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.

Apple will supposedly unveil a big redesign of Beats Music in June, but if you are hoping it will come with a free, ad-supported tier, you’re going to be out of luck.

Apple wants to help music labels kill free music streaming by inking deals that will give subscribers exclusive access to albums before they hit rival players like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora.

With more than 70 million iPhones sold in the last quarter alone, Apple has quickly become one of the world’s largest display buyers. To meet the increasing demand for iPhones, Apple has reportedly struck a deal with Japan Display to build a $1.4 billion factory dedicated solely to smartphone displays.

Professional front end web development is important today and it’ll be even more important in the future. That’s why Cult of Mac Deals is pleased to offer the Pay What You Want: Front End Developer Bundle, 7 elite web design courses in one neat and tidy package. This is your last chance to get this amazing offer so act quickly!

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?

On March 19, the world’s most valuable company will join the world’s top stock index.

In a feat of great irony, Apple is replacing none other than AT&T on the Dow Jones Industrial Average this month. And even if you don’t care about the stock market, for Apple it’s a big deal.

Google has already confirmed plans to experiment with its own wireless services to “show what’s possible,” and we know it’s going to be limited in its reach. So limited, in fact, that you might need Google’s own Nexus 6 smartphone to connect to it.

If Jony Ive sometimes missed out on getting his rightful credit while Steve Jobs was steering the ship at Apple, that same accusation can’t be made today. Following on from the recent superb New Yorker profile about Ive and the Apple Watch, Apple’s superstar design guru is the recipient of another profile (complete with interview), this time with the Financial Times.

The story’s not nearly as in-depth as the 10,000-word New Yorker piece, but it still has a few interesting observations about Ive’s approach to technology and the unique design challenges of working on the Apple Watch — including why the Apple Watch was a very different prospect for Ive than working on the iPhone.

Highlights can be found after the jump.

Blood makes Sherwood Forlee squeamish, it really does. So imagine the surprise of friends who know his weakness when he created a type of bandage for the everyday boo-boo that creates the illusion of a stomach-churning wound that would make most people call 911.

Forlee’s sense of humor is sicker than the images on his Boo-Boos bandages, though. He says he was in a “jovial spirit” when he began drawing up plans for the morbid adhesive strips.

“They look disgusting, but they also look funny,” Forlee told Cult of Mac. “While I was doing the research, I was at the point of quitting. I would google search ‘terrible wounds’ and I could only handle like five minutes at a time.”

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.

SAN FRANCISCO — Whether they’re in town to pitch products, apply for jobs or ponder the next big thing, the Game Developers Conference is an annual rite of passage for gaming geeks of all sizes, shapes and economic persuasions.

More than 24,000 game developers, publishers and journalists cram into Moscone Center for a weeklong dive into the latest gaming trends. In between panels like “Adventures of a Video Game Drag Queen,” “How Players Engage with Morality” and “Designing for Mobile VR in Dead Secret,” they mix and mingle — at least the ones who don’t have VR goggles strapped to their heads.

Here’s a taste of the action on the ground.

Mac users have had it pretty good when compared to Windows users, at least on the adware and nuisanceware front. Even Oracle, who has bundled the Ask.com search toolbar with Java for Windows for years, has abstained from infecting its Mac users with adware.

Sadly, though, that era now seems to be an end, with Oracle opting to bundle its most recent versions of Java for Mac with the Ask.com search toolbar.

In the summer of 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog was, quite simply, the greatest thing Simon Thomley had ever seen.

At the age of 11, Thomley had graduated to the SEGA Genesis gaming console after years as a Nintendo Entertainment System player. Sonic had lured him to SEGA’s system, and he wasn’t alone: The spiny blue speedster captured the hearts of gamers everywhere. By the end of the year, SEGA had sped past Nintendo on console sales.

A series of sequels followed. While many people remember the Sonic games primarily as a relic of the ’90s, they become an unlikely career for Thomley and his developer friend Christian Whitehead. Better known as Stealth and Taxman, they brought remastered versions of classic Sonic games to iOS for a new generation of gamers to enjoy.

“This has always been my hobby, but I’m lucky enough that this has now become my full-time job,” Thomley tells Cult of Mac. The pair brought finely tuned official versions of Sonic games to iOS — although recent turmoil at SEGA has thrown the future of their highly regarded work into doubt.

Apple was among a group of almost 400 companies which yesterday filed a so-called “friend of the court” brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that same-sex couples should have just as much of a right to marry as anyone else.

Interestingly, the brief doesn’t just focus on moral or ethical reasons that the Supreme Court should be on the right side of history, but actually makes a business case for the legalization of gay marriage; arguing that the confusing legality around the issue “places significant burdens on employers and their employees — making it increasingly hard to conduct business.”

The Samsung Galaxy S6 may borrow its physical form factor, software design, and, yes, even EarPods from the iPhone 6, but there’s one thing Samsung forgot to pilfer: quality.

According to new reports coming out of Asia, the newly-unveiled Samsung Galaxy S6 and SGS6 edge handsets both suffer from a pretty grievous fault — in the form of a display error that stops them properly reading touch inputs around the bezel.

Check out the photos and video after the jump.

Battery life is one of the most discussed aspects of the iPhone, but some handsets have it worse than others.

If you bought an iPhone 5 in the six month window between September 2012 and January 2013, you could be eligible for a free replacement due to a battery fault.

Apple first launched its iPhone 5 Battery Replacement Program back in August 2014, and has now extended it past its original deadline of March 1, 2015 to January next year. That means that if you’re one of the affected customers, and you’ve not yet done anything about it, you’ve still got a bit longer to do so.

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.

GoPro may have a new celebrity endorser, but he seems like a real sour pus.

An octopus in the neuroscience lab at Middlebury College apparently did not like having a GoPro placed in its tank. It turned the camera around on his photographer before trying to eat it.

Benjamin Savard, a digital media producer for the College, retrieved the camera and was surprised to discover the photos, which he posted to Reddit following Monday’s shoot.

The next episode of Beats Music won’t be making an appearance at Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ event next week.

Sources “with a knowledge of the company’s current plans” have told TechCrunch that Apple will debut the new service — which ditches the Beats branding for tighter iTunes integration — during Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference.

Snapchat may wipe away your messages after a period of time, but don’t count on it to wipe away your sins.

A man in the San Antonio, Texas who goes by “@Priest David” is hearing confessions via Snapchat through March 16. News 4 San Antonio interviewed the man, who said he has been a priest for 23 years and started taking the Snapchat sacrament as a way to help a college student with a class project.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous released a statement to News Radio 1200 WOAI said religion needs to “engage young adults, where they are and how they live.”

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.

The Mac platform has been treated as an afterthought by Microsoft’s software engineers for decades. That slowly started to change last year with new apps for iPhone and iPad, but with the public release of Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac, Microsoft is making its biggest play yet to woo Apple users to its productivity software.

Microsoft released a free preview build of Office 2016 for Mac today. You’ll be able to buy the final suite of Office apps later this summer, but Microsoft is luring Mac users by giving out the beta to the public.