“Wouldn’t it be neat to have a web browser on my Apple Watch?”
No, no it wouldn’t. It’s a thought most smartwatch owners have had at one time or another — but in the end, we probably don’t want that.
Comex, a well-known jailbreak developer who went off to spend some time as an Apple intern before moving on to other projects, has whipped up a fleeting but seemingly functional example of what a browser might look like running on the Apple Watch — and… well, again: you probably don’t want this.
The web just wasn’t built for screens this small. It took years for smartphone browsers to become more usable than frustrating, and a lot of the usability gains there came from massive screen spec jumps. A 1.5″ smartwatch screen never becomes particularly web-friendly, no matter how many pixels you cram in that screen.
Alas, Comex makes no mention of how he got this up and running. Out of the box, running arbitrary code like this shouldn’t be possible — while a native SDK is inbound, only stuff built with Apple’s somewhat limited WatchKit framework is supposed to run on the device for now. Is this a subtle demonstration of the world’s first jailbroken Apple Watch?
Here’s the vid, as tweeted by Comex and spotted by 9to5mac (Speaking of usability: pardon the wonky tallness of the video; it was shot vertically, so there’s no easy way to embed it in a pretty way. For best viewing, consider fullscreening it):