How will April 10th work?

Looking to buy an Apple watch? Or simply to go have a gander at them? Starting April 10th, you can do just that (although you won’t be able to take one home until the 24th, only pre-ordering starts on the 10th).

So how will it work? Well, it’ll be really, really busy. Think your average Apple store experience, with about 100 more people. That’s totally  a guesstimate, and we’re also guesstimating that the numbers will go up in the days following the 10th with people who are trying to miss out on the starter crowds. Sneakers!

So: busy. If you want to try on an Apple Watch, you’re looking at making and holding a personal 15 minute appointment with an Apple store employee, where they’ll presumably go through a bunch of questions about what style watch and band you want. Supposedly, they’re being trained to look at your style, what you do for a living, your lifestyle, etc and use that information to recommend the perfect Apple watch for you.

If you’re looking at buying the super fancy Gold Apple Watch Edition, you’re looking at a whole 15 minutes more than the rest of us plebs. That’s right, you get half an hour! And you’ll also get attended to by a specially trained employee. So that’s pretty special.

Apple Watch Edition will however only be available in select stores. The other Apple Watch options will be available to try on  in all Apple retail stores from the beginning of store hours on April 10th. The stores will be transformed overnight to and the watches themselves will be placed in glass display tables surrounded by try-on tables.

There will also be pop-up stores for the fancy Edition Apple Watches, although we haven’t heard of any in the states yet. So far we’ve heard mentioned The Wonder Room in Selfridges, the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and the Isetan Department Store in Tokyo.

Will you be going to try on an Apple Watch on April 10th?

Apple Special Media Event Part 3 – Apple Watch

A lot of what we heard today about the Apple watch was just a reiteration of what we’ve heard since the product was announced last year, a practice in upping the anticipation for it’s imminent release. How it’s the most personal Apple product ever, the tech that will become integral in your day to day life, from improving your health to being a full on iPhone impersonator sitting pretty on your wrist.

You will be able to use it for phone calls, look at your photos, use Siri, get and reply to notifications, emails, social media, track your health data, play music, make calendar appointments, use Apple Pay, get an Uber, unlock your hotel room at SPG hotels, open your garage door, etc. All very exciting things. That we already kind of knew. Nice to get a reminder, though, right?

So what new information did we get?

We learnt that Christy Turlington Burns is basically superwoman, and that’s why she was chosen to test out the Apple Watch in a half marathon in Africa, and a full marathon coming up in London. She loved the Apple Watch ( uh, d’uh) and she spoke about the Charity she founded,  ‘Every Mother Counts’,  which aims to improve maternal Health and prevent childbirth and pregnancy related fatalities around the world.

You should definitely check it out. 

Back to the watch! It will have… drum roll please… 18 hours battery life! Yay! Pretty good, Apple, pretty good.

The Apple Watch will come in three collections. Apple Watch sport,  the Stainless Steel Apple Watch and the Apple Watch Edition.

Apple Watch Sport is crafted from Aluminum and will cost you $349 clams for the 38mm model, and $399 clams for the 42mm model.

The Stainless Steel Apple Watch will start at $549 and top out at $1099, depending on the band and buckle combination you choose.

The Apple Watch Edition is crafted out of 18 Karat solid yellow or rose gold and will start at $10,000 and top out at $17,000. Yowza. This model is also limited. Because that’s how you know you’re fancy, if not very many other people have the same fancy thing.

Bands will retail for between $49 and $449, with additional magnetic chargers costing $29 for a 1-meter cable and $39 for a 2-meter cable. A new bands and accessories page on the Apple Online Store lists all of the available add-ons for Apple Watch.

Pre-order starts on April 10th, and you can also go into an Apple Store from that day to try it out. The Watch will be officially released on April 24th, in United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and United Kingdom. Apple Watch will be available for purchase by reservation at Apple Stores, online and at select authorized resellers in China and Japan. 

And that’s a wrap! What an exciting morning. We’re ready for a nap.

Apple Watch updates!

It’s Friday! Happy Weekend guys!!

So, we get that you don’t usually look forward to Mondays on a Friday afternoon, but guess what makes this coming Monday different?

That’s right, an Apple Special Media Event, that’s what. Time to SPRING FORWARD!

Obviously it’s not that exciting. We’d be really excited if they were, like, giving away free Apple Watches at the event. Or even releasing them to be sold for, let’s face it, quite a bit of monies.

