How do you buy an Apple Watch?

April 10th is SUPER close!

For those playing at home, April 10th is when you can start seeing for yourself what all the fuss is about the Apple Watch, try one on, and if you like it and have some spare cash sitting around, pre-order it!

You’ll need to make a try-one appointment at a retail store, which you can do through Apple.com or the Apple store App beginning April 10th. Most try-on appointments will be maximum 15 minutes, with the exception of the Apple Watch Edition appointments which will need to be made at select stores and will last up to 30 minutes.

When you get your appointment, get thee to the Apple Store! There, you can decide exactly what kind of watch you’ll want (Apple Watch Sport, Stainless Steel Apple Watch, Apple Watch Edition), which of the 2 size options,  and with what kind of band.

So here’s the dealio: Apple will not be letting customers mix and match multiple watches with multiple bands, or re-size links on bands at their try-on appointments. Bummer hummer, but kind of makes sense, as that seems chaotic even just to type. So, they’ll instead have 18 specific Apple Watch combinations on display at the try-on tables, and 10 specific combinations at the in-store display cases.

If you see what you like, you can pre-order it on the 10th and during the next couple of weeks, but the Apple Watch won’t be launching until April 24th. That is also the date when the first deliveries of the pre-orders will occur.

Now, when it comes to the 24th, you apparently won’t be able to just pop on in to your closest Apple store and buy one, as they won’t be selling them to walk-in customers. 

You’ll actually need to make an ‘Online Reservation’ to hold a specific model at a retail store. If you walk in to a retail store wanting to buy a watch after the 24th, you’ll be invited to try one on, and then an employee will walk you through how to order it online or through the Apple Store App. This also makes sense as there is apparently going to be low inventory of the Apple Watches both in real life and kept at the store, at least initially. Supply and demand people!

If you are interested in buying an Apple Watch, you should check out the Apple website to try and get an idea of what kind of Apple Watch you might be after before your (very short) try on appointment.

Need some cash for that shiny Apple Watch? Read this!

Just look at those beauties. Shiny, functional, brand spanking new Apple Watches. Available for pre-order April 10th, with earliest delivery and purchase coming at you April 24th. SO SOON!

If you’re not looking at getting an extra large tax return this year, and you’ve decided that an Apple Watch is what you very very want yes please with a cherry on top, then you be might in need for some extra cashola to help you out with the minimum $349 clams you’re going to have to hand over.

Maybe you have a significant other who’s decided that that’s what they very very want. And if you really love them, then an Apple Watch they shall have!

Got an old, broken or water damaged iPhone lying around?  Get some cash for that stink-bomb!  We will give you up to $400 for that thing! (more for a new phone, d’uh)

It’s super simple. Go to www.iphoneantidote.com and enter in the details of your phone. You’ll receive a quote of the amount of cash we’ll pay you, then you can choose whether you want to be paid via check, Paypal or Bitcoin (because we’re fancy like that).

You can use any box you might have lying around and we’ll mail you a pre-paid postage label, or we’ll mail you a pre-paid mailer box and all you need to do is slip your old stinky phone in it and mail it away to us and wait for your cash!

BAM! Shiny Happy Apple Watch wearing person!

Deals of the week Thursday!

Hi! Deals? Deals! Wait, no…. INCREDIBLE DEALS!

* Lets start off at Best Buy with the Apple MacBook Air 11.6″ 2014 – with 128GB Flash PLUS Microsoft Office 365 Personal for just $699.99.

That is SUCH an amazing deal, saving $200. But, let’s go a little deeper shall we? With the Best Buy Movers Coupon (pick it up at your local post office) it brings the price down further to $629.99. get in quick for this deal, as quantities are limited on this discontinued model. Get it!

* Like cool stuff? Get a Dji Phantom 1 Drone for just $349 with free shipping. Holy cow that’s a good deal. Check it out now! 

*Until midnight on April 3rd, get a mystery savings coupon for The Sharper Image! get up to 50% off your purchase by entering coupon code DS72RF at checkout.

