TuneIn, Shazam, RunKeeper among latest apps ready for Apple Watch launch

By Roger Fingas

With Friday's launch of the Apple Watch just days away, major developers are still working to add support to their iPhone apps, some new examples being TuneIn Radio, RunKeeper, Shazam, JetBlue, and Instapaper.

The TuneIn Radio Watch extension lets users control playback and change stations, including by jumping to recent or related content. Listeners can also follow new stations and shows, or just check the active radio stream. The iOS app has tangentially gained support for CarPlay, Apple's in-car infotainment platform.

RunKeeper's Watch features primarily start, track, and finish a run. Users are alerted to workout milestones through notifications. The app's developers are meanwhile promising to keep notifications from other apps out of the way, while a run is in progress.

Music discovery app Shazam has, as expected, migrated its main function to the Watch, but has also incorporated support for secondary features such as lyrics and Auto Shazam, which will keep listening for tracks while the app is open. Glance mode displays recent song history, and Handoff can be used to follow up with features that don't work on the Watch, such as music videos or buying songs.

US airline JetBlue has implemented what it calls "day-of" Watch features, such as a flight countdown, a "smart" boarding pass, and a flight status Glance. The app has separately gained a "Fly-Fi" indicator for detecting in-flight Wi-Fi, fixes to Trip History, and a DirecTV schedule extension showing all channels.

Instapaper, the offline reading app, now has the option of launching text-to-speech for saved articles from the Watch. Once an item is finished, it can be archived, organized, or deleted via a Force Touch menu.

All five of the apps a free downloads and require iOS 7 or later, with the exception of Instapaper, which needs iOS 8.