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.
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.
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 thecoolest 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.
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
Google is behind some of the best Easter eggs in tech, and its latest is sure to be popular among hard-core Android fans. Spotted in Google Maps near Rawalpindi, Pakistan, it’s an image of the Android bot urinating on an Apple logo.
If your Apple Watch freezes, just force it. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Let’s face it: A time will come when your Apple Watch crashes or freezes. It’s gonna become unresponsive, but you’ll be ready thanks to this handy Apple Watch restart tip.
Keep your mobile devices running day and night with a selection of portable power banks, like the ZeroLemon SolarJuice 20000mAh Battery.
Right now, you can save up to 50% on the purchase of the portable power bank of your choosing. They come with a variety of capacities and styles to suit almost any need.
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:
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.”
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.
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.
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.
These sensors don't just measure heart rate. Photo: iFixit
It would seem Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor is much more intelligent than Apple is letting on. Not only can it read your pulse, but it’s also capable of measuring blood oxygen — a feature Apple could enable in a future Watch update.
Say "Apple" into Voice Memos and you get its logo. Photo: Mike Rundle
Apple is known for placing its fair share of Easter eggs into iOS and OS X, but this is the coolest one we’ve seen in a while.
You know the new Voice Memos icon Apple introduced in iOS 7 Beta 2? It turns out the icon is designed after the waveform representation of someone saying “Apple.”
Apple Watches started arriving with customers today, and to mark the occasion Apple has launched three new ads, showing how its long-awaited wearable device can improve your life.
Titled “Us,” “Up,” and “Rise,” the ads stress the Apple Watch’s various functions in a way that doesn’t just appeal to those people who already own a smartwatch, but also makes a strong case for why everyone should have one.
The Apple Watch next to a classic mechanical watch. Photo: iFixit
The folks at iFixit wasted no time gutting their new Apple timepiece.
Their Apple Watch teardown confirms that the device comes with a hidden diagnostic port. They’ve also exposed the watch’s Taptic Engine, located the tiny battery, and found some gold highlights on the Apple Watch Sport.
A starry-eyed Jony Ive raves about the Apple Watch in a new parody video. Photo: Gizmodo
One magical piece of wearable technology, two radically different parody videos.
The first takes a jab at the seemingly never-ending supply of superlatives Jony Ive uses to describe the Apple Watch. The other reminds us just how precious watches are to people determined to pass them along as keepsakes at all costs. See them both below.
Soon, this sight won't be so strange. Photo: Ryan Ozawa/Flickr CC
Can you hear that giant “Squeeeeee!”? That’s the sound of Apple fans in Asia and Australian taking delivery of the very first Apple Watches.
In time zones where it’s already April 24, the wearable now adorns the wrists of delighted buyers who put in their orders immediately after Apple Watch went on sale earlier this month. These earliest of Apple Watch adopters were only too happy to show off their purchases on Twitter, Instagram and other services.
Literally blown away. Photo: America's Funniest Home Videos
Looks like you don’t need to be a long-time Star Wars fan to totally geek out over The Force Awakens trailer that appeared online last week, as these cuties so ably prove.
Even super young babies get it: this is the coolest, most exciting trailer ever in their young lives: it’s time to completely freak out.
Check out how these little ones react to the best Star Wars thing in recent years in their own America’s Funniest Home Videos YouTube post.
The Apple Watch App Store is now live and it’s packed with way more apps than we expected.
Even if you don’t have an Apple Watch yet, you can start exploring the new Apple Watch App Store in the companion iPhone app. The App Store began to roll out this morning, and Apple says it will include over 3,000 apps for users to install when orders deliver tomorrow.
Indubitably. Capes are cool. Photo: Rob-James Collier
Rob-James Collier, who plays the evil butler on Downton Abbey, Thomas Barrow, is running the London marathon to raise money for a local Multiple Sclerosis charity.
While he might have been able to raise the goal amount of £10,000 on his own cache in the popular British period drama alone, he chose to film a few members of the cast on set playing with lightsabers.
Apple has rolled out a new update for the iMac that promises to fix a Yosemite bug that can cause the all-in-one to freeze up when opening large JPEG files.
Learn how to use your Apple Watch before you get it. Photo: Apple
Ready to master your Apple Watch before it even lands on your doorstep? We’ve already rounded up Apple’s video tutorials on the Apple Watch, but in case you want to dive deep into all the features the unique timepiece has to offer, the official user guide is now available.