The Mandatory Apple Watch App in iOS 8.2 ⇥ arstechnica.com

Ars Technica’s Sam Machkovech (via Michael Tsai):

During Monday’s Apple press conference in San Francisco, Tim Cook announced that iOS 8.2 would immediately begin rolling out to compatible iDevices—as in, any device that could already run the original version of iOS 8. Along with expected bug fixes, the update’s biggest addition was support for the upcoming Apple Watch. It’s a fact that users are now being bonked over the head with thanks to the creation of a dedicated, mandatory app.

Machkovech also notes that owners of Android Wear or Samsung Galaxy Gear devices download an optional app to manage the device. This is pretty callous of Apple. It’s yet another app that you can’t uninstall, so it — like Tips, Newsstand, Compass, Game Centre, and perhaps Health and Podcasts — is likely to end up in a user’s junk apps folder. This seems like an awfully hard sell for a product that Apple is aiming to take a soft sell retail strategy with. It doesn’t even have a very pretty icon, either.

At least I’m running the 8.3 beta, so I don’t have to deal with it. Yet.