BUT

They will be talking a bit more about it. So that’s pretty cool, right? .. right? RIGHT! Well, cool enough. The Apple Watch product release is building in anticipation, and this is one of the ways that Apple amp that anticipation up a notch, those clever guys. And you know what else they do? Release information as rumors right beforehand!

So here’s what we’re looking at rumor-wise: The Apple Watch will take about 2 hours to charge, which will give you all day battery life, with about 5 hours of heavy use in that day.

The Apple Watch will only deliver notifications whilst the watch is sitting pretty on your wrist, and will stop with the notifications when it’s not on your skin or below 10% battery.
Pressing and holding the Digital Crown will summon Siri, which (who?) is apparently working really well on the watch.

If your battery is low but you still really need to know the time, the watch will have a Power Reserve Mode, which can be accessed at any time and will shut down all functionality except for the watch. The time-telling Watch. The clock bit. You know what we mean.

Apparently the Apple Watch will have 8GB of storage available, with other larger options available, such as in the iPhone/iPad.

The keynote begins on Monday at 10 AM P.S.T. and will be live-streamed on the Apple Website and on a designated Apple TV channel. We will be keep you up to date on  all the Apple Watch details and everything else that is revealed on Monday!

Have a rad weekend.

New Jony Ive Interview!

The great man himself, Apple’s design chief Jony Ive, recently gave a rare interview to the Financial Times.  Focusing on the design process of the Apple Watch, Ive delves into why and how the new tech was created and has evolved.

From the sauce:

“It was different with the phone – all of us working on the first iPhone were driven by an absolute disdain for the cellphones we were using at the time. That’s not the case here. We’re a group of people who love our watches. So we’re working on something, yet have a high regard for what currently exists.”

It’s a great interview, giving a rare insight into one of the worlds most renowned designers on a product a very many are excited about. In the lead up to Monday’s Apple Watch-centric special media event – go check it out!! 

Want the most expensive Apple Watch?

The release of Apple’s new product – the Apple watch – is fast approaching!  A special media event has been announced for March 9th which is believed to focus on the so far unspecified details of the watch, and the release itself is expected early April.

Are we excited yet??

Well, yeah. Because it’s going to be awesome, d’uh. But, we can imagine only a lucky few amongst us are excited about the purchase of this particular version of the Apple Watch. You know, the $69,995  one.

Um, wha?

Yup. Luxury and couture product design company Brikk have announced that they will be customizing a line of exclusive and luxurious versions of the Apple Watch called Lux Watch Line. How luxurious, you ask? Think color options of 24-karat yellow gold, 18-karat pink gold, and 950 platinum. Think lines of 12.3 carat diamonds.

The watches will be disassembled by engineers at Brikk and then customized with diamonds, gold and plates of metal before being reconstructed and shipped out to their customers approximately 4-6 weeks after the Apple Watch release. The line will start at $7,495 for the Standard, $11,995 for the Deluxe, and $69,995 for the Omni.

Apple has yet to specify pricing for all of the Apple watch models, and rumors have built up the high end gold model to be between $10,000 and $20,000, but don’t worry, if you’re not into gold and diamonds, the aluminum Sport model will be offered at a more acceptable $349.

Are you thinking of buying a Apple Watch? If so, will it be covered in diamonds? If so… can we come over later?

Apple needs a lot of gold for the luxury Apple Watch option

The Apple Watch release is imminent and a March 9 special media event will hopefully confirm not only the exact release date but the specific model pricing as well. We do know that the Apple Watch is going to come in an 18 Karat gold edition model, and there has been a lot of speculation as to how this model in particular will be priced.

There have been guesstimations of between $10,000 and $20,000 big ones. Here’s some more wild estimations from around the tech world – they’re thinking each watch will contain 62.2 grams of gold, and they’re thinking that Apple will sell 1 MILLION of these watches per month after it’s release.

That’s 746 tons of gold used for Apple Watches per year.  That, is about 30% of the world’s annual production of gold. Holy goober-balls, right?

Well, yeah, if those guys are right, that’s a lot of Goober-balls. However, other jewelry and tech experts have estimated the gold in the Apple Watch to be at about half that amount, and the price tag to be at a minimum of $5000, not $10, 000.

Looks like we’ll just have to wait and see. Until then, check out all the other models of the Apple Watch that will be on offer come April.

Apple announces Special Media event on March 9th

Good news!! One of those things we all love – Apple special media events – has just been announced!

