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, whatās in your heart is more important than whatās on your wrist ā but gadgets still have a role to play.
New details for the Apple Watch are beginning to surface ahead of its release this month, including the precise time youāll be able to start preordering Appleās first wearable.
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 youād see strapped to the wrist of an interstellar raider. Maybe thatās why Swiss watchmaker MB&F dubbed its lunatic $230,000 watch the āSpace Pirate.ā
The watch, which its maker says āhas been designed to operate in the hostile environment of ⦠the space on your wrist,ā is one of just two timepieces to be awarded Red Dot design awards in the competitionās 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 MN6ās alien design. Just wait till you see the spinning turbines that make the Space Pirate watch tick.
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.
Mobixeeās educational suite of Apple Watch apps are giving students a faster/subtler way than ever to find āthat formulaā when youāre doing tests homework.
By bringing iMathematics, iPhysics, and iChemistry to Apple Watch, you wonāt have to pull out your iPhone to search for formulas again. Just whisper a word to Siri like āderivativeā and a list of formulas related to the topic will pop up.
Apple Watch - useful, or just a trend? Photo: Apple
Apple told us last month it would make AppleCare+ available for anybody who just knows theyāre going to break Apple Watchās display. Apple still hasnāt officially revealed pricing, but a leaked internal screenshot may have just revealed the extra cost of insuring your timepiece.
Christy Turlington has been trying out the Apple Watch, and she's apparently hooked. Photo: Apple
In her latest blog post on Appleās website, supermodel and Apple Watch spokeswoman Christy Turlington reveals a few more interesting tidbits about the Apple wearable ā such as the fact that you can use the deviceās Force Touch tech to change the color of animated emoji.
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 headphoneĀ jack.
Those are a couple of the revelations from a new in-depth article, reporting on the creation of Appleās eagerly anticipated wearable device.
Don't expect to see the Apple Watch at the Carphone Warehouse. Photo: Flickr/Jose and Roxanne CC
The Apple Watch could be Appleās next mass-market iPod-like product, but the companyās 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.ās largest mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, with its debut wearable device.
āWe would love to be able to stock the Apple Watch,ā Carphoneās chief executive Graham Stapleton told The Telegraph newspaper. āIāve 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.ā
It's time to submit your Apple Watch app. Photo: Leander Kahney
Apple today announced that all members of its Developer Program can now officially submit Watch apps to the App Store; potentially triggering a gold rush similar to that seen when devs were first able to create iPhone apps early on its lifecycle.
Developers are encouraged to submit their WatchKit app, icon, screenshots, and description for review by Appleās testers.
What will the news of the future look like when weāre all busy staring at our tiny smartwatch screens instead of an iPhone or Mac? Youāre not likely to scroll through long-form stories on your wrist, so The New York Times plans to roll out one-sentence news blasts to Apple Watch.
The most detailed Apple Watch replica yet? Photo: Christopher Tan
Okay, this is pretty cool: aĀ 2.6x scale model of anĀ Apple Watch built entirely out of Nanoblocks, the tiny buildingĀ blocks made popular in Japan, but with a growing international following.
With the smallest brickĀ being 4mm x 4mm x 5mm, creating this take onĀ Appleās eagerly-anticipated wearable device took more than 800 bricks. It was created byĀ Christopher Tan, a well-known Nanoblock brick artist, who has previously built scale models of everything from the Great Wall of China to zombie dioramas.
You can check out more pictures of his Apple Watch below.
Apple Watch isn't being too closely, err, watched. Photo: Apple
The Food and Drug Administration is in a tough spot when it comes to health-tracking wearables. As the U.S. government agency in charge of regulating medical devices, it canāt promote health-oriented technology that doesnāt do what it claims, but it also doesnāt want to stifle innovation at a time when Silicon Valley is finally turning its attention to the field.
Thatās why, according to a new report,Ā the FDA is giving the tech industry, and particularly tech giants like Apple,Ā leeway to develop new products without aggressive regulation.
Mr. Selfridge will be selling Apple Watches. Sort of. Photo: Cult of Mac/ITV
If youāre in the market for an Apple Watch, and you live in London, Paris or Tokyo, consider yourself in luck: Apple will be opening mini store-within-store kiosks in luxury local department stores, dedicated to selling its eagerly-anticipated smartwatch.
