News - page 1196

A new report for Reuters says that app makers are struggling to come up with the kind of “killer app” that will be a winner for the Apple Watch in the way that Instagram or, more recently, Snapchat was for the iPhone. The report notes that Apple has blocked certain features of the Apple Watch, including its gyroscope and accelerometer, on the initial WatchKit developers’ kit, but won’t reveal exactly why this has been done.

Other aspects of the Apple Watch third-party developers can now yet tap into include the ability to wake up companion iOS apps, using the Taptic Engine, heart rate tracking, Force Touch, and a variety of other innovations.

“The limitations are discouraging,” one engineer, developing a Watch app to control a Tesla Model S, is quoted as saying.

The Apple Watch’s Force Touch technology and rose gold finish might not stay exclusive to the smartwatch for long.

A new report from The Wall Street Journal says that when the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus come around, they’ll have Force Touch screens, and come in pink gold.

Nerds and regular folks across the globe paused yesterday while Tim Cook unveiled Apple’s newest products. While everyone else was busying talking about the Apple Watch and new MacBook, your favorite brands were trying to get in on the buzz with a tweetstorm of puns and jokes.

Makers of everything from Twinkies to Miller Lite were ready to go viral with their witty tweets. Most fell flat, but there were a couple clever ones mixed in with the noise.

Here are the hottest Apple Watch-related tweets from social media marketers looking to cash in on Apple’s cachet:

Actress Anna Kendrick can probably afford a $10,000 gold watch, but that didn’t stop her from taking a bite out of Apple after it flexed its wrist-computing power Monday.

Known for her brutal Twitter truths, Kendrick offered a sour evaluation of the high-end Apple Watch, which is made of 18-karat gold and comes with a matching luxury price tag.

“We should be thanking Apple for launching the $10,000 ‘apple watch’ as the new gold standard in douchebag detection,” wrote Kendrick.

The internet is up in arms about the price of the higher-end Apple Watch models, with a grand level of snark and wit in the various Twitter rants and reaction pieces. The aggro response will most likely fade away, but if there were an equally large group of apologists, the resulting flame war might become a larger-than-life conflagration.

If you’ve ever wondered why some internet arguments go large, this video may have the answer. It turns out that the best way to get the attention of the internet is to get angry. Or, rather, angry reactions can almost guarantee the potential of an argument to go viral.

Because of Apple Watch, Jony Ive thinks Swiss watch makers are screwed. Even Swatch’s inventor agrees. But Switzerland’s top athlete isn’t sold quite yet.

When asked whether he think athletes will embrace Apple’s wearable, 17-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer said he’s interested to check out Apple Watch, but he doesn’t use “those type of things” and doubts “it’s going to have a big impact on the Swiss watch industry.”

“I don’t quite understand how much you need to know about all of these little things—about how much energy you burn, about how much spin you put on the ball,” Federer told CNBC. “I think it might be interesting to some people, but at the end of the day I believe in hard work.”

Watch the full interview below:

Apple has one of the most iconic logos in pop culture. Go into any coffee shop and you’ll be assaulted by an array of glowing MacBook lids and shiny iPhone screens, but it turns out that drawing the Apple logo from memory is shockingly hard.

A new study conducted by UCLA researchers found only one out of 85 undergraduate students could accurately draw the iconic logo from memory. If you’re think maybe they just weren’t familiar with the Apple logo, you haven’t been to a college campus in a while.

The difficulty of drawing Apple’s ubiquitous logo actually tells us something about human memory and how we form a ‘gist memory’ of objects and symbols we become too familiar with.

Swatch may be just a couple of months from launching its own Apple Watch rival, but the 61-year old co-creator of the low cost Swatch wristwatch, Elmar Mock, isn’t being shy about describing the havoc he thinks Apple’s debut wearable device is going to wreak on the watch industry.

“Apple will succeed quickly,” Mock told Bloomberg. “It will put a lot of pressure on the traditional watch industry and jobs in Switzerland.”

