Stay On Target 1138

Some pilots, at the critical moment, switch off their targeting computer and go with their gut. Yours now tells the time — so maybe leave it on.

A wireframe tunnel. Red range lines closing in. A crosshair that locks on and holds. Stay On Target turns your Apple Watch into a 1970s vector targeting display, with the time underneath in a big angular red readout. It is, technically, a clock.

Spin the crown and the radio crackles — short pilot callouts, recorded for this app.

Tap the date and your week scrolls away into the distance as a text crawl: today, tomorrow, and every day after that with something on it. Drag it with a finger or spin the crown to move through at your own pace. Nothing booked? It says so, and it sounds pleased for you.

FOUR UNITS

• ANq 3.6 — the tunnel: receding frames and rays, a twelve-second loop of range sweep, lock-on and chevrons. Amber or phosphor green.
• T-s7b — the range grid: two gridded gates swinging through space, gold on crimson, a ship marker between them, contacts curving past. The gates fill with your rings.
• DS-1 — the orbital approach: a red planet edge to edge, a green moon coming out from behind it as your Move ring fills, stars lighting with Exercise, a reticle filling with Stand. Close everything and it locks on.
• YV-4 — the base tracker: the war room's plotting table. A planet dead centre, a tracker coming round it with a flashing red cone of sight that eats into the green as your Move ring fills, until it lands on your moon. Stand lights the rim scale, Exercise grows the moon.

Long-press for SYSTEMS to switch units. KEY shows what each readout means.

ON IPHONE TOO

The iPhone app is the console the display is mounted in: each unit on its own screen shape, with the date, clock, ring bars and your next appointment around it. Turn it sideways for the full console, or press FULL and keep only the display. The Mission Briefing crawl plays across the whole screen. One purchase covers both.

WHAT IT DOES

• Always-on display: the clock keeps time while the animation rests
• Amber or phosphor green on the tunnel — tap to switch cockpits
• Radio callouts on the crown — every unit has its own, and two of them read the dial to you — silenced with one tap when you're in a meeting and your wrist starts talking
• Mission Briefing: your week's appointments as a receding crawl — drag or spin to scrub through it
• Rings, steps, resting heart rate and last night's sleep, read straight off the watch
• 12 or 24 hour, whichever way you were trained
• The watch app runs on its own; the iPhone app is optional. No account, no setup
• Collects nothing. We genuinely have no idea who you are

Tip: Settings → General → Return to Clock → 1 hour. Now it stays up like a real watch face every time you raise your wrist.

Don't get cocky.

https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

THE CONSOLE

Stay On Target now has an iPhone app, included with the watch app.

The phone is the console the display is mounted in. Each unit gets its own screen shape: ANq 3.6 on a wide amber panel, T-s7b on a crimson screen framed in gold, DS-1 on the orbital screen with the pointed bottom, YV-4 on the round plotting table. Around it sit the date and clock (always on screen), your ring bars and your next appointment.

• The arrow keys switch units, KEY explains the readouts, RADIO plays the callouts
• Turn it sideways for the full console; press FULL for the display alone
• BRIEF runs your Mission Briefing crawl across the whole screen
• 12 or 24 hour, date order, audio and amber or green, set on each device

The watch app still runs on its own. The phone is optional, the way a good console should be.