Apple Watch - page 98

It’s time… for our Apple Watch desires to be fulfilled. With the big day coming March 9th, catch our Spring Forward event expectations, all that we know about the Apple Watch thus far, and our expectations for other Apple hardware announcements. Plus: why Apple watch will replace your keys; Apple adds cars to its list of products; and since the new Photos app for Mac just hit public beta, we’ll tell you what we like and don’t about Apple’s iPhoto replacement.

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Full show notes ahead!

Apple Watch is entering the race to become the leader in wearable tech. And dedicated fitness trackers like the Nike+ FuelBand, Fitbit and Jawbone Up may struggle to keep up with Cupertino’s pace.

Few people remember the MP3 players that iPod left in its wake. Smartphones overtaken by iPhone shared a similar dismal fate. Could fitness wearables be next on the endangered list?

Apple has been very quiet about the Apple Watch’s battery life since the device’s unveiling in September. Reports that the wearable might run out of juice after just 2.5 hours of heavy use have worried many Apple fans, but according to TechCrunch, battery life will be better than expected.

Tim Cook has said Apple Watch owners will need to recharge their devices every night. That doesn’t mean the battery will run dry midway through the workday, though. People who have used the Apple Watch say you should still have around 25 percent of your battery left after a long day.

Jony Ive’s new interview with The Financial Times is packed with nerdy details on the Apple Watch and the designer’s life. Slipped in among the juicy design bits, Sir Jonathan also hints that Apple invented an entirely new form of gold just for the timepiece.

“The molecules in Apple gold are closer together, making it twice as hard as standard gold,” Ive says.

Wait. Gold is a metal. Does Apple’s design studio exist in another dimension?

When Tim Cook was recently asked, during a trip to the Kurfürstendamm Apple Store in Berlin, Germany, whether he would agree to give everyone who worked for Apple’s retail stores a free Apple Watch, he basically rejected the idea in the kindest and lightest-hearted way possible.

But while Apple Watches are currently thought of as more recreational devices than serious enterprise tools, there are those who see Apple’s debut wearable device as the kind of device that would fit perfectly within a business or office environment.

One of those is BetterWorks, a company backed by Google board member John Doerr, which is pitching itself as Fitbit for the workplace. “Having visibility and immediate access to your most critical business data literally at your fingertips, rather than on the phone in your pocket or on the web application from your computer, is super powerful,” creator Kris Duggan tells Cult of Mac.

Even in the wake of an uber-popular device like the iPhone 6, which sold upward of 10 million units in its first weekend alone, it’s fascinating to see analysts hedging their bets when it comes to the Apple Watch. The spread of predictions from these professional prognosticators might as well have been generated at random.

The latest group to weigh in is Strategy Analytics, which is predicting that the Apple Watch will sell (or at least ship) 15.4 million units worldwide in 2015, which would still make Cupertino the world’s No. 1 smartwatch vendor, but with a much smaller market share than others are predicting.

How do you make Apple Watch apps without access to the actual device?

For many developers, it doesn’t get better than the simulation tools Apple provides and some cardboard cutouts. But for a select few, Apple has given the opportunity to test the unreleased Watch in person at a top secret lab.

SAN FRANCISCO — Another Apple event, another mysterious building sprouting up seemingly overnight. They pop up to shield Apple’s prep work from prying eyes, but they also fuel the imaginations of anybody who’s interested in Cupertino’s next move.

The latest such structure — this time with solid white walls and a tented, tarp-like roof — isn’t nearly as elaborate as the gigantic building erected before last fall’s Apple Watch event, but the mysteries concealed could be gigantic.

The big reveal comes at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts next Monday, when we will almost assuredly learn more about the Apple Watch (among other things). Until then, all we can do is wait and wonder: What could be hidden inside Apple’s mystery tent?

The Apple Watch has a secret connector port the company hasn’t shown off, yet it could unlock some exciting possibilities in the future for Apple’s wearables.

Apple designers placed a secret Lightning port inside one of strap connector slots during development, reports TechCrunch which confirmed Apple is only using it to debug watches, but it could unlock an new ecosystem of Apple Watch accessories in the future.

The Apple Watch will be the most personal device ever, and that might include engravings too.

Apple plans to offer personalized engravings for online purchases of the Apple Watch, according to a new rumor from iPhonote. The site’s sources claim Apple hasn’t finalized when it will begin offering engravings, but the customization will almost certainly emerge eventually.

Apple’s March 9 “Spring Forward” event is just around the corner, and its tagline can only mean one thing: Apple Watch news galore.

Scheduled for the day after daylight saving time kicks in, we expect Apple to shower us with details about the upcoming wearable, including pricing and availability. Select Apple Watch apps from App Store developers will likely be shown off as well to whet our appetites for what’s to come.

While there’s a chance some new Mac hardware could share the stage Monday, we expect the event to focus mostly on all the unanswered questions surrounding the Apple Watch.

What are those questions? Glad you asked:

Oh god. What else is there to say? The first Apple Watch fart app is already in development.

Every wearable maker out there right now is trying to figure out how they’re going to compete with the Apple Watch once it lands. Leave it to adult website Pornhub to actually figure it out: It’s just unveiled a tongue-in-cheek concept for a wearable band that would allow you to charge your other gadgets using the power of masturbation.

