The Apple Watch

It’s FINALLY here! ONE MORE THING! This morning the iWatch Apple Watch was revealed and we have all the beautiful wearable tech details for you!

Firstly – how to solve a problem like no-one wants to wear the same watch? Make a bunch of watches, dummy. And that’s what Apple has done with the Apple Watch. It’s the most highly customizable technology Apple has ever made.

As well as 6 different (and interchangeable) strap options and what seems to be a bazillion types of changeable displays, the Apple Watch comes in 2 sizes (dimensions not specified yet), and 3 models: The Apple Watch, The Apple Watch Sport and the Apple Watch Edition. Respectively it goes: Stainless Steel; Aluminum casing, and 18-karat gold.

You will need an iPhone to have the Apple Watch. We mean, you can probably have one without owning an iPhone, but it wouldn’t do much. At all. You need an iPhone for the Apple Watch to work. BUT the excellent news is that it will work with any iPhone from the iPhone 5 and up. Bajinga.

The fancy innovation that we knew was coming with the watch is in the crown, or, we should say, the digital crown. The twisty knob that normally sits on the side of watches is instrumental in the user interface of the Apple Watch, becoming a zoom, scroll and home button all in one.

There is a button below the digital crown that, when pressed, calls up your favorite contacts and lets you call, message or contact them via the Apple Watch’s ‘new form of communication’. This includes sending your heartbeat to someone, sending customizable emoji’s, your own doodles and drawings, and sending taps. Time to learn morse code?

Raise your wrist and the watch face display disappears and in its place is your recognizable navigation home page, with all your apps. You can move in and out to see more or less of the apps, and touch to go into them.

A really cool feature we liked a lot was in the messages app. If you receive a message and wish to reply, you can either dictate the reply and the device will send it via type or audio to the recipient, or it will give you a list of replies created from analysis of the original message.

The given example was a message with a question regarding song choice for Karaoke, giving two options. Those two options were included in the possible replies the device gave. Our lives are slowly turning into a one-button lifestyle! We think we like it…

Exciting feature number 2: Apple Watch has Siri! It will be interesting how close you have to hold the watch to talk to Siri, as in the demo Kevin Lynch was leaning quite close to the demo watch.

Apple Watch can tell the difference between a touch and a press which allows easier movement around the user interface and includes a feature called Taptic feedback – which means if you get a notification, a direction on maps, or a special message – it doesn’t vibrate, it taps to you, so only you feel it. Each direction on maps has a different ‘tap’. James Bond much. We foresee magical blindfolded missions with our Apple Watches! Is that just us?

You can keep your photos on the device, which is pretty sweet, and any photo you favorite in iPhoto or on your iPhone will automatically appear on the Apple Watch.

4 sapphire lenses on the back of the watch detect pulse rate and the combination of a gyroscope, accelerometer, Wi-Fi and GPS creates a comprehensive picture of your daily activity. We’re talking tracking standing and running and walking and heart rate and we’re all going to be healthy. Or feel bad about ourselves about all the not being healthy we’re doing.

To charge, although not specifically mentioned, it seems like the Apple Watch might need nightly charging, but it does charge with a specifically designed, snug little MagSafe charger, so no complicated new cables or awkward positioning needed.

Apple is giving the Apple Watch over to developers for the rest of the year, looking forward to the added capabilities they can give the Apple Watch. New applications mentioned by Tim Cook that will for sure be included are for the Starwood Hotel chain, the ability to check in and unlock your hotel room door with the watch, the ability to check into your American Airlines flights, the ability to control lighting and temperature in your home, MLB sports updates, the ability to control Apple TV, the ability to use the watch as a viewfinder for your iPhone camera AND walkie talkie ability. Sweet 80’s ski-slope style.

Overall, the Apple Watch was what we expected and a little bit more- a bunch of extremely useful technologies with a focus on health and making life and communication easier, bundled up into one beautifully designed, highly customizable watch.

The watch will start at $349 and will be available early 2015.

Apple Pay

Apple Pay is the new service introduced by Apple this morning, and although it’s something that people have been waiting for for quite some time, it’s pretty exciting that it’s finally here and seems to be worth the wait in terms of design and simplicity of use.

Apple Pay uses NFC (Near Field Communications) to make purchases securely and simply – by holding up your phone to an Apple Pay reader in a store to complete the transaction.

Added to the 220,000 merchants across the United States, Apple has gotten some of the biggest chains and brands to get on board the Apple Pay train – such as Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Wallgreens, Duane Reade, Staples, Subway, Macdonalds, Wholefoods, Disney and Sephora. And, the Apple retail stores. Duh.

So what does this mean for you? Well, Apple is hoping to replace your wallet and put your purchasing power directly in your phone, making it

easier and more secure to make payments.

You simply load Apple Pay with a credit card (and it will work with Amex, Visa, Mastercard and -so far- 6 of the biggest issuing banks along with a few more) from iTunes or by taking a picture of it with the phone’s camera.

Apple will automatically verify with your bank that you are the owner of the card, and then you can go ahead and make purchases. In store, you place the phone near a sensor with your finger on touch iD. Online, stores that will use Apple Pay such as Target, Groupon, Uber and the MLB store, will allow you to make the payments within their mobile apps.

So how is it more secure? It’s a combination of the Touch ID and a new chip called the ‘secure element’ which stores all payment information encrypted. Your card numbers are never actually stored within Apple Pay. With each transaction the only information that is shared with the merchant is a device only account number, a one time only payment number and a dynamic security card.

This means that if your iPhone is lost or stolen, you can use Find My iPhone to suspend all payments BUT you don’t have to cancel the card.

