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Perhaps the most surprising thing about Apple’s reveal on Tuesday of their first smartwatch was that it was square.

Many of us were expecting something that was at least curved, if not round: a more traditional watch form factor that represented an evolutionary step away from the square displays Apple has embraced since the original Apple I.

Of course, as we all know, the Apple Watch is boxy, at least for now. But as these renders show, the Apple Watch design and UI would work just as well, if not more so, in a round casing, with a round display.

Two things strike me about the camera in the new iPhone 6 models. One is that you can take better pictures; the other is that the iPhone is now a much better place for viewing those pictures.

With their bigger, brighter screens — and iCloud’s new Photo Albums feature (which stores all your photos, ready to view, in iCloud) — the iPhone 6 and its larger sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus, are looking to be the best smartphones yet, from a photographic point of view.

One of the biggest disappointments from Apple’s announcements yesterday was the lack of a sapphire screen for the iPhone 6. A seemingly-neverending string of part leaks and rumors indicated that 2014 would be the year the iPhone got a nearly indestructible sapphire display cover.

And while sapphire is used for the Apple Watch’s display, Apple made no mention of sapphire for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

What happened?

The closing of Macworld is the end of an era. Thirty years ago, the publication was the midwife to the launch of the Macintosh.

Cult of Mac has a series of exclusive recollections by the magazine’s founder Dave Bunnell, which chronicle the journalist’s close encounters with a young and volatile Steve Jobs, the Mac’s difficult gestation and the birth of modern desktop computing. It’s a great trip down memory lane — with plenty of outbursts, last-minute changes and even a cameo by Ella Fitzgerald.

Read on for the full series.

The Apple Watch looks far more elegant than the rectangular smartwatches we’ve already seen from competing companies, but we couldn’t help noticing that some of its straps look a little… familiar.

In fact, several of Apple’s new strap designs look almost identical to straps from luxury watchmaker Ikepod, which not so coincidentally used to be run by Marc Newson, an Australian industrial designer who recently became a part of Apple’s design team.

With the poor streaming quality from yesterday’s Apple Event, you may have missed some of the juiciest bits — like the unveiling of the Cupertino company’s exciting new wearable. Well, fear not; the video above will tell you all you need to know about Apple Watch in just six minutes.

While you’re waiting for the Apple Watch to be released, be sure to subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to see more videos like this one — as well as the latest Apple news, and much, much more.

Apple started introducing gold variants of its devices with the “champagne” iPhone 5s in 2013. Given the unexpected popularity of that device, it was only natural that Apple would keep the color scheme going for future devices — which now includes the Apple Watch, as unveiled yesterday.

While Tim Cook didn’t dwell on too many details regarding the individual Apple Watch models during his keynote, technology journalist David Pogue does have some additional information about the 18-karat gold Edition variant of the Apple Watch, which he claims will come in a “gorgeous jewelry box” that doubles as a charger.

Apple is going big with the iPhone this year. Two million photo-aligned pixels big!

The sight of Apple’s new mammoth iPhone 6 Plus might inspire a lot of witty genitalia jokes thanks to its 5.5-inch display, but Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank, as the iPhone 6 Plus has the potential to be Apple’s biggest seller of the year, and I’m not talking screen size.

Yes, the iPhone 6 Plus has display so huge you’ll need to buy an entirely new wardrobe to fit it in your clothes, but it also packs all-new features we weren’t expecting, some of which didn’t even make it onto the iPhone 6.  Despite costing an extra $100, the iPhone 6 Plus is will hit shelves right as the phablet fad is booming, and its armed with features that make it not just bigger than the iPhone 6, but better too.

Here are eight reasons why the iPhone 6 Plus tops the iPhone 6:

For the second consecutive year, Apple has delivered not one but two new iPhones. Unlike the iPhone 5c, however, the slightly cheaper model this time around isn’t just an old iPhone inside a new shell. The iPhone 6 has the same A8 processor, the same Touch ID fingerprint scanner, and the same improved iSight camera as the iPhone 6 Plus.

