This fake Apple Watch Edition looks like the real deal. Photo: The Time Preserve
Casey Neistat showed us a brilliant way to turn your cheapo Apple Watch into a luxurious gold Edition, but if you’d like to make your fake Edition look just like the real thing, you can now get it gold plated for a fraction of the cost of Katy Perry’s.
Using an Apple Watch with a tattoo gives some users a (s)inking feeling. Photo: guinne55fan
More Apple Watch owners with wrist tattoos are reporting problems using the device. The light sensors that enable the Watch to determine if it’s being worn apparently get confused by tattooed skin.
The problem — let’s call it “Tattoogate” — is possibly the result of metallic pigments used for the inking process, although nobody knows for sure. While the glitch affects only a small number of users, it’s definitely mauling the buzz of some frustrated Apple Watch early adopters.
Cult of Mac reader Michael Lovell spoke with us about his disappointing experiences with the Apple Watch, and even sent in a video demonstrating the problem. Check it out below!
Did you know you can customize your Apple Watch app homescreen? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple Watch is the most personal device you’ll ever use, and it’s not just because you wear it all day.
This is the most customizable Apple product we’ve ever seen. Everything from clock faces to the app homescreen can be tweaked to your personal tastes. Early Apple Watch owners have already come up with a myriad of different ways to change the app homescreen so that it’s just not a giant blob of randomness. Some are a bit crazy, while others are down right brilliant.
Check out out some of the best custom layouts below:
Using an Apple Watch with a tattoo gives some users a (s)inking feeling. Photo: Guinne55fan
With a variety of bands, and price tags ranging all the way from $349 – $17,000, there’s an Apple Watch for everyone. Except, possibly, the heavily tattooed.
That’s according to a new thread on Reddit which claims that several tattoo-sporting Apple Watch customers are having trouble using the device, because the wearable’s wrist-detection feature gets confused by the way in which tattoos reflect the green and infrared light emitted by the Watch.
The result? People with tattoos don’t get notifications, unless they move the Watch to an un-tattooed area, or turn off wrist detection. Not exactly ideal for those with full sleeves!
Just Knock on your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac. Photo: Knock
Remember Knock? Released last year, it was an iPhone app that allowed you to unlock your Mac without entering a password, just by tapping on your smartphone’s screen. Now you don’t even need your iPhone handy to use Knock: It’s the latest app to get the inevitable Apple Watch support.
You can change your Apple Watch band quickly and easily. Photo: Apple
One of the neat features of the Apple Watch is the ability to quickly and drastically change its appearance by sliding different straps on and off the body of the device.
Achieved by way of a cunning three-contact mechanism, it’s undoubtedly a cool solution and — to paraphrase Steve Jobs — boy, has Apple patented it!
Apple Watch is a great early adopter device. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo:
Apple Watch is the most confounding device to come out of Cupertino since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. Is is it a watch? Is it a tiny computer on your wrist? It’s both — and it’s so much more.
After four days playing with the Apple Watch, we’ve found it to be far more futuristic — and far more fun — than we could have imagined. (It’s even more impressive if you’ve tried any of the other smartwatches on the market.)
Apple Watch isn’t without its disappointments, though. If you’re still unsure whether to shackle yourself to Jony Ive’s fabulous timepiece, here’s our take on what works — and what doesn’t.
78% of all Apple Watch orders still haven't shipped. Photo: Slice Intelligence
Last week, researchers at Slice Intelligence claimed that Apple had taken orders for as many as 957,000 Apple Watches in the first 24 hours that it was available on Apple.com. And that was in the U.S. alone.
Now Slice is back, with new numbers suggesting that demand for the Apple Watch is far, far exceeding supply. According to Slice, in fact, Apple may have sold as many as 1.7 million Apple Watches since pre-orders began.
And if your Apple Watch still hasn’t shipped, you’re not alone: 78% of all Apple Watch buyers are in the same boat.
Apple earnings are on the way. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo:
In less than an hour, Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri will reveal whether iPhone 6 sales have continued to sail past Wall Street’s expectations. We’ll be on hand to liveblog all the action from the Q2 2015 Apple earnings call.
The results are expected to be monstrous, thanks to strong demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus carrying over from last quarter’s historic results. Wall Street is expecting Q2 2015 to be the second-biggest quarter in the history of Apple, with revenue believed to top $56 billion, for 23 percent year-over-year growth.
Apple only needs to sell more than 58.1 million iPhones to make it the second-biggest quarter ever, but what we’re most anxious to hear is whether Tim and Luca drop some Apple Watch numbers on us.
The call begins at 2 p.m. Pacific, but the liveblog action starts now. Keep this tab open and come back throughout the day for coverage and commentary.
Apple Watch already has a ton of apps. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is pushing into new territory with the Apple Watch, by making it the first device to come from Cupertino that uses an OLED display. One of the reasons Apple’s never brought OLED displays to the iPhone is they’re more challenging to engineer than long-established LCDs.
Apple hasn’t given us too many details about the Apple Watch’s display yet, other than telling us it’s a ‘Flexible Retina Display’ but the team over at DisplayMate have put the new display to the test, and came away with a shocking discovery: Apple Watch Sport has a better display than the Apple Watch Edition.
Tom Dickson put the new Apple Watch in a blender for his show, Will It Blend? Photo: Will It Blend?
