You really have to want it: Developing on Apple pre-release software...

Given the current state of debugging WatchOS2 beta3, I've been reduced to printf debugging. Basically, try to figure out what might need to be shown and build big property panels that show a few values. From this try to figure out what is really going on. This is even more fun as the only reliable means of distributing this code to the hardware is via an archive-> ad-hoc deployment through iTunes to phone!

Recap:

• no debugging, resort to printf style debugging
• no simulator support of accelerometer so have to debug on the hardware
• no quick means of distributing code to hardware
• no reliable wifi on the phone -- so need to use cellular data
• often times this whole flow needs resets, restart, etc [i haven't had to do re-pairing lately]

I've gone through this a few times with Apple in the past, if you really want to get on a beta program be prepared to get creative. I'm fairly certain the lead for the rollup of all these features, has a thankless job; days of arguing with teams "you missed your date, and the workaround sucks".

I know this is pretty much the norm inside Apple. After all they are always working on the next version of something. I think, however, there are not too many folks inside Apple who are trying to use all the product -- sort of like an external developer would. They are big and compartmented. And a product tends to look like the organization that built it...

(Back in the day, I was 'tech lead' for a couple Sun Solaris releases; running around trying to corral a bunch of teams to make their dates.)