Apple Watch video tutorials



There are not yet too many valuable video tutorials out there for Apple Watch development but I am going to share my feedback below about the top ones I found available.

The Developing for Apple Watch First Look course at Lynda.com is a short course (2.5h). It is a low cost option, if you have a monthly paid membership. The course barely scratches the surface of Apple Watch development and there are no assignments to do.

The WatchKit Series video tutorial at RayWenderlich.com is another low cost option for which one needs to have a monthly paid membership. The course duration is also below 3 hours. There are short challenges however at the end of few of the lessons.

The Complete Apple Watch Developer Course and the Apple Watch - go from Newbie to Pro by building 15 apps course, both at Udemy.com are very detailed courses that contain many hours of video content. The cost is the highest amongst all the courses: $199 each. At the end of each section there is a short quiz but I was hoping to also see some assignments for that price.

Finally, I left the Apple Watch Course from Bitfountain.com at the end of my survey because there is a lot to say about it. Just like the Udemy course, the Bitfountain course also contains hours and hours of video content. The huge advantage though is that the price is only $99 and you can even get it at a discounted price on special occasions. The course is taught by Eliot Arntz, the same great teacher we’ve met in other iOS courses in the past. Eliot makes himself available for course related questions on various media channels such as Twitter, Facebook or even by email. Another great advantage is having challenges throughout the course so you can practice the concepts you learned. An outstanding feature that should be mentioned is that the course is updated as new versions of the SDK or Xcode are released. At the time of writing this review the Xcode version Eliot used was 6.3.1 while the latest one is now 6.3.2 (only a couple of weeks behind)! What I always liked about Bitfountain courses is Eliot’s modular approach at presenting new concepts. He first starts with explaining the Apple Watch architecture, then continues with introducing the UI elements in great detail (Labels, Buttons, Switches, Sliders). He then continues with positioning of the UI elements in the storyboard and using of the Interface Controller. In the next chapter we are building a complex music app using the WatchKit and AVFoundation frameworks. We then proceed to a more advanced task list application that uses Core Data and table views. In the final project we build a weather app using Core Location, MapKit and accessing an external API for the weather data feed. I’m very happy to have chosen Bitfountain’s course as my main go-to source of information about WatchKit as well as about iOS. Without any doubt, this course is offering us the best bang for the buck!