Although other brands are now starting to investigate the possibilities of smartwatches, Mock thinks people are still selling the Apple Watch short, saying that the Apple Watch is going to bring about an “Ice Age” for makers of mid-priced Swiss watches when it ships in April.

The new MacBook is one of the most impressive pieces of technology Apple has unleashed in five years. It boasts a Retina display, USB-C, butterfly-hinged keyboard, Force Touch trackpad and terraced batteries. All crammed inside a body that’s smaller than the MacBook Air, made possible by a new fanless processor.

Despite being an unapologetically gorgeous piece of hardware, the new MacBook’s biggest weapon — the fanless processor — is also its greatest weakness.

Apple has placed the new MacBook in a category most people shouldn’t even consider buying, and that’s OK. The new MacBook isn’t for you and me, it’s for the future.

One of the highlights of any Apple keynote is that it inevitably means another catchy jingle from YouTube songsmith and longtime Mac-fan, Jonathan Mann: a musician whose Apple-centric songs once made even Steve Jobs dance.

Frankly, it’s amazing that nothing short of amazing that Mann is able to create such entire songs, complete with music videos, so quickly after an Apple keynote is off the air, but somehow he does. Choosing a smooth jazz-synth sound and the vaguely-inappropriate title “It’s Not Just With You, It’s In You… I Mean On You,” Mann lovingly lampoons Apple’s “most personal device” with an earworm that, all things being equal, should tide you over until WWDC.

Check out the music video (and its lyrics) after the jump. You might even want to sing along…

Apple will consume 18 percent of global sapphire ingot output making the displays for the Apple Watch, according to a new report coming out of China’s supply chain. This adds up to a whopping 30.8 million millimetres of two-inch (diameter) sapphire ingots in total.

Betabrand designers don’t want to dress us in crap. But they will happily cover us in Poo emojis.

The San Francisco-based crowd-funded clothing company known for innovative blends of comfort, clever, cool and humor – consider the Photobomber hoodie or Shiny Silver disco leggings – seem to have piles of material with a poo emoji pattern.

First, Betabrand produced a Chuck Taylor-inspired high-top sneaker, then a men’s short-sleeve button-up shirt that left the company flush with orders. Now, a sleek pocket dress sprinkled with the bright-eyed, smiling coil of fun is available.

Assume, for a moment, you’ve always been an Android guy but yesterday’s spintastic Apple Watch presentation sent you over the edge.

Now you’re a freshly minted Apple fanboy with money to burn, and you want to go from zero to full-on Apple hero. How much is it going to set you back if you’re ready to go all in with the latest, greatest gear Cupertino has to offer?

We’ve seen a lot of iPhone 6 torture tests in our day. But this guy dropping his iPhone 6 in a lava lamp has to be the grooviest.

The CIA has been been involved in a multi-year effort to crack iOS security, according to new information provided to The Intercept by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The attempts have been the focal point of multiple yearly CIA conferences called “The Jamboree.”

Among the possible solutions proposed include a means of “whacking” Xcode, the software used to create apps for iOS and Macs. Researchers claimed they had discovered a means by which Xcode could be manipulated to allow devices to be infected, so as to allow for the extraction of private data — thereby creating a “remote backdoor” that would disable core security features and allow undetected access to Apple devices.

The Apple Watch is a watch in as much as the iPhone is a phone: It bears a resemblance to its titular device, but does so much more as well. That said, Apple’s focus on inviting fashion and watch journalists to yesterday’s “Spring Forward” keynote shows that Cupertino does view its new wearable device as an alternative to analog watches.

Now that we finally have a price tag for all the Apple Watch models, we can compare a few classic alternatives you could strap on your wrist instead. You won’t get the apps, or the ability to beam your heartbeat to a loved one, but if it’s a stylish status symbol you’re after, these are the timepieces the Apple Watch needs to beat.

Check out our picks to see if Jony Ive’s proclamation that Swiss watchmakers are “f*cked” is really true.

