Apple Watch: Woolworths takes a byte of latest wearable tech

THE familiar Woolworths logo is among the tiny icons of apps clustered on the Apple Watch home screen.

SEVENTY-NINE minutes into the launch of the highly anticipated Apple Watch this week, something unexpected occurred. Apple fleetingly displayed a familiar Woolworths logo among the tiny icons of apps clustered on its Watch home screen. The familiar curly green logo of the supermarket chain appeared for only a few seconds but was noted by several eagle-eyed participants.

Apple, despite its penchant for fanatical secrecy, had let a cat out of a bag. It turns out the Fresh Food People are indeed one of several Australian firms building apps for Apple Watch, but Woolies told us it was bound by a secret squirrel agreement not to spill details.

But it is clear from the features that some US supermarket chains, including the Indiana-based Marsh supermarkets, are incorporating into their apps that Watch has great potential for grocery shopping.

Understanding what Watch offers is a vital issue to resolve before you shell out $499 to $579 for Apple Watch Sport or from $799 to $1629 for Apple Watch. With deeper pockets you may be willing to pay from $14,000 for the 18-carat gold Edition. You’ll want to be sure that Watch offers functionality beyond duplicating the features you find on a phone.

The advantage a Watch has over a phone is that it is a hands-free operation. You don’t want to cradle your phone while pushing a shopping trolley and weighing vegetables or carrying a small child. Your Watch is literally at hand.

Marsh Supermarkets, which developed its app with mobile marketing firm inMarket, will combine Apple Watch with Apple’s iBeacons technology that detects and talks to nearby watches, near field communication systems for payments and Bluetooth for communications.

Creating a shopping list can be done more conveniently on a phone or notebook, but once complete and you’re in-store, the magic starts. The nearest iBeacon might detect your shopping items and alert you to when a product you want is nearby on the shelves. You’d get an alert on your wrist. This is guided shopping.

In what is a marketer’s dream, alerts about individualised specials might pop up on your Watch. These could be based on your shopping history, already collated thanks to supermarket loyalty schemes. Paying at the checkout is simply a matter of waving your Apple Watch over a terminal and invoking Apple Pay.

Australian app developers we spoke to say Watch has the potential to augment, rather than duplicate, a smartphone experience.

Chris Strode, founder of Invoice2go, an invoicing system targeting mobile traders, has been working with Apple on a smart watch app since November. He says only a few specific functions appear on Watch.

When, say, a tradesman appears at a job site, Watch will alert the person to start the job clock. Technically, Watch makes use of GPS co-ordinates to tell if a tradesman is on site. Another poke of the Watch face will stop the timer, allowing a worker to clock off.

If you forget to do this, the Watch app will realise you have left the job site and prompt you to stop the timer and send out an invoice.

Nick Maher, proprietary owner of TripView, which shows Sydney train, bus and ferry timetables in real time, has been working on an app that will use Apple Watch to display departure times of your train or bus.

You’ll still need to use the iPhone to nominate your particular trips. The Watch will show the next five departure times for predefined favourite journeys. Apple’s Glances feature will show departures times plus platform/location details.

Here, a poke at your Watch is easier than getting your phone out of your pocket and unlocking it and scrolling to the app, especially if you’re running to catch a train or bus.

It’s examples such as these that will define if Apple Watch is a step beyond a smartphone.