Apple watch seems to have declined in use... I can see why companies don't want to put too much effort into supporting it.
Source please.
I don't typically see many good use cases for running your own apps on the watch but there's many medical/fitness applications for the data itself.
My watch only has a few apps outside of fitness and alerting, everything else gets deleted. I found Audible and podcasting apps useful.
I think the first generation of Apple Watches were woefully underpowered for what they pitched as a development platform. The resources were very limited. Developers had to nail optimizations, and that was a shock in today's world where too many developers just npm install or pip3 install their problems away. It's very telling that early on, despite having a ton of apps, the fastest, most stable ones were the included ones by Apple and Google Maps.
The result were a ton of slow, crashy apps with poor connection reliability. Users, myself included, got pissed, blamed the apps, and developers just said this wasn't worth it.
> Apple shipped 7.6 million smartwatches worldwide in the first quarter of 2020, according to recent data from Strategy Analytics, an increase of 23% compared to 6.2 million in the first quarter of 2019. As such, Apple now claims 55% of the smartwatch market, representing a slight increase from the 54% it controlled in the same period one year ago, according to the research firm. [0]
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-watch-sales-numbers-st...
Also: https://www.statista.com/chart/15035/worldwide-smartwatch-sh...
I've had both a Polar and Garmin watch and neither were close to my Apple 3 for GPS accuracy or heart rate. My wife has a 2020 Garmin and we stand around waiting for her watch to get all of it's "bars"
* The 245 locks GPS really, really fast. I never have to wait for it. Much, much faster than my older 630. The Apple Watch doesn't even tell you if it has locked a signal. I think it would lock fast if I had my phone with me, since it would use the phone's GPS to save watch battery, but I think it would be confused if I left my phone in the house while stepping out the front door for a run.
* The 245 has physical buttons that reliably work with sweaty fingers in the summer and with gloves in the winter. So many times I couldn't stop a workout on the Apple Watch because of the swipe needed.
* Display is always on, no need to raise my arm directly in front of my face to turn it on. Too many times I had to raise or twist my arm multiple times to see my pace with Apple.