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Apple Watch - page 95

Apple Watch takes on power drill. Guess who wins?

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Photo: iPhonefixed
How tough is Apple Watch? Photo: iPhonefixed

To make the most personal device ever, Apple is using sapphire glass for the Apple Watch to make its display more durable. None of the reviews we read yesterday complained about scratches on their Apple Watch, but iPhoneFixed managed to get its hands on a 38mm Apple Watch display and put it through a barrage of tests.

Apple Watch’s glass stood strong during tests with keys, sandpaper, and even a hammer. Then the crazy nerds busted out a power drill to and throttled it on the glass. The results might shock you.

Check out the glass after the test below:

Forget Apple Watch, we want this retro Apple II Watch

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Can your wrist handle the Apple II Watch? Photo: Aleator777/Instructables

 

We’re eagerly counting down the last few hours until we can preorder the Apple Watch, but I think I may have found a new love for my wrist: The Apple II Watch.

The brilliant folks over at Instructables unveiled a retro Apple Watch styled after the Apple II computer. If Apple made a smartwatch back in 1985, this would be it. The amazing device actually works and you can make one yourself.

Check out its incredible features:

Here’s where you can buy the Apple Watch Edition

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Tim Cook has only said that the Apple Watch Edition will be available in “select stores” later this month. You won’t be able to just walk into any location and try on the ultra-expensive gold model.

Now we know exactly which Apple retail stores around the world will sell the Edition when it goes on sale April 24th.

Apple Watch will be available for sale online only at first

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The company is preemptively trying to meet Watch demand by limiting orders to its online store. Photo: Apple

Apple is clearly expecting the Apple Watch to be a big hit, because it’s already limiting orders to just its online store.

In an effort to help meet expected demand, Apple has announced that you won’t be able to go into your local store and walk out with a Watch for the foreseeable future.

Tim Cook reportedly jets to Paris for Apple Watch’s fashionable debut

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Photo: Kaysgeog/Flickr CC
The Galeries Lafayette is getting a special visitor. Photo: Kaysgeog/Flickr CC

While you’re at work today, Tim Cook is enjoying croissants and chocolat chaud at a chic French eatery. Probably.

That’s because the Apple CEO is reportedly in Paris: most likely for the Apple Watch’s official public unveiling tomorrow at one of the city’s fanciest department stores, Galeries Lafayette Haussmann.

The 17 best Apple Watch tidbits from early reviews

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Apple Watch Edition
Early reviewers are in love with Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

The first wave of Apple Watch reviews landed this morning with the consensus that Apple has created the best smartwatch ever. Now whether you actually need a smartwatch is still being heavily debated, but the early Apple Watch reviews have highlighted some pretty compelling cases.

Reviews from tech news sites have praised Apple Watch for its innovative UI and incredible design. After slogging through the first reviews though, the most interesting insights I found about Apple Watch came from non-tech sites. What will it be like for normal, non-tech nerds to use Apple’s timepiece?

Here’s everything new I learned about Apple Watch from reading all the reviews:

First reviews: You’ll love Apple Watch, but it’s gonna take some time

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The next big thing? Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

The first reactions to the Apple Watch are hot off the presses and, to be honest, they’re pretty much what I was expecting.

There are some nice revelations (battery life isn’t as bad as we feared), some areas to improve on (activating the screen carries a lag, although Apple promises it can fix it though software updates), praise for how easy it is to manage notifications, and a general sense of reviewers trying desperately to figure out what the hell a smartwatch should try and do.

And concluding that — despite being unclear about quite what that is — Apple has done it pretty well.

Check out the highlights of the early hands-on impressions from Re/Code, the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue, and the other people lucky enough to get an early review unit:

Instagram makes it super-easy to stalk your favorite accounts

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Follow people you care about on Instagram.

Instagram quietly enabled an option today that makes it super-easy to keep track of your favorite accounts.

You can now set up push notifications for whenever a specific account posts a new photo. The timing of the new feature makes perfect sense with the impending release of the Apple Watch.

New pictures reveal Apple Watch packaging and charging station

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Photo: Cult of Mac
/Instagram

Just three days before Apple’s smartwatch will be on display in stores around the world, new pictures have revealed what Apple Watch packaging will look like.

Images of the Apple Watch box, which doubles as a charging stand, were posted on Instagram today. With the first review units already out in the wild, we’re learning new details about the Apple Watch nearly every day, like how Apple Watch bands will be packaged.

Here’s a glimpse of the Apple Watch band boxes:

Pharrell sure is ‘Happy’ to show off his Apple Watch

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Jealous much? Photo: NBC/Jonathan Shell

From pop-up kiosks in up-scale luxury department stores to focusing more on the fashion press than the tech pages, it’s been fascinating to watch the unorthodox way in which Apple is choosing to spread the word about its upcoming Apple Watch: attempting to make it into this summer’s must-have item.

During Monday’s episode of The Voice, the next step of this roll-out was revealed, as Pharrell Williams — acting as a judge on the show — was spotted wearing the device, without a supervising Apple engineer or PR bod in sight.

Hey, as fashion items go, it makes a change from giant hats, at least!

Apple Watch is currently barred from going on sale in Switzerland

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Not yet coming to the home of the watchmakers. Photo: Apple

When the Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, one place it will be conspicuous in its absence is Switzerland: the spiritual home of the wristwatch, which Jony Ive famously (allegedly) said was “f**ked” due to the awesomeness of Apple’s upcoming wearable.

