Uber has discontinued its Apple Watch app, telling customers to modify to its cellular app as an alternative. No extra hailing an Uber experience out of your wrist.
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Has Uber discontinued its Apple Watch app?
“Please change to the Person cellular app,” reads a grammatically incorrect message that greets the consumer once they open Uber for Apple Watch. “We now not supporting the Apple Watch app. Sorry for the inconvenience,” it continues.
It seems the app has been unavailable to obtain since round December 8. Furthermore, Uber for Apple Watch can also be at present obtainable to obtain from Apple’s App Retailer, however that is in all probability as a result of server modifications taking a while to propagate.
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
Curiously, Uber has not eliminated the Uber Apple Watch app from the App Retailer. The app continues to be capable of be downloaded and put in on an Apple Watch, however opening it up reveals a poorly-worded message about dropped help, ending with a tragic face emoji.
On the time of writing, Uber didn’t replace its help web site to mirror the change.
Why are some builders discontinuing Apple Watch apps?
Uber is simply the most recent main developer to drop help for Apple’s smartwatch.
Previously a number of years, main apps have stopped supporting Apple Watch with native apps. Among the well-liked apps that was once obtainable on the wrist-worn gadget however now solely supply help for notifications embody eBay, Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Twitter and Instagram.
In many of the instances, builders stated they noticed little exercise from their watchOS apps. Many app makers merely couldn’t afford to help Apple Watch whereas others have didn’t optimize their apps correctly for wrist computing. Restricted performance might be the explanation for the removing of Uber for Apple Watch—the watchOS app by no means supported Uber options similar to uberPOOL, ETA sharing or contacting a driver.
However there are additionally instances when a developer has pulled their Apple Watch app as a result of it was both outdated or used outdated APIs that Apple would quickly cease supporting.
One such case is the Google Maps app, which was unavailable on the wearable gadget for a interval till Google rewrote it from scratch to run natively on the watch.