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Things get hairy when Apple Watch appears in the wild

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Photo Courtesy: Apple
These hand models from Apple's Watch videos look like they're fresh from the cloning vat. Not a hair in sight. Photos: Apple
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The weird thing about all the promotional videos for the Apple Watch is how perfect the hand models are. The people wearing the watches look like citizens from Logan’s Run: fresh and young and perfect.

What you won’t see is a parade of hairy arms.

But now that the Apple Watch is out in the wild, that’s exactly what you get on Instagram. These pictures tell the real story.

How to turn great iOS app ideas into something real

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Time to find a great programmer.
Time to find a great programmer.
Photo: Graham Bower

My friends, family and even complete strangers are constantly asking me how to get their million-dollar app idea in the App Store.

This is always a shocker for me because, after countless hours of hard work over the past two years, my app is barely breaking even.

But I can offer one solid piece of advice for anybody hoping to turn a clever idea into a world-beating app: Find yourself an amazing developer and hold on tight.

Tweak your Apple Watch notifications

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Manage your Apple Watch Notifications from your iPhone. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Manage your Apple Watch Notifications from your iPhone. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Notifications are why we all got an Apple Watch, right? We want to be able to know what’s going on in our digital lives all the time, but we want to do it faster, without having to pull out an iPhone. Because that’s just rude.

However, getting every single Notification that you get on your iPhone shunted automatically over to your Apple Watch is going to get tiresome. No one wants to deal with a wrist tap every time someone takes a turn in Evil Apples.

Here’s how to manage all of the notification cruft a little bit better.

How to turn your $399 Apple Watch gold

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When life gives you an ugly Apple Watch, paint that shit gold. Photo: Casey Neistat
Photo: Casey Neistat

 

Lusting after the gold Apple Watch Edition but don’t have the funds for Jony Ive’s $17,000 timepiece? You could take out a second mortgage on the house, or sell a kidney. Or you could do what artist Casey Neistat did and manually turn an Apple Watch Sport into a golden beauty.

Neistat only had $399, so he decided to preorder the black Sport model and then carefully painted it gold. Sure, his method might void your warrant, and it doesn’t look perfect, but it’s better than spending your kid’s college savings just to be as fly as Drake.

You can do it too, just follow the steps in the video below:

See Jony Ive and Marc Newson talk Apple Watch design

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Jony Ive gets animated as he talks about Apple Watch. Photo: Vogue
Jony Ive gets animated as he talks about Apple Watch. Photo: Vogue

Jony Ive and his BFF Marc Newson launched Apple into the luxury market this week with the Apple Watch, which expertly straddles the line between gadget and fashion accessory.

Apple’s dynamic designing duo sat down with Vogue’s Suzy Meeks this week to talk about their first foray into the fashion world — as well as what inspired them to create the Apple Watch. We rounded up the top 8 revelations from the pair’s appearance earlier this week, but Vogue just made the full interview available online, and it’s full of juicy insights into Jony and Marc’s thought processes.

Watch the full interview below:

Customize your Apple Watch settings

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This screen is way too small for all the tweaks available. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
This screen is way too small for all the tweaks available. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Getting your Apple Watch set up is fairly basic, but to truly make this your own personal device, you’ll need to dig into the Apple Watch settings.

You can do all of these things on the Apple Watch itself, but why force yourself to tap and swipe on that tiny screen? Use the Apple Watch app on your iPhone for a much more pleasant experience. You can thank me later.

How to set up your Apple Watch Friends screen

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Learning the user interface can take some time, and then there are all the subtle tricks.
The Friends screen is one of the most important on the Apple Watch. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

After linking your new Apple Watch to your iPhone, your favorite contacts are automatically synced over. But to get the most from the device, you’ll want to make a couple of tweaks to the Apple Watch Friends screen.

It’s truly one of the most important screens on the Apple Watch — here’s how to make the most of it.

How to sync and play music with your Apple Watch

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Get ready to rock with your Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Get ready to rock with your Apple Watch. Photo: Apple

Apple’s smartwatch doesn’t come with much onboard storage, but that doesn’t mean you’re screwed when it comes to Apple Watch music. You can add your own playlists and listen to your favorite tunes using Bluetooth headphones or AirPlay speakers.

