What you need to know
- Smoke is now available in the App Store.
- It brings Steam features to Apple Watch.
- No, you can't play Borderlands on your wrist.
OK, so people use Steam to download games on their Mac. They usually don't like steam, but it's what they have to use. So, they do. And now those same people can use it on their Apple Watch, too. Because why wouldn't they?
Smoke is a new Apple Watch app (via 9to5Mac) that brings store information, news articles, and your friends to your wrist. You can't buy games from the app, but you can see how much they cost and how well – or not – rated they are. Did I mention it's on your wrist?
Smoke is primarily an Apple Watch app that brings parts of Steam, the online video game store, to the Apple Watch! It aims to provide a simple user experience that gives users access to key information and statistics from both their own and their friends accounts.
- View the games you own as well as your achievement statuses and total play time
- View the store information for the games you and your friends own (Price, review and player numbers, genre etc.)
- See if your friends are online and the games they have recently played
- Find news articles for the games you own.
- Tap a news article to save it to your phone!
- Customize the iOS app by choosing the theme color and changing the app icon
- Share saved news articles with friends
Maybe those who rely on Steam for their gaming will make great use of an app like this. Maybe they won't. I don't know, but it's free so why not take it for a spin? It's available for download (opens in new tab) now with an in-app purchase offering customizable icons and more.
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