So, is size the only difference, and how do you choose which model is right for you? Our in-depth comparison below will help you compare each device — spec for spec, feature for feature — and decide which one most deserves a place in your pocket for the next 12 months.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — This is the first group photo of Apple’s new Industrial Design team — the men and women behind the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and a long string of other hit products.

The group is super-secretive and rarely appears in public together. In fact, they’ve only been pictured once before. This picture was taken at the end of Tuesday’s launch event, when many of the journalists had been ushered out. In the middle is Jony Ive and the team’s latest and highest-profile hire, star designer Marc Newson.

The Industrial Design team is Apple’s idea factory. This is where Apple’s innovation comes from. They design and develop all of Apple’s products, and many of them were working at Apple before Steve Jobs returned in 1997.

Apple’s actually made watches before, but one thing that makes the Apple Watch unique from other Cupertino products is it’s the first design I can think of that is asymmetrical. Look at the buttons, and you can see the Apple Watch has a clear handedness: it’s meant to be worn on the left wrist, and operated with the right hand.

Bad for lefties… or is it? Come on: this is Apple we’re talking about. As it turns out, the Apple Watch can be easily set up to wear on the other wrist, as long as you don’t mind the digital crown being on the bottom.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — One of the big questions about the Apple Watch is how Apple will prevent thieves from ripping it off your wrist and using it to clear your bank account.

Because the Apple Watch is connected to Apple Pay — making purchases as easy as a quick swipe — what’s to stop miscreants from abusing it?

The answer wasn’t addressed at Tuesday’s unveiling, but an Apple staffer at the hands-on demo told me how the watch will be protected against fraud.

Months of rumors suggested Apple’s wearable device would be a health-centric powerhouse capable of predicting heart attacks, analyzing sweat and other miraculous feats. But in reality, the Apple Watch seems more like a sexy, supercharged fitness tracker than a full-fledged medical device.

Still, this is an ambitious first-generation device — a crucial step forward for wearables that points the way toward the comprehensive health and fitness device the Apple Watch could become.

We love it when Apple live-streams its keynotes so that we can watch along with those lucky enough to have gotten an invite, but yesterday’s was nothing short of a disaster. It was down more than it was up, and it made Tim Cook and Phil Schiller sound like Chinese girls. But if you missed anything, you can now catch up on-demand and uninterrupted.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — The iPhone 6 is about the only phone that can make your iPhone 5 look fat and schlumpy.

The first thing you notice when you get your hands on one is that the iPhone 6 is pleasing to the touch: The aluminum feels great, the screen is big, bright and beautiful. This is the total package, possibly the best smartphone ever made, and definitely the best in class. I’m not ashamed to say I tried to sneak out of Apple’s demo tent with one.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus take everyone’s favorite smartphone to the next level. They are bigger, faster and thinner than their predecessors, with better battery life to boot.

In the videos below, you’ll get Cult of Mac leader Leander Kahney’s first hands-on impressions, straight and unfiltered from the demo room after Apple’s big press event in Cupertino, California.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — The Apple Watch doesn’t look like it comes from some distant future, where cars drive themselves and we never have to go through airport security again. Instead, it’s clearly the best smartwatch Apple could design based on knowledge gleaned from today’s experts — including those in arcane arts like metallurgy and horology.

And you will absolutely want one.

It may not look like it yet, but after trying out the Apple Watch, I’m convinced it will become an essential piece of kit – as important as your iPhone.

Apple finally showed the world today what the media has been calling an “iWatch” for months. Apple Watch is the first new product category to come out of the company since the original iPad.

It marks a “new era” for Apple, according to CEO Tim Cook, and introducing the Apple Watch was even deemed worthy of a “One more thing” tease (as made famous by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs).