The pop-up stores are planned to open Friday, April 10, when the Apple Watch first goes on preorder, which means you can be among the first to see the Apple Watch in person.
Steve Wozniak seems to have mixed emotions about the upcoming Apple Watch. Photo: HigherEdWeb/Flickr CC
Steve Wozniak seems to have a complex relationship with both modern-day Apple and, particularly, the Apple Watch. In an interview at theĀ Automate/Promat Show in Chicago yesterday,Ā Appleās co-founder said Appleās foray into high-end wearables marks a very different turn for the company he helped to found.
āIt didnāt seem like the company we started,ā he said. āThatās not the Apple that moved the world forward.ā
Apple Watch apps are ready for your wrist. Photo: Apple
Apple Stores wonāt have the Apple Watch on display for a few weeks, but anyone eagerĀ to see what the world of wrist apps will offer can already download them to their iPhone.
The first wave of Apple Watch-supported apps started hittingĀ iTunes today, with big names like Target, Evernote, WeChat and Expedia being some of the first out of the gate. You canāt actually use the Apple Watch functionality on the apps yet (unless Tim Cook hooked you up with an early unit), but you can get an early glimpse of how some apps will dramatically change your life.
Here are some of the first Apple Watch apps you can download and their features:
You can leave your iPhone behind on Apple Watch runs. Photo: Apple
The beautiful Apple Watch spokesperson Christy Turlington-Burns has been running a blog on Apple.com for the past three weeks, detailing how the Apple Watch has helped her train for the London Marathon.
Itās mostly puff stuff, but her latest entry has one interesting tidbit: the Apple Watch can apparently track many of your fitness levels even without an iPhone in range. She goes into more detail about how.
Starting April 10th youāll finally be able to go into an Apple Store and try on Jony Iveās first wearable, as long as you have an appointment. Those shopping for the regular Apple Watch and Sport models will get up-to 15 minutes of hands-on time at the Apple Store, but if youāre looking at the Apple Watch Edition, youāll get to play with it twice as long.
You canāt get an Apple Watch until April 24th. But that doesnāt mean you canāt pretend to have its fine metals rubbing your naked wrist right now.
By printing out a tiny piece of paper and downloading an app, a horrible render of the Apple Watch will appear on your wrist like magic.
Weāre just weeks away from the Apple Watchās launch, but maybe youāre not as excited about it as some of us are. Itās understandable; not everyone needs a $550 watch that offers many of the same capabilities your phone already does (albeit more conveniently).
If youāre in the market for a cool new watch and donāt need all the smart features and gadgetiness of Appleās offering, here are a few less-shiny options you could check out. And they are, in fact, far less shiny than the Apple Watch. Because theyāre made of wood.
Woz, doing his part to help computers takeover the world. Photo: Apple
Tech pioneers like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk have warned humanity of the dangers of AI for years, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says heās finally a beliver in the doomsday scenarios.
āComputers are going to take over from humans, no question,ā Woz told the Australian Financial Review in a recent interview from his US home.
The man who sparked the personal computer revolution with the invention of the Apple II says āthe future is scary and very bad for peopleā because computers will eventually get faster than us and wipe us out.
Demand is there for the Apple Watch, but is supply? Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Apple may not sell close to the number of Apple Watches it wants to in the coming months ā and itāll have nothing to do with lack of demand on the part of customers.
According to a new report, Appleās plans to manufacture between 2.5 and 3 million smartwatches every month could be cut by as much as half thanks to supplier yield problems, which mean that onlyĀ 1.25 ā 1.5 million watches are being churned out every four weeks.
Ahead of the April 24 launch of the Apple Watch, Cupertinoās debut wearable continues its world tour with a new style guide in Australiaās Elle magazineĀ āĀ advising on how Appleās smartwatch can be used as a chic wearable everywhere from cocktail parties to the workplace.
For a cocktail party, for instance, the magazine suggests that you might want to pair it with a ātuxedo suit and sexy heels (think Le Smoking Saint Laurent style with Alexander Wang black heels), or if you have the legs for it, a killer cocktail dress.ā For the weekend, meanwhile, you can āWear it with trackies, your boyfriendās shirt (worn cuffed and loose) and a chic cashmere overcoat.ā