Apple Watch - page 102

With the Apple Watch release still months away, plenty of details — like the timepiece’s price and battery life — remain unknown. But the release of WatchKit this morning sheds new light on Apple’s most personal product ever.

We dug through the new WatchKit programming guide and Apple Watch human interface guidelines this afternoon and found a few details that weren’t mentioned in the keynote, such as a special new font designed to look good at any size on the Apple Watch’s tiny face.

Here are five new Apple Watch details buried in the WatchKit SDK:

The mad dash to develop the first wave of Apple Watch apps has just begun, and to go along with the new WatchKit for devs, Apple has also released the first iOS 8.2 beta this morning.

iOS 8.2 beta 1 includes support for WatchKit, which allows Apple Watch apps to connect to and run processes on your iPhone in the background. In a press release announcing the update’s availability, Phil Schiller said, “With the iOS 8.2 beta SDK, developers can now start using WatchKit to create breakthrough new apps, Glances and actionable notifications designed for the innovative Apple Watch interface and work with new technologies such as Force Touch, Digital Crown and Taptic Engine.”

Release notes for the beta don’t mention other major new features, but we’ll report on any surprises we find, once we get it installed. The iOS 8.2 beta is available to registered developers in the iOS Dev Center, along with a new Xcode 6.2 beta as well.

You can also grab iOS 8.2 from the direct download links below:

As promised, Apple has given third-party developers tools to start making apps for the upcoming Apple Watch. Today the company announced the availability of WatchKit, its new SDK for creating app experiences on the wrist.

With WatchKit, developers will be able to make actionable notifications, Glances “for timely information accessible by an easy, quick look,” and eventually full-fledged apps. Early WatchKit partners like ESPN, Instagram, and American Airlines have already tested the new APIs for future versions of their apps.

Cupertino has its chic Apple Watch, Redmond has its Microsoft Band, and now Intel has unveiled its own female-friendly take on the wearable phenomenon with a $495 smart bracelet — which will allow users to receive and respond to text messages, emails and other notifications.

Called the MICA, the fashion-conscious bracelet boasts a sapphire 1.6-inch, 256 x 160 OLED curved screen on the inside of the wrist. As with the Apple Watch there are multiple styles available — ranging from black and white water snake skin, Chinese pearls, Madagascan lapis stones, South African tiger’s eye, and Russian obsidian.

One way you can tell a technology is becoming mainstream is when it starts to have brushes with the law. We saw it in the 1980s with the first computer hacker trials, more recently with the appearance of Google Glass, and now with fitness trackers — courtesy of a personal injury suit taking place in Canada.

In what is thought to be the first ever case of data from a wearable device being used in court, a female Calgary plaintiff is using information gathered by her Fitbit device to demonstrate that her activity levels have dropped dramatically following an accident.

The data is being analyzed by a third-party analytics firm called Vivametrica, which will make its findings known to the court.

Apple’s HealthKit app for iOS 8 is great at capturing and storing personal health data from tons of sources, but according to a Reuters report, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission wants to know what it plans to do with all of it.

The FTC has reportedly met with from, seeking assurances that sensitive health data scooped up by the Apple Watch and other apps won’t be used without users’ permissions.

Apple chipmakers are gearing up to start production of the Apple Watch, according to a new report. Orders for the chips suggest that the initial production run is likely to be between 30-40 million units.

If accurate, these figures fall in the middle of previous guesstimates regarding how many Apple Watches Cupertino plans to sell in 2015.

One recent report claimed that Apple has placed orders for shipments of up to five million AMOLED panels per month, which would suggest sales of 50+ million units next year. More conservatively, Gene Munster has predicted that Apple’s first year sales for the new device will come in at around the 10 million unit mark.

Having written about the Apple Watch for months before it was announced, I’ll admit it was difficult to stop referring to the device as the “iWatch.” Even Tim Cook has slipped up and used that name in interviews, suggesting that this is the name Apple’s wearable debut had inside the company.

With that in mind, CollegeHumor has created a hilarious public service announcement video entitled, tactfully enough, “Apple: Call It the iWatch and We’ll Kill You.”

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has long been an unabashed believer that Cupertino should release a bigger iPhone. Around the time of the iPhone 5, he said Apple should have released two different models, one “regular” and one jumbo-size, to better compete with Android superphones

Now that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are here, Woz is glad. But he’s still being hard on Apple, saying they’re three years too late with the big phones. And he’s not too crazy about the Apple Watch either.

Clearing the way for its own fitness-tracking wearables, Apple has stopped selling Fitbit activity trackers in the Apple Online Store, and has begun removing them from its brick-and-mortar retail outlets also.

Fitbit’s devices have been sold in Apple Stores for the past few years; quickly racking up close to 70% of the fitness-tracking device marketshare, courtesy of a head start over competitors such as Nike’s FuelBand and Jawbone Up.

Although Apple has given us our first peek at the Apple Watch, so far we don’t know much about it, including when it will be released or how much its many versions will cost.

A new report, however, provides some possible answers to these questions. According to a French website, the Apple Watch will start at around $500 for the steel model. And gold? Gold will be even more expensive.

Jony Ive has designed someone of the worlds most iconic tech devices, but when it came time to revolutionizing the wrist watch, Ive says it was even more challenging to make than the iPhone.

Speaking to an audience at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Thursday night, Ive said that societal expectations for a wristwatch posed some serious challenges when creating the Apple Watch, but he believes with “every bone in his body” that Apple will usher in an entirely new computing device category.

iPhone owners who can’t wait for the Apple Watch can now change their home screens to a fresh interface inspired by Apple’s wearable UI, thanks to a hack for jailbroken devices.