*Concerned about your internet security? You might want to take a look at this: Get a 2-Year Private Internet Access VPN Service for just $59.95- that equates to $2.50 a month! Check it out here, and see a review of the service by PC Magazine here. 

*Get a T-Mobile SIM with activation Kit for only ONE CLAM! That’s right, use promo code SIM99 and it’s yours for just $0.99, down from $15. Get one today!

*Until the 4th, get your hot little hands on some cheap Nintendo 3DS games, with select titles ( including Mario Kart 7, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, New Super Mario Bros 2 and Super Mario 3D Land) on sale at Target for just $14.99. These prices are only available in store and may not be available in all locations.

*Get an $100 eBay Gift Card for $95 – with free US Mail Delivery. Limited time only!  Check it out before it checks out! 

*Fan of UK Top Gear? Shocked and saddened by Jeremy Clarkson’s exit from the show? Even if you’re delighted, you should probably head on down to Best Buy to pick up the full 16th season for just $7.99!

* Get a Sony 16GB HD Camcorder with a Built-In Projector ! For just $229! With free Shipping! From Buydig. So Rad! Use coupon code ‘HDMEMORIES’ Ends April the 5th.

*Speaking of projection, Until April 8th, if you’re up for some cinematic funtertainment, check this bad boy out: Use coupon code GM50 to get a Multifunctional Home Theater LCD Projector for just $68 with free shipping from GearBest. 

* Also from GearBest, get a rad little baby quadcopter for just $26.99 with coupon code FY326. You have to make an account to be able to use the coupon code but you get free shipping! (They’ll fly it to your house…JUST KIDDING!)

Have a fun wheeling and dealing guys! And remember, if you ever need any cash to help you make these rad purchases, and you have a stinky old iPhone lying around, let us know! We’ll swap them out, you get the wonderful monies, and we get the stinky broken iPhone! DEAL!

Play Pac-Man in Google Maps for reals whaat

Perhaps in honor of the great day that is April Fools day tomorrow, today Google has enabled a most excellent feature in Google Maps!

Say bye bye to Tuesday work, say hello to playing Pac-Man in the streets where you live! Don’t believe us?

Go to Google maps now son! Make sure the location you’re set to has a lot of roads, or change it to one that does, and on the bottom left of the screen, next to street view, you’ll see your old friend Pac-Man.

Click and play, man. Click and play. Sorry Tuesday work, well played Google.

Elon Musk to announce new product line April 30!

You guys heard of Tesla? How about Solarcity or SpaceX? Paypal? Yeah? Well, these are all (in part or wholly) the brainchildren of superhuman Elon Musk. And they’re all awesome companies, building products and producing services that have changed or are changing the world.

And guess what? On April 30th, his company Tesla will be bringing forth a new baby into the world! Tesla is a company that currently makes electric cars, but – wait for it – this new product?

Not a car.

Major new Tesla product line — not a car — will be unveiled at our Hawthorne Design Studio on Thurs 8pm, April 30

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 30, 2015

There has been no other hints today as to what this new product could be, however some in the industry are predicting that is will be a stationary battery pack that will be designed to power the home which was mentioned by Musk at an earnings conference call in February. Exciting stuff to be sure, but is that actually what the new product will be?

Only time (and Elon musk) will tell!

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?

iPhone 6S rumors already?

Yup, now that we’re over the Spring forward special media event, we now have WWDC to look forward to, and with that comes the rumors as to what actually will be revealed or announced at the annual conference. Which means, generally, a SHINY NEW IPHONE!

Yay!

We’re expecting iPhone 6S and iPhone 6 plus…S? iPhone 6S Plus? Not sure how that whole naming thing will work with the Plus, but unless Apple are upping the Ante with their iPhone release schedule, we shouldn’t expect an iPhone 7 until 2016.

If we’re looking at a ‘s’ update then we’re probably looking at incremental spec updates rather than anything astonishing design or capability wise, especially in the same year as the Apple Watch is released.