We’re looking forward to this catching on. It’s great forward thinking technology. There will assuredly be some hiccups down the line, but, there’s still hiccups (pretty major ones, Hi Target) with the current credit card system, and that’s some 50 years old. Time to move on, we thinks.

So, hey.. Developers? We were wondering how long it will be until Apple Pay includes Bitcoin?

Apple Pay will launch in October and will be a free update in iOS 8. 

The iPhone 6!

It’s finally here! The iPhone 6. AND iPhone 6 Plus. Fancy. Here’s what you need to know about the new iPhone models:

They look remarkably similar to the leaks we’ve seen in the past few weeks with rounded edges, and extended camera lens. The power button is indeed positioned on the upper right hand side and both iPhones are what we expected for screen size and a lot thinner than their predecessors. The iPhone 6 sits pretty at 4.7 inch screen size and 6.9mm thin and the iPhone 6 Plus is 5.5 inch screen size and just 7.1mm thin. For comparison’s sake, the iPhone 5S has a 4 inch screen size and is 7.6mm thin.

Combine this larger screen size with the screen resolution and it sounds pretty magic. Both models have what Apple calls ‘Retina HD Display’, with the iPhone 6 featuring a 1334 x 750 display at 326 pixels-per-inch while the iPhone 6 Plus features a 1920 x 1080 display at 401 ppi.

The iPhone 6 has more than 1 million pixels. The iPhone 6 ups it’s game here to 2 million pixels. According to Apple that’s 185% more pixels on the iPhone 6 Plus. Fewf. Good thing we like having lots of pixels.

There are updates to Apps to make one hand control easier and to take advantage of the extra space the screen size brings – such as two tone display for email, messages, etc.

The iPhone 6 models have a next generation A8 chip, 2 billion transistors and 64-bit support. 25% faster CPU performance. Which means, basically, that it’ll be faster and better.

The battery will be equal or better than the iPhone 5S,  for example, watching video you’ll get 10 hours on the 5S, 11 on the iPhone 6 and 14 on the iPhone 6 Plus.

The iPhone 6 models come with a barometer that measures relative elevation from air pressure, which, in combination with the M8 chip will make fitness applications tell accurately when your cycling/walking/running/ as well as being able to estimate distance/steps/elevation. This will all be recorded in the Health app that comes with iOS 8, of course.

The cameras on both models come equipped with an ‘isight’ sensor that will apparently help take better photos. It’s a 8MP iSight camera, 1.5µ pixels, ƒ/2.2 aperture that will focus almost twice as fast, has advanced face detection, tone mapping, and noise reduction. Panorama photo capability will improve with up to 43 mexapixel photos and a gyroscope means stitching is seamless.

The iPhone 6 has image stabilization, however the iPhone 6 Plus again steps it up to include optical image stabilization. Which is fancy, and will make your photos better and cleaner.

Video will be shot at 1080p at 30fps and 60fps, and slo-mo at 240fps (holy moly), up from 120fps on the 5s. The iPhone 6 models will both include time lapse photography capability.

The front facing ‘FaceTime’ camera has also been improved with f2.2 aperture that lets in 81% more light. It also has improved face detection and burst selfie mode, single shot HDR and HDR in FaceTime video.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus come in Gold, Silver and Space Gray. All in all, its a nice, rounded update with no surprises but improvements that will make the user experience a better one. When we get our hands on one we’ll let you know about how the larger screen sizes feel, and how noticeably faster and better performing the new models are.

Pricing!  The iPhone 6 – 16GB/64GB/128GB for $199/$299/$399.

AND

The iPhone 6 Plus – $299/$399/$499 for 16GB/64GB/128GB

Both models will be released come September 19 and its preferred operating system, iOS 8, launches September 17th. BUT take note- you can preorder starting September 12.

P.S.  Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake are the voices behind the new ads!

The Apple announcement!

This morning, at 10:00 AM Pacific time, Tim Cook took to the stage at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of De Anza College in Cupertino.

Over almost 2 hours, we were introduced to two new models of iPhone, a new service in ApplePay and the Apple Watch. A lot of rumors were confirmed, some were seen to be false (bye easy to type iWatch) and a raft of new services not foreseen were revealed.

The live stream was not the best thing anyone’s ever seen, far from it actually, from consistent pauses and breakdowns in the streaming video, to the addition of a lovely Chinese translator (we’re assuming?) cutting in over Tim Cook’s sentences. It seemed to work itself out after about 40 minutes thank goodness, but not before Twitter was set on fire annihilating Apple for being unable to use simple streaming technology.

But, it worked itself out. Shout out to the guys over at MacRumors for live blogging so we could understand anything we missed! We were introduced to the two models of the iPhone 6 – the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. They are, as rumored, a 4.7 inch model and 5.5 inch model respectively. They both have a bunch of updates and improvements and we’ll delve into them in a little bit in our detailed iPhone 6 blog post.

We had confirmation of NFC capabilities with ApplePay, aiming to make payment transactions in a bunch of online and in-store retailers all over the US simpler and more secure.

Then; One more thing!

Those magic words that we haven’t heard in a while! That one more thing? Nope, not the iWatch. Natch. It’s the Apple Watch. And it’s so very pretty! And functional! And innovative, and useful. We’ll be going into far more detail in our Apple Watch blog post coming soon. But all you need to know for right now? There are two sizes and three models – the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport, and the Apple watch Edition. They’ll be coming in early 2015, they’re highly customizable, they start at $349, and you’ll probably want one.

Tim Cook ended the event with a performance by U2 and the announcement of their new Album ‘Songs of Innocence’. And Apple just made the album free to all half a billion iTunes users!

We’ll be bringing you the details of both models of the iPhone 6, Apple Pay and Apple Watch shortly.

Photos courtesy of 9to5mac.com