This new tweak replaces the existing iOS look and feel — which has remained conceptually unchanged since the debut of the iPhone back in 2007 — with circular, bubble-looking icons that users can zoom in and out of to find their apps easier.

While the mod started out as nothing more than a concept, another developer has taken the idea and run with it, constructing a tweak called WatchSpring that replaces a jailbroken iOS 8 device’s SpringBoard with a working Apple Watch-style home screen.

Here’s how you get hold of it.

Tim Cook gave a rare public interview on Monday night at the Wall Street Journal’s new tech conference, WSJD. The Apple CEO touched on a range of topics, including Apple Pay’s success, a big potential partnership, why the iPod classic was discontinued, and more.

Here are the biggest takeaways from Cook’s comments:

The user interface for iOS hasn’t changed much since the introduction of ‘iPhone OS’ back in 2007. Sure, Jony Ive has added some tweaks over the last few years, but you still swipe around between rows of tiled icons.

Apple’s UI for the Apple Watch though is radically different that iPhone, with circular app icons on a homescreen that can users can zoom in and out of to find their apps easier, so Lucas Menge decided to take the pretty bubbly design and bring it to the iPhone. The results are pretty amazing and bring an entirely new look to the iPhone homescreen.

Check out the full demo below:

When the Apple Watch is released next year, it’s going to represent a major paradigm shift for iOS: it’ll be an interface made up of fingertip-sized bubbles, not rounded square icons.

Don’t you think that calls for a new logo to mark the occasion?

Apple’s great at hopping into new markets just as they’re set to explode, and it seems that the upcoming Apple Watch is no different.

Despite mixed reports about consumer interest, research firm IHS thinks demand for sensor-equipped wearable tech devices is going to see a major acceleration starting next year — largely thanks to Cupertino. Just how much of an increase are we talking about? Try 7x the size of the existing market by 2019, according to analysts.

“Similar to the iPhone and iPad, IHS expects the Apple Watch will set a de facto standard for sensor specifications in smartwatches,” says Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst, MEMS & Sensors. “Most other wearable [original equipment manufacturers] will follow Apple’s lead in [incorporating multiple sensors into devices] — or will add even more sensors to differentiate.”

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus may be Apple’s best-selling iPhones in history, racking up a massive 10 million+ sales in their first weekend alone, but how does this massive success translate into numbers going forward?

Ahead of today’s Apple earnings call, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has taken a shot at forecasting how the rest of the year may play out, in a research note to investors. His guess? All in, Apple can expect to sell between 56.7 million and 62.7 million iPhones this quarter.

If Munster’s on the money, that means unit sales of the iPhone could leap between 25 to 45% compared with the previous quarter last year. Not bad, huh?

Was Apple’s livestreamed iPad event really such a big yawn? Search Twitter for “#AppleEvent yawn” or “Apple boring” and you’ll see tweet after tweet bemoaning the boring nature of Thursday’s press conference. It got so tedious for some, there were dozens of photos of napping dogs.

“Most boring Apple event ever,” tweeted one. “Bring back the Chinese translation.”

Maybe some of those folks are being facetious, but there’s a grain of truth in the tweets: Nothing about Thursday’s event, except for maybe Stephen Colbert’s crackup comedy bit with Craig Federighi, was super-compelling on the surface. Many of the specs had been leaked (some even by Apple itself), and the rumor mill proved pretty accurate in the run-up to the presentation.

Still, this was no Phantom Menace. I mean really, what were people expecting? Jetpacks, aliens and electric cars?

This is Apple’s big dilemma right now: How do you top yourself when you make the best products in the world?

Fitbit’s lineup of activity trackers may soon get exiled from the Apple Store, sources have told Recode, as Apple prepares to launch its own lineup of wearables next year.

It’s unclear whether other activity trackers will suffer the same fate, but the move comes just days after FitBit announced it has no plans to support iOS 8’s HealthKit in the near future, which makes it easy for iOS users to track all of their fitness data in one app.

With GT Advanced Technologies asking permission to close down its Arizona factory after less than a year, it’s a fair question to ask where exactly Apple plans to get the sapphire displays for its forthcoming Apple Watch.

Earlier this week, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the bankruptcy filing wouldn’t affect Apple’s forthcoming wearables debut. According to a new report from Digitimes, the reason for this is that Apple has a backup plan in the form of two other sapphire cover suppliers besides GT Advanced: the South Korea-based Hansol Technics and China-based Harbin Aurora Optoelectronics Technology.

Apple has made it obvious that it’s making a big fashion play with the Apple Watch.

After inviting the fashion industry press to the product’s unveiling and staging a one-day showing during Paris Fashion Week, the Apple Watch is getting its own Vogue cover. Well, Vogue China, to be specific.

The iPad may be more popular than ever among young people, but according to one analyst that same level of excitement doesn’t carry over to the forthcoming Apple Watch.

In a research note to clients, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster describes reaction to the Apple Watch among teens as “tepid,” despite the fact that Apple remains an incredibly popular brand.

According to Munster, interest in the Apple Watch actually fell over the past year — starting out at 17% interest from teens in spring, and lowering to 16% just prior to Apple’s September 9 unveiling of its wearables device.

GT Advanced Technologies, a sapphire supplier that works closely with Apple, today confirmed that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. Its share price has been falling since it was revealed that Apple opted for Gorilla Glass rather than sapphire for its iPhone 6 displays, but GT insists it’s not going out of business.