We’re probably looking at two different sized new models, just like the iPhone 6  and the iPhone 6 Plus. The bigger screens have proven successful for Apple and they should definitely be happy to continue in that direction. Although we would be very surprised to see them move any larger than the current 5.5 inches of the iPhone 6 Plus. There have been rumors of a new third size, a 4-inch iPhone to be released alongside the larger phones, to please those who are still attached to the size of the 5S.

We’ll be expecting the new iPhones to have brand spanking new A9 processors from Samsung, which will apparently be 15% smaller, 20% more powerful and 35% more power than the current A8 chips. Camera improvements are also on the cards, possibly a two lens system that would provide the iPhone with the ability to take DSLR quality photos, although this rumor is highly debated, as it would require a rather large chassis design change.

More RAM could be a possibility, going up to 2Gb from the current 1GB in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus. The Touch ID feature as well as Siri would be expected to have some improvements. There have been rumors that the new iPhone could come with the new force touch haptic feedback seen on the Apple Watch, however that is a rumor not many are clinging to.

Then there are the constant rumors that have a little less credibility – that the new iPhones will start at 32GB instead of the beginning-to-be-too-meagre 16GB, that the new iPhones will have wireless charging (we wish!) and that the new iPhones will come with a mini unicorn that will grant you 3 wishes.

That one has far less credibility. Just sayin’

The new iPhones are, of course, believed to be announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco June 8th – 12th this year, which, at time of writing is 90 days, 16 hours 51 minutes and 42 seconds away. 

Following Apple’s previous release schedule, we should be looking at a September release.  

See all of Apple’s new ads and videos!

Missed the Apple Special Media Event yesterday? Want to look at some pretty pictures, hear Jony Ive speak and find out a bit more about the Apple Watch, the new Macbook, and Research kit?

We got you !

Check out the following Ads and videos from yesterdays event below. And don’t worry, these aren’t the make-you-cry type Apple videos, so enjoy!

The Apple Watch Ad –

The Apple Watch – Aluminum

The Apple Watch – Steel

The Apple Watch – Gold

The Apple Watch with Christy Turlington-Burns

ResearchKit – how iPhone is transforming medical research

The new Macbook!

If you want to watch the whole keynote, check it out here. 

Get the lowdown on the Apple Special Media Event!

Today, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Apple held a Special Media Event. The event was thought to largely focus on the imminent release of the Apple Watch, which it did, and announce a new Macbook, which it did. A really, really nice looking new Macbook.

Rumors had them announcing the rebranded Beats Music, which did not happen, but what did happen was the announcement of an Apple Supported HBO streaming service (with an exclusive viewing of a new Game Of Thrones Trailer) and the announcement of Apple’s entry into the Medical research field.

Say what?

You read right – Apple has partnered with a bunch of medical research firms and universities such as Stanford and Oxford to come up with a way that medical research scientists can collect medical data from the millions of iPhone users around the world, creating a much more quantitative, objective and communication-centric way to look at health, disease progression and giving a stronger more effective way of treating and curing diseases and conditions such as Asthma, Cardiovascular disease, and Diabetes.

Very exciting stuff. Before we get too far into that, let’s start off with some more of the lighter features in the event. We’ll be splitting this report into 3 parts, because it’s a lot of information, and…  it’s Monday. We got you!

Tim Cook started off, as he most always does, with giving us some stats about how awesome Apple it is. Here’s a shortened version:

*Apple opened 6 retail stores in China in the past 6 Weeks, making that a total of 21 stores overall so far,  and 453 stores in 16 countries around the world.

*120 million million retail customers in the last quarter

*25 million Apple TV’s sold so far

*700 millionth iPhone recently sold

*99% satisfaction score for customers owning an iPhone 6 or an iPhone 6 Plus.

*Apple Pay has grown massively since it’s launch with a lot more retailers accepting Apple Pay and thousands more banks supporting the payment system

Next,  Tim Cook brings on stage the CEO of HBO, Richard Pepler, to announce a new streaming service HBO Now – initially only available on Apple devices, called HBO Live. Giving you access to the entire HBO catalog. You can access the new service on it’s own dedicated Apple TV channel, or on any Apple Device. The service will begin early April ( in time for the new Game Of Thrones Premier on April 12th) for $14.99 a month, and you’ll get the first month free.