One possible reason? A trademark claim made by a company called Leonard Timepieces for a watch and watch parts carrying the image of an apple and the English word “APPLE.” First filed in 1985 — not too long after Apple originally launched the Mac — the 30-year trademark expires on December 5, 2015.

Instapaper for Apple Watch lets Siri read to you

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Instapaper for Apple Watch lets Siri read to you. Photo: Betaworks
Instapaper for Apple Watch lets Siri read to you. Photo: Betaworks

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.

A look at the first Apple Watch apps plus Periscope vs. Meerkat on The CultCast

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OMG check out these cute meerkat Photo: Tambako The Jaguar (Flickr)
/Flickr CC
Photo:

This week on The CultCast: With Apple Watch apps now hitting the store, we discuss some of the most popular ones. And if you want an Apple Watch you absolutely need to preorder — we’ll tell you why and how. Plus: Periscope! Learn all about it and why it’s way better than Meerkat. All that and so. Much. More…

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

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Full show notes ahead!

Can Apple Watch really help you get fit?

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Swatch has an answer for Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Swatch has an answer for Apple Watch. Photo: Apple

With Apple Watch about to become a reality, recent reports have questioned the benefits of fitness trackers, highlighting their inaccuracy and even claiming they make you fat.

So can wearables like Apple Watch really help you get fit? From my experience, what’s in your heart is more important than what’s on your wrist — but gadgets still have a role to play.

$230,000 Space Pirate timepiece makes Apple Watch look like a bargain

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Horological Machine No. 6, aka
Horological Machine No. 6, aka "Space Pirate," costs a little less than a mission to Mars. Photo: MB&F

Horological Machine No. 6 looks like something you’d see strapped to the wrist of an interstellar raider. Maybe that’s why Swiss watchmaker MB&F dubbed its lunatic $230,000 watch the “Space Pirate.”

The watch, which its maker says “has been designed to operate in the hostile environment of … the space on your wrist,” is one of just two timepieces to be awarded Red Dot design awards in the competition’s current round.

The other winner of the Red Dot Award for Product Design? Apple Watch, which seems like a modest piece of jewelry next to the MN6’s alien design. Just wait till you see the spinning turbines that make the Space Pirate watch tick.

The best Apple Watch apps for cheating at math and science

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iMathematics puts infinite cheat sheets on your wrist. Photo: Mobixee
iMathematics puts infinite cheat sheets on your wrist. Photo: Mobixee

Cheaters in school these days have it too easy. In my day, we had to program cheat sheets of formulas into our giant graphing calculators. Now that the Apple Watch is coming out, the cat and mouse game between students and teachers is about to change.

Mobixee’s educational suite of Apple Watch apps are giving students a faster/subtler way than ever to find “that formula” when you’re doing tests homework.

By bringing iMathematics, iPhysics, and iChemistry to Apple Watch, you won’t have to pull out your iPhone to search for formulas again. Just whisper a word to Siri like “derivative” and a list of formulas related to the topic will pop up.

Check it out:

Here’s how much AppleCare+ will cost for Apple Watch

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Apple Watch - useful, or just a trend? Photo: Apple

Apple told us last month it would make AppleCare+ available for anybody who just knows they’re going to break Apple Watch’s display. Apple still hasn’t officially revealed pricing, but a leaked internal screenshot may have just revealed the extra cost of insuring your timepiece.

Apple Watch can harness Force Touch to change the color of animated emoji

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Christy Turlington has been trying out the Apple Watch, and she's apparently hooked. Photo: Apple
Christy Turlington has been trying out the Apple Watch, and she's apparently hooked. Photo: Apple

In her latest blog post on Apple’s website, supermodel and Apple Watch spokeswoman Christy Turlington reveals a few more interesting tidbits about the Apple wearable — such as the fact that you can use the device’s Force Touch tech to change the color of animated emoji.

The first Apple Watch was an iPhone with a Velcro strap

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This isn't the actual Apple Watch prototype, but it should give you an idea of how unwieldy it was. Photo: Smartlet

The Apple Watch was created under crazy, sleep-deprived conditions, with its first working prototype being an iPhone strapped to the wrist with a Velcro strap, and the Digital Crown represented by a custom dongle plugged into the bottom of the phone via the headphone jack.

Those are a couple of the revelations from a new in-depth article, reporting on the creation of Apple’s eagerly anticipated wearable device.

Why withholding Apple Watch from U.K.’s biggest mobile retailer is a brilliant move

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Don't expect to see the Apple Watch at the Carphone Warehouse. Photo: Flickr/Jose and Roxanne CC
Don't expect to see the Apple Watch at the Carphone Warehouse. Photo: Flickr/Jose and Roxanne CC

The Apple Watch could be Apple’s next mass-market iPod-like product, but the company’s not quite ready to see it popping up everywhere yet.

With the Apple Watch launch just 24 days away, Apple has reportedly declined to supply the U.K.’s largest mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, with its debut wearable device.

“We would love to be able to stock the Apple Watch,” Carphone’s chief executive Graham Stapleton told The Telegraph newspaper. “I’ve got to be careful what I say but I think they are just going another way with it. We have not been given the opportunity.”