You’ve gotten hold of an Apple Watch, but what do you do with it? That’s the question for brands eyeing up the next big tech platform. Do people want to read on it? And if so, how do you tell a story on a screen barely bigger than a 50 pence piece? The New York Times could have the answer.

While competitors like Flipboard and Facebook focus on algorithms to decide what stories people see in their feeds, Apple News is taking a different approach. The app from the tech giant is hiring editors to curate content, hoping that a human touch will make all the difference.

Today’s news outlets are like Twitter feeds; filled with short articles to quickly read, but rarely revisit. Coda Story is different. It offers a thematic approach to news stories, analysing all the major events as they unfold. But what’s the point of long form articles if no one wants to read them?

SmartNews might look like any other news aggregator. But its sophisticated engineering is making it an addictive pastime for readers on the go. The app is already the number one news app in Japan, and now it's making inroad in the US, where it has more than a million users.