The glass may be scratch-proof, but the Apple Watch is not durable enough to withstand a blender.
Tom Dickson wasted no time having the Apple Watch as a guest on his YouTube show, Will It Blend?Sure enough, it didn’t.
Dickson – maybe all too cheerfully – placed the watch in one of his Blendtec blenders and gave it a whirl. It seemed to take the beating from the initial revolutions of the blade before pieces began flying off the watch. The session ended with black smoke and a pile of what looked like ashes.
Instapaper for the Apple Watch is here. Photo: Instapaper
The Apple Watch may be good at telling you how healthy you are, tracking your steps, propelling you to move, and reminding you of upcoming appoints, but conventional wisdom says it’s rubbish for reading. The 38mm and 42mm screens are just too tiny to read anything more than a sentence or two long on, and certainly not any longreads.
So on paper (no pun intended), Instapaper for Apple Watch is a terrible idea. Amazingly, though, it looks like the Instapaper team at Betaworks has made it work.
Even a broken Apple Watch is right zero times a day. Photo: Weibo
There’s an old adage about most sports car crashes happening within minutes of leaving the automobile showroom for the first time, and apparently the same is true of clumsy (or unfortunate) Apple fans enjoying their first weekend with a brand new Apple Watch on their wrist.
Almost like a badge of honor, social media already shows multiple people who managed to break their Apple Watches before most of us even got our hands on one of the devices.
The Apple Watch glass going through a torture test. Screenshot: Cult of Mac
Consumer Reports has a history of being hard on Apple. They famously refused to recommend the iPhone 4 because of a so-called “flawed” antenna design.
To test the Apple Watch, though, Consumer Reports is being harder on Apple than ever. They’ve run a gamut of torture tests on Apple’s new wearable to see just how hard the sapphire display actually is. Here’s a spoiler: You won’t be able to scratch it with anything short of a nuke. And even the Apple Watch Sport’s display is nearly unscratchable (although it can be cracked).
Developers have some interesting ideas for what you’d want to do on your wrist. Here are some of the weirdest, goofiest and most downright bizarre Watch apps:
Apple Watch, inbound! And now that it is, we’ll take a look at some of the most useful Watch apps available, and just for fun, some of the stinkiest. Plus: the noteworthy differences between the Sport and steel editions; why those “scratch test” videos shouldn’t trouble you; and finally, you’ll never believe what our ol’ pal and ex-Apple exec Scott Forstall is up to now…
Our thanks for Freshbooks for supporting this episode. FreshBooks is the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster. It also makes tax time a cinch. Get started now with a 30-day free trial.
The Apple Watch sure looks cool under X-Ray. Photo: Chipworks
For anybody who wants a detailed look at what makes the Apple Watch’s chip tick, the silicon experts at Chipworks have posted an X-ray look inside the S1 processor.
Manage your Apple Watch Notifications from your iPhone. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Notifications are why we all got an Apple Watch, right? We want to be able to know what’s going on in our digital lives all the time, but we want to do it faster, without having to pull out an iPhone. Because that’s just rude.
However, getting every single Notification that you get on your iPhone shunted automatically over to your Apple Watch is going to get tiresome. No one wants to deal with a wrist tap every time someone takes a turn in Evil Apples.
Here’s how to manage all of the notification cruft a little bit better.
When life gives you an ugly Apple Watch, paint that shit gold. Photo: Casey Neistat Photo: Casey Neistat
Lusting after the gold Apple Watch Edition but don’t have the funds for Jony Ive’s $17,000 timepiece? You could take out a second mortgage on the house, or sell a kidney. Or you could do what artist Casey Neistat did and manually turn an Apple Watch Sport into a golden beauty.
Neistat only had $399, so he decided to preorder the black Sport model and then carefully painted it gold. Sure, his method might void your warrant, and it doesn’t look perfect, but it’s better than spending your kid’s college savings just to be as fly as Drake.
You can do it too, just follow the steps in the video below:
Jony Ive gets animated as he talks about Apple Watch. Photo: Vogue
Jony Ive and his BFF Marc Newson launched Apple into the luxury market this week with the Apple Watch, which expertly straddles the line between gadget and fashion accessory.
Apple’s dynamic designing duo sat down with Vogue’s Suzy Meeks this week to talk about their first foray into the fashion world — as well as what inspired them to create the Apple Watch. We rounded up the top 8 revelations from the pair’s appearance earlier this week, but Vogue just made the full interview available online, and it’s full of juicy insights into Jony and Marc’s thought processes.
This screen is way too small for all the tweaks available. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Getting your Apple Watch set up is fairly basic, but to truly make this your own personal device, you’ll need to dig into the Apple Watch settings.
You can do all of these things on the Apple Watch itself, but why force yourself to tap and swipe on that tiny screen? Use the Apple Watch app on your iPhone for a much more pleasant experience. You can thank me later.
Get ready to rock with your Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Apple’s smartwatch doesn’t come with much onboard storage, but that doesn’t mean you’re screwed when it comes to Apple Watch music. You can add your own playlists and listen to your favorite tunes using Bluetooth headphones or AirPlay speakers.
To get the songs you want, you need to create a playlist on your iPhone or iTunes, then beam it over to your Apple Watch. Here’s how to do it.