Mr Pepler also debuted an exclusive new trailer of the next Game of Thrones season which you can watch here. 

The next announcements were simple and welcome one – Apple TV is going down in price from $99 to $69, sweet, and every major car brand has committed to delivering Carplay, with more than 40 new models of cars shipping by end of 2015.

Now on to the interesting stuff.  Medical research. Up until now scientists had to rely on relatively small sample sizes and subjective data when it came to research. Apple is making it possible to change that, creating an software developer kit called Research Kit, which will be open source (!), allowing developers to create interactive apps that will make it possible to collect substantive and important data on our health, gauge the effects of disease degeneration and turn our iPhones into diagnostic tools.

The first five apps, released today, are ‘mPower’ for Parkinson’s, ‘Diabetes GlucoSucess’,  ‘MyHeart’ for Cardiovascular disease,  ‘Asthma Health’,  and ‘Breast Cancer – Share the Journey’. 

An important detail to note here – you choose what you participate in, and Apple will never see any of the data. An exciting idea created by Apple here, full of potential to help a lot of people. As long as they can make sure to keep all of the Data out of evil genius bad guys hands, this gets a huge thumbs up from iPhone Antidote.

Next – Part 2. The new Macbook. Ooooh, aaaaaah.

Apple Special Media Event Part 2 – The new MacBook

Today, Tim Cook announced a new Macbook, and it is very, very shiny and pretty and new.

What, you wanted more information? Okay, okay. Here’s what you can expect from the new member of the Apple Family.

* It weight 2 Pounds. That’s less than a 1 liter bottle of soda pop. It’s lighter than our iPhone Antidote Guinea Pig, Papa Nu.  It’s really light.

* It’s the thinnest Macbook, coming in at a anorexic 13.1 mm thick, 24% thinner than the previous skinny-minny, the 11-inch Macbook Air.

*The enclosure is, for the first time, all metal.

* The keyboard is full size, and is actually an entirely new keyboard, with  a butterfly mechanism instead of the usual scissor mechanism, making it 4 times more stable than before. The keys are 40% thinner and 17% larger, and now come with an LED light each. The new Keyboard and the new track pad (see below) apparently will take some getting used to.

* The trackpad has also been redesigned, with 4 force sensors and a new ‘force’ click with a range of different applications, from bringing up the Wiki page for a word you force click, to opening up the calendar for force clicking a date in a message.

*It comes with a new 12-inch edge to edge Retina, 2,304 by 1,440 pixel resolution display that uses 30% less energy.

*It’s the first fanless Macbook. It wasn’t actually explained how the new macbook will keep itself from overheating, but we assume (hope) that detail will be forthcoming.

*The logic board is super tiny, coming in at 67% smaller than previous logic boards.

*They will have the new intel core M with 1.3 ghz and turbo to 2.9 ghz

* The Battery life has improved, thanks to terraced battery contours helping you to get all day battery life.

* The new Macbook will be almost entirely cable-less, with one port to RULE THEM ALL. Or, just one port, really, for Power, USB and video output. The USB cable/port is a new industry standard that we will see more and more of, called USB-C.

Cool, but definitely something that will get some users fired up, as to gain USB compatibility you will need to use an USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adaptor with included HDMI, USB 3.1, and USB-C inputs located on the device. This adaptor, currently unavailable, will come in at a rather large $79 clams.

* The Macbook is the most environmentally friendly and the most efficient Macbook.

* They will come in Silver, Space gray, and Gold option. Is the Gold option a little too flashy? We think maaaaybe. Time will tell. They will come with 8GB memory, and 256 GB storage space.

* Shipping  April 10th, you’re looking at $1299 big ones, or if you have a couple more big ones handy, there’s also a slightly more powerful model for $1,599 with a 1.2GHz processor and 512GB storage space.

See what we mean? Apart from needing another adaptor Apple, this new Macbook sounds like a definite step forward in notebook technology.

Next: Part 3 – Apple Watch in all it’s shiny detail!