increasingly being used in all walks of life, from filling invoices to tracking your workout.
IFTTT
Publisher: IFTTT
Price: Free
IFTTT is perhaps the most well-known automation app for setting up processes around your smart home and, of course, your life in general. It uses Applets to trigger the automations (called Recipes by IFTTT), so you don't have to lift a finger.
Many automations for various tasks have already been created by the IFTTT community and integrate with a huge array of apps (600 to be precise) including Gmail, Spotify, YouTube, Google Calendar, Tumblr, Medium, Pocket, Square, eBay, Giphy, Automatic, Fitbit, Withings, littleBits, Google WiFi, Evernote, Reddit, Digg, Skype, Slack, LINE, MailChimp, Salesforce, Todoist and devices such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Nest, Philips Hue, as well as your iPhone itself.
IFTTT's Watch app also integrates with the Health App so you can track your activity and habits throughout the day, measuring your vital signs and combining them with your other apps and devices to offer a complete lifestyle management solution too.
Because the app works seamlessly with the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant, you can use your voice to trigger app actions, control devices around you and generally make your life a whole lot easier.
Calcbot 2
Publisher: Tapbots
Price: Free
Calcbot 2 is a calculator and unit converter in one, and definitely worth considering in light of its easy-to-read history tape, intuitive conversion, expression view, and plenty more features.
The History Tape is an especially intuitive addition as it records every calculation the app processes, enabling users to refer back to those made frequently or refer to calculations at a later time. Expressions View, meanwhile, allows users to see everything that has been typed so they could, for example, remind themselves of what has been previously entered if they have forgotten.
This highly functional iteration can perform basic calculations, calculate tips, conversions, and even split the bill at a restaurant, and also features automatically updating currency conversion rates, can also convert any calculation across more than 500 units, in 22 separate categories.
iTranslate
Publisher: iTranslate
Price: Free
iTranslate has been ported to the Apple Watch and it's a must-have download if you often travel abroad or need to converse with people in foreign languages.
The app is not only lightning fast at translating sentences and text in more than 100 languages, but 16 of these can be used while offline too, meaning you don't even need to be on a data network to use it (great if you're travelling and don't want to drain your data or your battery).
Translations can either be presented in text format or voiced in the correct pronunciation so the speaker can read it out. You can also speak to the Apple Watch and it'll pick up your speech.
If you don't travel often, you can still use iTranslate to view international website content in your native language, which is a particularly useful option if you frequently need to keep on top of international news headlines.
You will need to pay for in-app purchases for some of the more advanced features, but even the basic version should satisfy your every language need, right from your wrist.
Evernote
Publisher: Evernote
Price: Free (In-app purchases for premium features)
Evernote for Apple Watch ensures you can stay completely up to date with all your to-do lists simply by glancing at your wrist. You can see what's upcoming, what needs doing further ahead and you can also add new lists with a few taps. Everything is synched instantly between your other devices, including your computer, smartphone, tablet and the web.
A big part of Evernote is also the ability to collect snippets of information from other sources including websites, your own photos, PDFs or other files. On the Apple Watch, you can take this one step further by using dictation to create new notes or search through all your notes using the power of voice.
1Password
Publisher: AgileBits
Price: Free (Watch subscription of £7.99 required)
Our top security app pick for mobile and desktop has come to the Apple Watch and just like the larger-scale versions, it makes managing your passwords for absolutely everything a doddle. It works alongside the iPhone’s TouchID and compatible logins are simple to add – just tap the ‘Add to Apple Watch' option when it’s shown.
Everything will stay secure too, because as soon as you take the watch off, 1Password will lock, meaning if anyone wants to gain access to your bank of passwords, they’ll need your fingerprint or master password to unlock the app.
BBC News
Publisher: BBC
Price: Free (subscription required)
The BBC News app is probably the best Watch app to keep on top of all the current and breaking news stories on your wrist. You’ll get notifications when there’s a new breaking news story and it’s fully customisable so you can see the news that means the most to you instantly. Each story appears with the text and a picture and if you want to view the story in its full glory, you can Handoff to your device.
Dark Sky Weather
Publisher: Jackadam
Price: £2.99
Dark Sky Weather is a nifty little app that will provide incredibly detailed weather reports about your exact location, ensuring you don't get caught in the rain without a brolly. The app allows you to create custom alerts for things like severe weather warnings or dangerous conditions, and will even tell you when the next rainfall will be, and for how long. It features a gorgeous UI that fluidly tracks weather patterns and will provide essential information at a glance. It is a great companion to the Apple Watch and more intricate than the default weather app - though it does come with a price tag.
