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.
Here’s a couple of tips should you decide to hire an octopus as your photographer.
If it asks you to “watch the birdie,” be sure to know exactly which tentacle is holding it. Also, don’t let it charge you double for the shots where a tentacle got in front of the lens.
An animal trainer at an aquarium in Aukland, New Zealand has trained an octopus named Rambo to photograph visitors to her tank. Considering the intelligence of these sea creatures, it may only be a matter of time before she raises her prices. For now, she charges $2.
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.
A destroyed MacBook Air is now on display as part of an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Wondering how it got there? Two words: Edward Snowden.
The Apple Watch launch might be Cupertino’s most innovative — and complicated — product rollout ever. Usually you just pick between a colors and tech specs, but for Apple’s “most personal device yet,” things aren’t so straightforward.
Even the actual purchasing process is different: Lining up at the store a couple days early isn’t going to help you this time, but this guide to buying an Apple Watch definitely will. It’s loaded with tips for beating the odds and wrapping an Apple Watch around your wrist on launch day.
Here’s everything you need to know about how to preorder and buy an Apple Watch.
(Editor’s note: This post has been updated and stickied to the top of Cult of Mac’s homepage. You’ll find fresh Apple news by scrolling down the page.)
You probably knew this already, but if you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone or iPad, don’t upgrade to iOS 8.3. Not only does it break existing jailbreaks, but it patches a huge number of security holes in the operating system, making an iOS 8.3 jailbreak farther off than ever.
Shooting ultra slo-mo videos are one of my favorite things about the iPhone 6 Plus, and thanks to Twitter, it’s now far easier to share them via social media.
That’s because the micro-blogging network now supports the posting and embedding of slow-motion iPhone clips; opening up whole new possibilities when it comes to making sure that video of your office work party, your pet running across a field, or your kid practicing skateboard stunts looks as dramatic as possible.
Slow-motion enthusiasts like director John Woo are going to have a field day…
Apple Pay continues its march to becoming the standard mobile payment solution, adding ten new participating retail partners in the United States, to bring its total number of merchants to 68.
Major new Apple Pay adoptees include GameStop, T-Mobile Stores and the Golden State Warriors, Orlando Magic, and Phoenix Suns NBA franchises.
Check out the full list of new participating companies below.
Apple released big updates to iOS and OS X today, and among the changes is a whole lot of new emojis.
There are over 300 emojis added by Apple as part of an update to the Unicode standard, and most of them focus on racially diversifying the existing emojis we all know and love. There’s also an awesome Spock emoji for when you’re wanting the world to live long and prosper.
But the catch is that if you’re not on the newest iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3, you won’t see these new emojis. Instead, you’ll see an alien or an empty box!
There are plenty of Apple Watch reviews out in the wild now, but we have yet to see a solid unboxing of the hottest new wearable in tech.
French newspaper Metronews did the honor, and here’s what opening an Apple Watch for the first time is like:
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:
Space travel is bound to be essentially lonely. Even in our one galaxy, there’s something like 300 billion star systems. Three hundred billion. It’s hard to even conceive of that number, to be honest.
Frontier Developments, the developer of Elite: Dangerous, has gone to great lengths to give players that feeling of loneliness, balanced with the excitement and multiplayer action that current gamers expect when they launch a video game.
“With a real full scale galaxy it’s easy to head off into unexplored space,” executive producer Michael Brookes told us. “We think that’s a good thing; players can choose the life of a pioneer on the unexplored frontier, or stick to more populated places for cooperative and competitive play with other players.”
Even better, this stunningly gorgeous fourth entry in the Elite game franchise is coming to your Mac soon.
The Apple Watch isn’t available for preorder until this Friday, and it’s already looking like certain models won’t ship by April 24.
Apple released the third major update to iOS 8 today with the public launch of 8.3, which brings a host of new features to iPhones and iPads.
The iOS 8.3 update is available as an over-the-air update or via iTunes. Some of the new features include racially diverse emoji, two-factor authentication for Google, new Siri languages, and tons of bug fixes.
Here’s a run down of the biggest features you’ll find:
Apple has released OS X 10.10.3 to the public. The update includes the all-new Photos app, which has been in beta for the last several weeks.
Hundreds of new emojis have also been added, along with improvements to Spotlight, Safari, Wi-Fi connectivity and more.
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:
There are self-help books and expensive seminars that can give powerful inspiration to raise your career profile, be a better leader or grow your business.
Then there’s the free app that could potentially be a game-changer in less than three minutes.
The ambitious can gain bits of advice from more than 100 corporate gurus, best-selling authors and motivational speakers with Audvisor, a library of curated expertise brought to IOS and Android users in short audio clips.
Having first been made available to developers back in February, OS X 10.10.3 may be arriving for the rest of us today, according to a new report in the Associated Press.
The article in question concerns the new (free) Photos app for Mac, which serves as a replacement for iPhoto and Aperture. Photos makes it easy to organize and edit your photos using professional grade tools, such as granular color correction and a slew of other functions, previously available only in pro-grade apps like Adobe Lightroom.
Most apps are way too nice to us. “Don’t worry that you missed your 10,000 steps today,” they say. “There’s always tomorrow.”
CARROT apps are different. Whether you’re using a CARROT calorie counter or a CARROT weather forecaster, all the apps in the growing line have one thing in common: an hilariously sadistic AI character that serves as your in-app guide, dishing out harsh punishments if you miss your targets.
“So many of the apps out there are just cloyingly sweet, CARROT creator Brian Mueller tells Cult of Mac. “They’re always telling you that you’re doing a good job, no matter what you’re doing. I wondered what would happen if you did the opposite and created a sarcastic, irreverent personality who would yell at you if you don’t get stuff done. And, to my surprise, people really, really responded to it.”
April 24 isn’t just about the Apple Watch. If you live in China, it’s also the day on which the second brick-and-mortar Apple Store opens in Hangzhou — following hot on the heels of the recently-opened gorgeous West Lake store in the city’s Shangcheng District.
The new store is located in the city’s Jianggan District, in a MixC mall that is also home to a number of high-end brand stores and upmarket eateries.
Apple was among 12 tech companies — also including Google and Microsoft — which appeared in front of an Australian parliamentary hearing on Wednesday to defend their corporate tax structures in the country.
Apple has previously stood accused of shifting close to $8.1 billion in untaxed profits from its Australian operations to its business operations in Ireland over the course of the past decade.
Sometimes described as “Netflix for pirates,” the video streaming service Popcorn Time is coming to iPhone. The standalone Popcorn Time iOS app will launch imminently — quite possibly as early as today — and will allow users to watch pirated TV shows and movies on the move.
While it won’t be allowed in the App Store for obvious reasons, a workaround means users can install the app without having to jailbreak their handsets first — although, for now, you’ll need to have access to a Windows computer.
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.
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:
Sony is planning to invest $376 million dollars to boost capacity for chips used in smartphone camera sensors, including the iPhone. The company announced today that this will be the second boost to capacity made this year to meet demand.