There’s a lot to digest about Apple’s first wearable, so we’ve made it easy for you. Here are the 10 most important things you need to know about the Apple Watch.

That like-new iPhone 5s in your pocket? Obsolete. How about that smartwatch or fitness band you’ve been carting around on your wrist for the past six months? Old news. If you whip out your leather wallet and try to pay with a rectangle of plastic — at least at the corporate stores Apple works with — chances are you’ll be looked at like an old fogey.

Apple has, once again, thoroughly owned the mobile category, expanding the ways we communicate, live and transact business in our daily lives.

This domination of the smartphone, smartwatch and mobile payment categories, as revealed in today’s big iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event, has us ready to hand over another load of cash to the Apple mothership, and gladly. As usual, there were some surprises — some awesome and some not so much — but here are the main takeaways.

Tim Cook and company brought down the house at the Flint Center in Cupertino, and while investors haven’t reacted positively, Apple fanboys are still trying to recover from the hurricane of incredible new products Apple just announced.

The Apple Watch, big iPhones, Apple Pay and even some new software features were previewed at Apple’s first fashion-forward event. But there were a couple of disappointments hiding in the dark corners of the Flint Center as well. Like, where was the talk about the Apple Watch’s battery life? And why is there no sapphire glass on the iPhone 6?

Here are the biggest disappointments from today’s Apple keynote:

All the finishing touches have been added to iOS 8 ahead of its release later this month, leading Apple to seed the final GM beta to developers.

iOS 8 GM is now available to developers in the iOS Dev Center with the public release slated for September 17th, 2014 – two days before the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus hit Apple Store shelves. The new mobile operating system will be made available to iOS users for free, and is compatible with the iPhone 4s and greater, as well as the iPad 2 and greater.

Apple just released U2’s new album, free to all iTunes users, onstage at the Flint Center in Cupertino this morning at the end of Apple Event.

After the two hour event, which unveiled both the new iPhone 6 models and the highly anticipated Apple Watch, Tim Cook introduced “one of the best artists of all time.”

U2 took the stage at the Flint Center in California and rocked the crowd of tech and fashion journalists. Then the two celebrities, one tech and one rock, released the new U2 album Songs of Innocence exclusively to iTunes through October 13 of this year.

As expected, the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus offer more screen space, with 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screens respectively.

The exciting thing?

Apple has pulled off a major engineering miracle: they’re also thinner, faster and smarter than their older cousins — and you don’t have to be richer to get your hands on one. You’ll also be able to use these phones as wallets and health trackers, marking a huge advance in how smart our phones really are.

When Tim Cook started off the keynote by saying “Today, we are pleased to announce the biggest advancement in iPhone,” we were slightly wary of the hyperbole as journalists should be. But after getting a good look at the two new iPhones, we couldn’t agree with him more.

Today Apple unveils the iPhone 6 and mythical iWatch, and Cult of Mac is on the ground in Cupertino, enthusiastically reporting all the action from The Flint Center. Leander will be at the event, elbowing his way to the front of the line for the keynote and hands-on sessions.

This liveblog post is where we’ll cover all the announcements and festivities in Cupertino. We’ll have full updates, analysis and entertainment—everything you could possibly want to know about Apple’s newest, most magical devices.

The event kicks off at 10 a.m. Pacific, but we’ll be firing up the liveblog hours before to give you details from ground zero. What mysteries await us inside Apple’s mysterious white box? You’ll have to come back and find out.

Apple is widely rumored to unveil a new NFC-based mobile payments service tied into the iPhone and iWatch later today.

But there’s a problem. In the aftermath of the Fappening, the massive iCloud breach that leaked nude and pornographic images of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and more, it’s bad timing. Apple’s name is synonymous in the news with security breaches right now. People may not want to trust the company with their financial data if Apple can’t even protect the nudes of celebrities.

So maybe Apple shouldn’t push payments during today’s big event. Or at least not at first. Maybe Tim Cook should apologize instead.