To get the songs you want, you need to create a playlist on your iPhone or iTunes, then beam it over to your Apple Watch. Here’s how to do it.

Set up your Apple Watch face the right way

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There's a lot of utility in this watch face. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
There's a lot of utility in this watch face. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

 There are 10 Apple Watch faces to choose from, and each one comes with a crazy amount of options. The moon phases widget is pretty neat, but do I really want to clutter up my watch’s minimalist look? If you’re looking for the coolest Apple Watch faces to match your style, there are plenty of customizable options.

The cool thing is that you can almost have it all. Apple makes it pretty easy to pick your preferred Apple Watch face and then tweak the specific options you want to add to (or delete from) your wrist.

Here’s how.

How to set up Apple Pay on Apple Watch

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How to set up Apple Pay on Apple Watch so you can breeze through checkout lines.
Once you get Apple Pay up and running on Apple Watch, you'll be breezing through checkout in no time.
Photo: Apple

Using Apple Pay on Apple Watch is ridiculously easy. Once you get everything set up, all you have to do is double-click the side button and then hold the Watch face up to a terminal. Apple’s also made it super-easy to add new cards to your Apple Watch, or create a custom Apple Pay profile just for your wrist.

Here’s how to get started with Apple Pay on your Apple Watch

7 killer apps the Apple Watch should have (but doesn’t)

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More Apple Watch apps please. Photo: Apple
More Apple Watch apps please. Photo: Apple

The first wave of Apple Watch are finally here just  in time for Friday’s big release. The Apple Watch App Store went live yesterday with over 3,000 apps that are sure to delight users, as developers try to create the first must-have Apple Watch app.

We rounded up some of our the coolest apps that are ready for your wrist this morning, but we also couldn’t help but notice there were a lot of apps that would be awesome if they were available today.

Here are 7 killer apps Apple Watch should have, but doesn’t:

Apple Watch spy game brings clever twist to retro format

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There's a trick to creating a compelling game on your wrist. Photo: Bossa Games
There's a trick to creating a compelling game for your wrist. Photo: Bossa Games

From James Bond’s laser Rolex to Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone, spies have always been suckers for wearable tech.

To salute secret agents’ fondness for the latest gadgets, the makers of Spy_Watch crafted their new game for the latest cutting-edge device — the Apple Watch. And, like clever spymasters, there’s a twist: They paired this super-modern smartwatch with a vintage videogame mechanic to make a compelling game suitable for a gadget the size of Dick Tracy’s famous wrist radio.

“The idea is to immerse yourself in the idea that you are a spymaster controlling a spy out on missions,” Vince Farquharson, COO of Spy_Watch developer Bossa Games, told Cult of Mac. “To make it feel like they are a real person and that this is really happening.”

Apple will walk you through Apple Watch setup virtually

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Find out how to work your Apple Watch. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Apple has begun sending out emails to customers offering them personal online Apple Watch setup appointments so they can learn more about their new devices.

The sessions with Apple Specialists take the form of the kind of personal setup sessions Apple already offers in brick-and-mortar stores whenever a customer buys a new product.

The best Apple Watch apps you probably haven’t heard of

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Time to download some apps. Photo: Apple

There are already more than 3,000 apps for the Apple Watch, which makes it difficult to find all of the hidden gems. How do you find the best Apple Watch apps?

Luckily, there are plenty of third-party Watch apps that deserve attention, whether they tell you when it’s going to rain or help you get stuff done. Apple is promoting Watch apps heavily in the App Store, and while the big players (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) are obvious downloads, we’ve been on the lookout for some of the other apps for the Apple Watch you might not know about.

Here are some of the best Apple Watch apps to trick out your wrist.

How powerful is the Apple Watch’s S1 processor?

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The S1 processor inside the Apple Watch is equivalent to an A5. Photo: Apple
The S1 processor inside the Apple Watch is equivalent to an A5. Photo: Apple

If you’re wondering roughly how powerful the Apple Watch’s S1 SoC processor is compared to other ARM chips, the answer appears to be that it’s roughly equivalent to an A5 chip, as seen on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, first iPad mini, and the Apple TV, at least as far as graphics chutzpah is concerned.