Reinventing news for the Watch
The Apple Watch is not just a smaller screen with shorter content. The best Watch apps are connected to the world around you. You can discover when it’s about to rain, find the nearest public transit, call an Uber and open the door to your hotel room.
After a few days of wearing the Watch, NY Times’ Farhad Manjoo said it’s “like a natural extension of my body — a direct link, in a way that I’ve never felt before, from the digital world to my brain.” That sensation is amplified when the Watch is contextually aware of things around you.
That awareness can also apply to news. Remember the last time you heard lots of sirens, saw a large column of smoke or felt the ground shake. Depending on the event, you either experienced a mild curiosity or a burning need to know what’s happening nearby.
Over the past year we worked hard at Breaking News to be the first app to meet that need, both on your phone and now on your wrist.
Like a Breaking News Sensor
Humans are wired to want to know what’s causing commotion near us. The closer we are to a big story that just happened, the more urgently we want to know about it. In many cases, you may not even know something is happening in the first place.
Our new Apple Watch app is much like a sensor for breaking news. If a major story breaks nearby — like a mass shooting, building collapse, train derailment, etc. — you’ll receive a “proximity alert” on your Watch moments later. If it’s a smaller story, you can quickly tap into the app to see what’s happening with a glance.
Earlier this week, we sent a proximity alert to Goldsboro, NC after a shooting on a community college campus.
Technically, your Watch can’t detect news around you, but it certainly acts and feels like a sensor on your wrist. We’re now publishing several hundred updates a day in real time — mostly Tweets from our tipping partners around the world — that are only visible if you’re near the story in question, even when you’re traveling.
The faster you find out what’s happening, the more likely you can avoid disruption, minimize anxiety and alert other people who need to know.
An Innovative Way to Tip
The world is a big place, and sometimes Breaking News doesn’t know what just happened near you. So we created an experimental feature that makes it easy to tip us with a story from the Watch — without telling us the story.
A view of test pings coming into the Breaking News publishing platform.
Just a single tap of our tip button pings our editors with the town closest to your location. (It’s entirely anonymous even to us.) Then we check social media and news sources in the area. If we find any news, we’ll publish it to users who are nearby.
Rising Above Notification Overkill
In the first version of Apple Watch, every notification you receive in the phone version of an app will also appear on your Watch.
“We are about to experience a hyperdrive acceleration of notifications, propelling us to a crisis situation,” explains Steven Levy. “[But] done right, notifications are a wonderful Feed of Feeds, weeding out the stuff you really need to see from all the usual chaff in the stream.”
The Breaking News Watch app is decidedly simple. And incredibly fast.
Fortunately, people who use the Breaking News app already have unprecedented control of their notifications. Out of the gate, Breaking News sends fewer, faster alerts than other news apps, and everything we publish is tailored for quick glances. You can follow any of 45,000 topics and stories (i.e. Tesla, cybersecurity or Manhattan) and receive an alert the moment news breaks in one of your interests.
Whenever Apple offers more granular control of Watch notifications, we’ll provide even more flexibility between devices.
Just Version One
Like Manjoo at the NY Times, we’re taking the long view. The Watch has a steep learning curve and needs lots of improvements, but the potential is enormous. This is just version one, and we’re all learning at the same time.
One thing’s for sure: the best Watch apps will go beyond abbreviated versions of existing iPhone and iPad apps. They’ll be contextual experiences that connect with the world around you in simple, powerful ways.
(See also: At the Speed of Right)