The Apple Watch may not be available in New Zealand yet, but that isn’t stopping some safety-minded organizations from seeking to ban it, and other smartwatches, from use while driving.
“A second’s inattention at the wheel can result in tragedy,” said advocate Caroline Perry of road-safety charity Brake. “Smartwatches and other wearable technology are extremely distracting if used while driving.”
The Apple Watch isn’t completely waterproof, so it makes sense that you won’t find a swimming option in the Workouts app. But that hasn’t stopped one development team from building their own way to track aquatic exercises on the wearable.
Active in Time has ported its own Pebble swimming app over to Apple’s smartwatch, and it tested its functionality (and the Apple Watch’s water resistance) with four lengths in an Olympic swimming pool. You can see the results in the video below.
If you bought an Apple Watch hoping it would help you get fit, but you haven’t been on your first run yet, maybe you need of a little more encouragement. So here’s some advice from a reformed couch potato.
The first workout is the hardest. It gets progressively easier and more rewarding from there. You just need to know how to get started.
If you like the look of the high-end Apple Watch Edition, but the $10,000+ price point makes your heart and wallet hurt, a Swiss company might have a nice alternative for you.
Golden Dreams of Geneva specializes in classing up iPhones, cases, and bags, and it’s turned its monocle-rimmed gaze to Apple’s new smartwatch. The company can take a standard version of the wearable and make it fancy at a fraction of the cost of its more precious sibling.
If you’re one of the people out there who haven’t taken the plunge on an Apple Watch, you’re not alone. While Apple’s latest wearable has gotten a ton of press and sold really well, a lot of the rank and file out there might think it’s a toy, or only for rich folks.
In fact, says journalist Morgan Housel over at Time, most people throughout history have pretty predictable responses to new things.
He has a list of reactions to new innovative inventions, each of which are reactions we’ve all heard (or had) when the Apple Watch (or the iPad, or the iPhone) was launched.
Hyundai has good news for Apple Watch owners who also drive late-model Sonatas: You can now use your wearable to control parts of your car.
The auto manufacturer has rolled out an update to its Blue Link app, which already creates an interface with an iPhone, to expand the connected-car functionality to Apple’s new smartwatch.
If your Apple Watch stops responding to your iPhone, you can reboot it or you can turn the Bluetooth connection off and on. If that doesn’t work to reconnect your Watch, you might need to reset it, and then you’ll need to re-pair it.
Here’s how.
Another week flying by here at Cult of Mac headquarters, and we’ve got a ton of great stories to share with you in the latest issue of Cult of Mac Magazine.
Taylor Swift made waves with her calling out the Cupertino company’s plans to not pay artists for music streamed during upcoming Apple Music free trial period, and we’ve got all the details within. Plus, we take a look at Amazon’s new home hub, the Echo, spend some time trawling the patent office for new Apple gear coming our way, and take a quick tour of the latest iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan betas for developers.
All that and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine. Be sure to download and subscribe to check it all out on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
One of the main complaints Apple Watch naysayers have is that the advertised 18-hour battery life of the wearable is kind of crappy. An expensive, upcoming accessory aims to address that issue, but we’re not sure that the look appeals to us much.
The new band is called the Reserve Strap, and while it definitely sounds useful, its price and appearance leave our pointers well clear of the pre-order button.
Apple fans with their ear to the rumor mill have known for months that Apple is probably going to add Force Touch to the next iPhone. Now, we’ve got confirmation from one of the most respected sources in journalism that it’s almost definitely happening.
The Apple Watch is the best watch I’ve ever owned. It’s also the first watch I’ve owned in over a decade but amazing features like the heart rate monitor, responding to texts from my wrist, and being able to see what time it is without pulling out my iPhone have totally won me over.
Not everyone is keen on the future of smartwatches though, and if you need any further proof, just look at the Kickstarter page for The Mason Watch. It’s dumb, ugly, and lacks all the features you could want for in a modern watch, but the project is absolutely killing it on Kickstarter, and passed its funding goal in the first week.
Check out how huge this thing looks on your wrist:
As Apple fans in seven countries line up today to grab their new Apple Watches as the new wearable becomes available, we’re looking ahead to see which other nations will be sporting the smartwatches by the end of the year.
