Developing for Apple Watch

Performance Concerns

The most fundamental differences between WKInterfaceTable and UITableView relate to the way row content is set up. The interesting thing about WatchKit’s approach here is that it’s in direct contrast with the way iOS does it, and yet UIKit on iOS works the way it does for performance reasons. You’d think the lowest-power device—Apple Watch—would have the most efficient API for table performance, but the needs are quite different.

Recall that every time a method is called in our WatchKit extension and the watch UI is updated, Bluetooth communication is happening between the watch and the phone. If WKInterfaceTable were to use the same API as UITableView, then the watch and phone would be in constant communication while ...