Publisher: Instagram/Facebook
Price: Free (subscription required)
Although as a visual-centric app, you may not think it would work on the small screen of the Apple Watch, Instagram is perhaps one of the best social apps to install on your device. The images are resized perfectly to fit on the watch’s small screen, without losing too much detail and your feed displays in all its glory. There’s the ability to like and comment on photos too -if only it supported uploads!
Invoice2go
Publisher: Invoice2go
Price: Free (subscription required)
With Invoice2Go on Apple Watch, you can do everything you need to do on the mobile version of the app, but from your Apple Watch, This includes creating price estimates, purchase orders and invoices, plus seeing who owes what to your small business. The information is presented in graphs and charts that are perfectly rendered for the small screen of the Apple Watch.
Microsoft OneNote
Publisher: Microsoft Corp
Price: Free
Microsoft’s premier note-taking app is among the first of its kind to be converted for Apple’s wearable. With OneNote for Apple Watch users can review their current to-do list on the miniature screen. Instead of offering an impractical writing pad, user can dictate notes directly to their Watch. Offering a simple combination of reminders at a glance and audio note-taking, OneNote is certainly among the more useful Apple Watch apps available.
PowerPoint Remote
Publisher: Microsoft Corp
Price: Free (subscription required)
If a smart watch is useful for anything, it’s controlling iOS PowerPoint presentations from your wrist. Forget the hand held clicker to shoot through slides, using your Apple Watch is way more efficient. PowerPoint Remote for Apple Watch allows you to navigate between slides, view the running time of your presentation to make sure you don’t overrun and more. Although it isn’t supported to control PC or Mac presentations yet, we think an update will be coming very soon indeed.
ProCamera
Publisher: Cocologics
Price: £3.99
There are so many photography apps on the Apple Watch, but ProCamera is our favourite because it’s so flexible. Although you’ll have to stump up £3.99 to use it, the app gives you more control compared to Apple’s own camera remote. On top of remote trigger, ProCamera also features external viewfinder preview, photo preview and timer, plus you can programme how many photos you want to shoot and the length of the timer display.
Runkeeper
Publisher: FitnessKeeper Inc
Price: Free (subscription required)
Smart watches were perfectly designed to use as a fitness companion and Runkeeper is one of the top apps to get tracking your activity. You can start your workout/run straight from your device, so if you forgot your phone, no matter. When you’ve finished your run, you can view all the stats, including how much you’ve covered, your pace and how long you were running for. Of course, as soon as you sync with your phone, more detailed information becomes available.
Salesforce
Publisher: Salesforce
Price: Free (subscription required)
If you’re already using Salesforce in your organisation, it seems silly not to install it on your Apple Watch too. The app specifically developed for Apple Watch allows you to keep on top of your analytics while you’re on the go, displaying the data in dashboards, graphs or Handoff, meaning you can switch between viewing the data on your Watch or iPhone instantly. Salesforce for Apple Watch also comes with its own development platform so we expect to see a whole lot more integration with other business apps coming soon.
Slack
Publisher: Slack
Price: Free (subscription required)
As one of our favourite collaboration apps, Slack makes a great impression on Apple Watch, just as it does on desktop, mobile and web. You can view notifications when someone sends a message directed to you or in one of your private conversations, respond with Emojis or by using Siri dictations, or even create an entire new message from the Apple Watch’s screen. If you want to change to respond via your iPhone, Slack supports Handoff for seamless switching.
Streaks
Publisher: Zervaas Enterprises
Price: £2.99
Good habits are the foundation of healthy living and – many would agree – feeling happier. With time pressures and distractions affecting all our days, Streaks is the app on a mission to help nudge you in the right direction. The app allows you to assign six habits – such as reading, eating a healthy meal, and walking the dog – which it triggers reminders for on set days of the week. While some may find its feature set somewhat limited, this encouragement app has proved to be a firm hit with Apple Watch users.
Trello
Publisher: Trello
Price: Free (subscription required)
One of the few problems we found with Trello was that the mobile interface didn’t cut any features and trying to make the full features available to control on a small screen made it clunky to control. The company hasn’t made the same mistakes with Trello for Apple Watch though and it has been designed to do only what the watch can handle, including adding tasks, viewing due date alerts and changes and accessing cards. You are also able to respond to comments left by collaborators even from the small screen.
Weather
Publisher: Apple Inc
Price: Free (subscription required)
Like on the iPhone, there are so many weather apps to use on your Apple Watch, but the originally is definitely one of the best, giving you enough detailed information to help you decide whether to take a brolly to work with you or not. You can view what the outlook is likely to be in hour-by-hour format for each of your preconfigured destinations, which is certainly handy if you want to know whether the torrential rain will continue when you get to work too.
