The first round of Apple Watch apps weren't that great, but that's all about to change

When the Apple Watch arrived, it quickly became clear that most third-party apps were limited in their features, sluggish, and constrained by Apple's limitations on its Apple Watch developer platform, WatchKit.

Third-party apps on the Apple Watch are currently powered by the iPhone, but big changes are probably coming soon.

Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president of operations, promised at Code Conference that Apple would soon allow app developers to build native Apple Watch apps, which has been a chief concern for developers seeking to build richer apps that can accomplish more.

That means developers will be able to write apps that actually utilize all of the sensors within the Apple Watch, opening the gates for new features and better performance than the current crop of apps has to offer.

Jeff Grossman, co-founder and chief product officer of confidential messaging app Confide, said his team even held back some of its plans because they had to create the app without having full access to everything inside the watch.

"We're looking forward to that, as there's definitely limitations involved when we built Confide," Grossman said. "We even held ourselves back a little with what we built, partly because we had to build it without using the watch."

In particular, Grossman is especially excited to incorporate the Apple Watch's Digital Crown into the app.

"We want to use the Digital Crown to 'wand' over your message in Confide, to reveal it piece by piece," he said.

Matt Ronge a former Apple engineer who created the drawing app Astropad, agreed.

"We really want access to the Digital Crown, and the current SDK is just a little too limited."

The Digital Crown is just one part of the device that developers are dying to play with - there are also tons of sensors inside that offer a potential treasure trove to developers.

Many app creators are chomping at the bit to be able to pull in data from Apple's heart rate sensor, orientation sensor, and its haptic feedback feature called the Taptic Engine.

"With the Watch, what I think is going to make it really fly is developers tapping into the sensors and coming up with really new and creative ideas," Ronge said. "A lot of the Apple apps are pretty cool but I think when you get it out there to developers you'll have some really novel stuff that will be really fun."

Most people will agree that there has yet to be a "killer app" for the Apple Watch, but we'll likely see one created after Apple unties developers' hands and allows them full access.

"We'd love to get access to all the sensor data that's being captured." Jordan Edelson, CEO and founder of the mobile app development studio, Appetizer Mobile, told Business Insider. "When Apple eventually opens that up that's going to be a big game changer for developers."

When Apple allows developers to access the Apple Watch's sensors, apps will also gain an additional monetization channel. Apple Watch users could decide which health and sensor information to share with third-party apps, which will in turn allow developers to work with advertisers to utilize the new customer data.

"From a marketing standpoint, that's a huge deal, because if you can gain the trust of the consumer that's wearing it and they give you access to this information, then you can do some really crazy things," Edelson said. "You can send really highly targeted messages and provide some really relevant content and ads to those users."

Of course, you won't be forced into sharing your heart rate or fitness habits with advertisers or third-party apps. Apple already allows you to pick and choose in its Settings app how much you reveal to third-party apps, but there's no doubt the coming changes represent fertile ground for advertisers.

Apple is expected to reveal iOS 9, its new music streaming subscription service, and announce fully native apps for the Apple Watch at next week's conference. For a deeper dive into what developers say they want to see Apple address at its conference, click here.