We’re just days away from finding out all the juicy details of the Apple Watch, but preparations are already underway at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Apple’s crew began working on the event decorations this morning by adding a giant Apple logo graphic to front of Yerba Buena. It’s still a work in progress, but it looks like Apple is using the same graphic from the event invites that went out last week. Along with the Apple signage, a giant white tent has also been constructed nearby, presumably as a press hands-on area for after the event.

Apple will reveal pricing details on its long-anticipated smartwatch in less than a week, but if the stainless steel version costs upward of $700, I’m definitely going the cheap route with the Apple Watch Sport.

The $350 timepiece isn’t as fashionable as its expensive gold and stainless-steel siblings, a point Apple’s website emphasizes by only showing Sport units with Sport bands. But if you pair the Sport with pricier bands, you can barely tells its the el cheapo option.

iOS developer Nick McCardel created mockups of the Apple Watch Sport with bands for the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition. Despite its less luxe finish, the Sport’s silver and space gray aluminum cases still look great no matter what you pair them with.

Take a look at some of the configurations below:

The Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, and already it’s picking up major design awards. The award in question here is the prestigious 2015 iF Design Gold Award, a prize sometimes referred to as a “Design Oscar.”

The awards were first introduced in 1954, and attract more than 2,000 product entries from 37 different nations — with expert judges ruling based on outstanding design quality.

Becoming the most funded Kickstarter in history is certainly enough to boost confidence — and if you’re Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky it’s enough to get you to take some potshots at giant-sized rival, Apple.

With Cupertino’s March 9 Apple Watch event just one week away, Migicovsky has thrown out a few barbed comments about Apple’s eagerly-anticipated debut wearable. Describing the device as “definitely lacking,” Pebble’s founder noted how he’s just not that into smartwatches that are “relegated to being an accessory to your mobile phones.”

Oh, snap!

A billion dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool, Justin Timberlake? A trillion dollars!

Three point four trillion to be exact.

That’s how big Apple’s target market (the money it could potentially make if it had no competitors) could be by 2020, according to the latest estimates from Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty. Apple’s current target market is only $800 billion. Huberty’s projections show that the Apple car could be the biggest money maker Apple’s ever known, adding up to $1.6 trillion of value to the company.

Take a look at the mind boggling numbers Apple could add to its bottomline in these markets:

Ahead of Apple’s March 9 event, the Apple Watch has popped up in another non-tech magazine, boasting some fashion shots of it being worn by a male model. The magazine is East Touch, a Hong Kong-based Cantonese magazine aimed at (predominantly female) readers between the ages of 20-30, and covering mainly celebrity, fashion and entertainment news stories.

This is just the latest fashion publication to feature a look at the Apple Watch, following shortly after the devices was profiled with a multipage spread in the March issue of Vogue.

The Apple Watch will have a special battery-saving feature that will essentially turn it into a basic timepiece.

The previously unreleased detail about the smartwatch’s functionality showed up Sunday in a New York Times story that digs into Apple’s development of the long-awaited wearable.

We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.

This week the Apple Watch rumors have reached a crescendo as invites to a not-so-mysterious event in March were released. Will the Apple Watch really launch with 100,000 apps? Will demand for the gold Apple Watch wreak havoc on the world’s gold supply? And don’t forget about the Apple car either. New rumors are claiming Samsung could be the biggest boost or roadblock for project Titan.

Find out the truth behind the week’s wildest Apple rumors below:

During his whirlwind tour of the Middle East and Europe, Apple CEO Tim Cook has been leaving little breadcrumbs of Apple Watch revelations.

There was the confirmation that the Watch will be showerproof in Germany, and now Cook has said it will eventually replace your car keys.

There is a pretty set pattern that happens whenever Apple enters a new industry: evidenced everywhere from iTunes to the iPhone to the (rumored) Apple Car.

First of all, the established old guard dismiss Apple as a tech company that knows nothing about their business, then starts to panic when it realizes what it’s in a fight it may well lose, and then finally follows Apple down whichever path it is going.

Having initially dismissed Apple’s debut timepiece, Swiss watchmakers are now squirming as the Apple Watch’s April launch date creeps ever closer. First off, TAG Heur admitted it was working on a smartwatch and now fellow Swiss watch company Mondaine has revealed it is doing much the same.

It may be a desperation move on the part of Mondaine but, hey, as desperation moves go, it’s a pretty gorgeous one!

Mark your calendars: Full details of the Apple Watch will be revealed March 9.

Invites were sent to the press today for a special Apple event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on that date. The only hint on the invite are two words: “Spring forward.”

Chances are that the majority of people reading this won’t be looking for a way to make the Apple Watch more expensive.

With a rumored price in excess of $10,000 for the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition, most of us would have to take out a second mortgage on our house before we could dream of picking up the watches on the higher end of Apple’s wearable collection.

For some individuals, however, solid gold just isn’t enough — which is why luxury design company Brikk today announced its plans to increase the decadence by offering diamond-encrusted Apple Watches for sale. Somewhere, you just know that Kanye West is picking up his blinged-out iPhone 6 Plus and getting ready to make an order!