[dabernathy89]

Their timeline is a bit unclear. They claim that in 2015 and 2016, they were denied outright. In 2017 they say that "Apple continues to make it challenging for us to deliver a workable streaming solution for the Apple Watch". Then in 2018 they say that "Apple finally allows enhanced functionality for the Spotify app on the Apple Watch".

[graeme]

Until watchos 5, 3rd party apps couldn’t do lte streaming. That said, lte was new in watchos 4, the tslk was that apple wanted to initially restrict it for battery life reasons.

Spotify could have made a watch app that provided controls and had offline somgs. They didn’t, and kept shutting down spps that did, or buying them and shutting them. This was a major sore point against spotify on the apple watch subreddit. Even now they’re dragging their feet, iirc.

[Kesty]

Their point is that Apple app could do that and it was unfair to block other apps to be able to do the same.

[graeme]

The watch is a new, battery constrained device. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to limit 3rd party apps for a bit while sorting out how to work with the size constraints.

I’m guessing apple will add lte support for 3rd party apps in watchos 6. Meanwhile, 3rd party apps have had the ability to make apps with offline support since June 2018. Most audio apps have added this.

Spotify....has not. What’s the holdup? Apple watch users are pretty frustrated with spotify: if all the other audio apps can do it, why haven’t they?

(Lte is an edge case: few watches have lte, and even fewer have an active lte plan. Offline audio is the main use case spotify still isn’t doing)