We don’t have dates for all of them just yet, but Apple has confirmed that they’re on the way.
To succeed in tech, you must be a master of innovation. No two companies understand this better than Apple and Google, which have become kings of the industry thanks to a string of incredible ideas that have shaped the technology we rely on today.
But which company is continuing to innovate in 2015? Is it Apple, with its fitness-focused Apple Watch, Apple Pay, and a new streaming service that hopes to save the music industry? Or is it Google, with Google Glass, self-driving cars, and secret robots?
Join us as we take it to a debate in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.
You waited for the Apple Watch for what felt like forever…so casually tossing it on your nightstand at the end of the day? Not an option. Keep yours charging safely and stylishly with this wood charging stand, now $19.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
People working on the Apple Watch supply chain are said to be expecting a “possible surge in orders” for the second half of 2015, as Apple’s debut wearable device continues to gain momentum in the marketplace.
According to a new report, this growth is linked to the fact that Apple Watch yield rates have significantly improved since manufacturing began, meaning that Apple is finally able to get hold of units of the device in the kind of quantities it would hope for.
Apple has been working on the Apple Watch’s heart-rate monitor ever since the wearable launched in April. First, it was taking your pulse every 10 minutes. Then, it was doing it every 10 minutes unless you were moving around because the company said that a resting heart rate is a better health indicator than a “doing whatever” heart rate.
And that’s correct, but a newly released patent hints at some future improvements for the function that could also spare you some wrist pain and warn you about stress.
Your Apple Watch band contains some cutting-edge fabrication technology that could extend into other fashion accessories, according to a patent filing released today.
The patent describes an ingenious method for molding “woven fibers” into any desired shape and securing them without stitching.
Black Eyed Peas founder Will.i.Am has been an Apple fanboy for years, but when it comes to supporting Jony Ive’s new wearable, the singer thinks it’s just weird.
During a panel discussion at the Cannes Lions festival, Mr I.Am said he recently saw a man at the gym with an iPhone 6 strapped to his arm even though he was wearing an Apple Watch, and it just didn’t look right he told SaleForce CEO Marc Benioff.
Steve Wozniak, one of Apple’s co-founders, does not yet own the company’s recently released smartwatch.
“They haven’t shipped it yet,” he said in a recent interview that also covers his thoughts on artificial intelligence, driverless cars, and Segways.
The launch of the original iPhone and the first Apple Watch have been polar opposites. While the iPhone was available at Apple Stores and third-parties on launch day, getting your hands on an Apple Watch on April 24th was almost impossible.
According to researchers at Morgan Stanley, that’s because the Apple Watch is in even more demand than the original iPhone weeks after it launched in 2007.
The University of New South Wales in Australia is the latest school to tell students that wrist-worn devices, especially smartwatches like Apple Watch, are not welcome during exams.
Administrators issued the ban to get ahead of any possibility that the new gadgets could be used to cheat.
Apple Watch might not be waterproof, but it will help Maryland residents get sailing, anyway.
The state of Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has launched a companion Apple Watch app to help residents find waterways to explore. This makes Maryland the first state government with an official app for Apple’s recently released smartwatch.
The Apple Watch might not seem like it has the most powerful processor on the block, but it’s still an A5-caliber CPU, similar to the one shipped with the iPad 2, the original iPad mini and the iPhone 4s.
That means the Apple Watch’s processor is still more powerful than pretty much every other CPU of the last 40 years. And it’s certainly up to the task of emulating a vintage Mac, as this video abundantly proves.
Siri is a pretty handy virtual assistant on your Apple Watch. It can tell you the temperature, convert measurements, send text messages, and do several other things without you having to take your iPhone out of your pocket.
The one thing you should never have to do, however, is ask it what time it is because you’re wearing a watch, and that’s the minimum of information it should provide you without you having to ask. Seriously, just bring up your wrist. The time is right there.
But if you’re thick as a brick and ask Apple Watch Siri what time it is, it’ll come back with one of over a dozen silly responses. Check out our results below:
The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FSWI) has announced today that for the first time since 2009 exports of traditional timepieces are down, and it looks like Apple Watch is to blame.