Come March 9th (that’s in just 11 days people!) Apple will be sharing some special news with us at a media event held at 10:00 AM P.S.T at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

What the news? Well, we’re not 100% on that, but that’s of course not unusual for an Apple media event. Here’s what we do know:

The event is named ‘Spring forward’.

Apple will be live streaming the event from it’s website as well as making it available on Apple TV via a dedicated channel.

It is assumed that the event will focus mainly on the imminent release of the much anticipated Apple Watch, including specific price, battery life, accessory and release date details.

There is a rumor that Apple will also talk about a 12-inch Retina Macbook Air as well.

Other than that we’ll just have to wait and see! We will of course keep you up to date with the rumor mill as the event gets closer!

Apple earnings call & Apple Watch release update

Tim Cook has had a busy day. But – a pretty good one by all accounts. He had to make the earnings call which covered the first fiscal quarter of 2015. In it, he told financial analysts and investors that not only did Apple sell about 9 million more iPhones than what was expected and forecast, but that they also had reported earnings of $3.06 per share on revenue of $74.6 billion which is way more than anyone was expecting.

According to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters, analysts had actually expected Apple to report earnings of about $2.60 a share on $67.69 billion in revenue.

Yeesh.

The iPad was the only soft note in the earnings call, with sales hitting a quieter 21.4 million units instead of the 22.2 million unit estimate. However, Apple’s cash rose to almost $178 billion, up 15 percent from the prior quarter.

Again – Yeesh.

So – to the best news! Straight from the Sauce, Mr Cook himself –

“Development for Apple Watch is right on schedule, and we expect to begin shipping in April… My expectations are very high on it. I’m using it every day and love it and can’t live without it.”

Bam. Bam. Bam. April. Early April, Apple Watch, tech we apparently can’t live without. Excellent! And with a battery that can be charged just by thinking good thoughts. Right Tim?

Apple Watch updates

We have a quick round up for you on the recent rumors and updates regarding the (hopefully) super awesome Apple Watch.

When it was announced, Tim Cook advised that the Apple Watch would be seen ‘early in 2015’. There have been a few updates on that since, but nothing too specific.

A secret sauce has leaked that we would be pretty lucky if the watch was released by Valentines day (14th February for the unromantic amongst us) next year.

According to the guys over at 9to5Mac, a more reliable sauce – Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts – revealed to retail employees in a video message that the Apple Watch will be launching in the Spring of next year.

Back in September when the watch was announced, Apple advised that the starting price would be $349. This price is most likely for the Apple Watch Sport Edition.

French website iGen.fr has recently come out predicting (with the help from some secret sauce no doubt) the price of the stainless steel Apple watch ($500) and the gold Apple Watch ($5000!).

Other estimates have the gold Apple Watch at a more wallet friendly $1000- – $2000.

Let’s just say that Valentines Day might be an expensive one next year.

Apple Watch battery

So we’re pretty excited about the Apple Watch.

We know there are a lot of people out there who aren’t- people who dislike Apple for the sake of disliking Apple, people who don’t like to wear watches, people who have really fat wrists…

But we’re excited. The one thing, however, that was rather glossed over in the Special Media Event where it was announced was battery power. Specifically, how long the battery will stay powered.

There have been rumors that this is one reason for the (some say) delayed release date of early(ish) 2015 instead of the predicted release date of 4th quarter 2014. The little Apple Oompa Loompa’s have apparently been working around the clock to try and increase the battery length of the Apple watch past one day’s use, which it seems to be at currently.

In comparison with other brands of smart watch, the Apple watch seems to be a fierce competitor, however when we’re talking specifically about battery length, not so much. Although it’s not too bad – the other watches range from less than one day ( Hi Moto 360) to one day, to 7 days ( Hi Pebble Steel).

These two things obviously interact- with more processing power and capabilities comes less battery life. If Apple is unable to increase the battery life on the Apple Watch, and it does indeed need to be plugged in overnight, every night, will that sway those in the market for the next new & big thing? The newest Apple wearable tech no less?

Hey, maybe it’ll be a Jony Ive Christmas Miracle and they’ll figure out completely wireless charging in time for the release! And then, in twenty years, our children will ask us why we sometimes call starting to charge something ‘plugging it in’.

Just like some kids these days don’t know why we say ‘roll down/up’ the window’. Isn’t that WEIRD?

*We’re sorry, that was mean