The people of St. Pauli in Hamburg, Germany are pissed off about being pissed on.

Declaring “Peeback Time,” an anti-public urination group has coated neighborhood walls with a special chemical that will return the stream back to anyone too lazy to find a bathroom.

St. Pauli draws throngs of visitors in the German port city because of bars, music clubs and a well-known red light district. The Beatles briefly called St. Pauli home before fame struck.

With so many Apple Watch configurations to choose from, making your preorder before Apple’s initial stock sells out next month could be difficult if you leave it until the last minute.

But you can choose and save your favorite Watch configuration now for instant preordering later through the Apple’s online store.

When Steve jobs co-founded Apple, his vision was to democratize technology.

At the time, computers were for governments and rich corporations. Jobs wanted everyone to have their own computer — a crazy idea back in the ’70s. The slogan for the original Macintosh was “the computer for the rest of us.”

For the next 30 years, Jobs worked hard to realize that mission. Although Apple has never made the cheapest computers, in general, the trend has been cheaper and more accessible, from the Mac to the iPhone. For most people, Apple’s products are largely affordable.

This is why the gold Apple Watch Edition — which starts at $10,000 — bugs me. It’s not a watch for the rest of us. It’s a watch for everyone but us. It’s a watch for the one percent.

Apple blew us away today with its HBO Now partnership, sexy new MacBook, and ResearchKit. But the star of the show was Apple Watch, which has the potential to be either a game changer or massive flop.

For those who don’t remember, this was the second time Apple execs have taken the stage to talk Apple Watch. We got an initial preview of the Watch back in September, and today’s event was more for filling in the knowledge gaps.

While we already knew the Watch’s main selling points and the kinds of apps it would run, there was still some crucial information that needed answering. Luckily Apple did address the most important questions, but it also left certain aspects of the Watch in ambiguity.

The new MacBook is gorgeous, insanely thin, revolutionary and pressure-sensitive. It’s also missing one killer feature: a glowing Apple logo.

The shining bit of trade dress has been a pop culture icon ever since Apple released the PowerBook G3 in May 1999. However, it looks like Jony Ive’s design team is ready to sacrifice the glowing Apple beacon in the name of thinness. You’ll still find a light-up logo on the MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, but it was never meant to be on Apple’s new golden beauties.

Take a look at the back of the new 12-inch Retina MacBook:

HBO is finally embracing cord-cutters by offering up a dream product: unlimited access to all of its content for $15 per month, no contract required.

The new cable-free service is set to premiere next month, just in time for the Game of Thrones season 5 premiere, but in order to access it you’ll need either an Apple TV or an iOS device. Apple signed an exclusivity agreement with HBO to sell the new service, and according to a report from Recode’s Peter Kafka, Apple’s exclusive access will last for the first three months.

Pre-orders for the Apple Watch start on April 10th, but if you’re anything like us, you probably already know which Apple Watch you’re going to buy.

I’ve got my heart set on the Apple Watch Sport murdered out in space grey with a black sport band, even though the stainless steel Apple Watch is a little cheaper than I was expecting. Some of the Cult of Mac staff are still debating which timepiece they’ll be purchasing, but we want to hear from you, the readers, which Apple Watch version do you plan to buy?

Today’s media presentation was billed as an Apple Watch event and even its name, “Spring Forward,” had the press preoccupied with time and wrist-based computing.

But journalists in attendance were just as excited to learn about a completely reinvented Retina MacBook. Reporters covering the Apple unveiling eagerly shared initial impressions once they got their hands on Apple’s thinnest, lightest computer yet.

The look impressed. The touch was another matter.

Today’s ‘Spring Forward’ keynote was packed with more videos than any event in recent memory. Not only did Apple show promo videos for the new products like the 12-inch MacBook and Apple Watch, there were three separate videos just talking about the different materials that went into Apple Watch.

Apple finally posted all nine new videos on its YouTube channel, and you can watch all of them below: