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 Pay Making it’s Debut Monday!

Apple pay will be making it’s spectacular (ish) debut this coming Monday the 20th October!

Secret sauces ( mmm KFC, uh…) spilled the beans last week that retailers who will have Apple Pay enabled at their point of sale systems have already completed their training for the payments process AND THEN Tim Cook confirmed at the iPad media event on Thursday that Apple pay will indeed be up and running on Monday.

Banks however look like they’ll begin to support the payment system at different times (makes sense) making the release more of a staggered release. For example, USAA, one of Apple’s bank partners, has claimed that it plans on starting to support Apple Pay come November 7th.

Apple Pay will be enabled on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus with a free update to iOS 8.1 and will be available in over 220,000 merchants country wide, including some big name chains such as Macy’s, Bloomingdales, McDonalds, Staples, Sephora, Walgreens, Whole Foods and, obviously, Apple. Because it would be weird if they didn’t.

You will also be able to use Apple Pay within the apps of companies such as Groupon, Lyft & Uber, Airbnb, OpenTable and Target. You will be able to use Apple pay with iPhone 5, iPhone 5S and iPhone 5c’s with the addition of your very own Apple Watch next year.

Hooray for Apple Pay? It’s spectacularish because it should be awesome, and a solid improvement to how payments are processed BUT not everyone can use it yet and there will probably be some (non-security related) bugs to work out before it becomes totally stable. BUT WE think it’s pretty exciting!

Therefore, Hooray!

Apple Special Media Event!

So the Apple Special media event happened!  But! What actually happened?

Tim Cook began the event with a little spiel about how great Apple has been doing this year with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus being the fastest selling iPhones in history, rolled out now in 32 Countries, and rolling out in China today.

He went on to talk about how Apple Pay is cool, with 500 more banks signed up to partner with Apple on the payment system so far, and more retailers coming on board too. Apple pay is launching this Monday October 20th! 

The CEO then spoke about how proud they are of the Apple Watch, how it’s super rad and has been on the cover of Vogue China!  Watchkit (for the benefit of potential Apple Watch developers) will be available next month. Christmas time is App making time, yo!

Mr Craig Federighi came on stage then to talk about software, with iOS 8 get the first spotlight. He explained that 48% of Apple customers are using the new iOS so far and 94% are using either iOS 8 or iOS 7.  They have apparently been listening to customer feedback to improve the user experience. The example he makes for this is that they’re bringing back the camera roll.

iOS 8.1 will be available free on Monday!

Now on to OS X Yosemite. It’s cool. It has cool features.  AND it will be available free from the Mac App Store today!  Check out our rundown of the features of OS X Yosemite here.

ALSO: New iWork for iOS and Mac is available today, for free. 

Tim Cook came back on stage to talk about iPads. They’re cool, there’s 675,000 apps in the app store for them, a 100% customer satisfaction rating for the Retina Mini, they’re the best iPads ever, aaaaand he introduces a thinner iPad Air, now available in Gold. According to Phil Schiller, it’s pretty thin: ‘6.1mm thick, 18% thinner. Thinnest iPad ever. World’s thinnest tablet.’

And: two iPad Air’s  on top of one another are still thinner than an original iPad. Technology, you be silly.

It has a sharper image, an A8X chip, 2nd-gen 64-bit architecture, 3 billion transistors, 40% faster CPU, and 2.5x faster GPU.

New anti-reflective coating reduces reflection by 56% and it has a 10 hour battery life. Features include an 8MP iSight camera with 2.4 aperture, 1080p HD video, Apple-designed image signal processor and a M8 coprocessor.

It will be capable of taking panoramas up to 43 megapixels, burst mode photos , Slo-mo video at 720p FPS and Time-lapse photos.
It will come equipped with faster Wi-Fi, 80211ac with MIMO.  There’s a new FaceTime camera on the front with larger 2.2 aperture, 81% more light, improved face detection, burst selfies, Single-shot HDR photos and HDR videos.

AND it will come with Touch ID fingerprint scanner and be able to support Apple Pay.

We will now have Pixelmator for iPad Air as well as a new video editing app called Replay.

iPad Air 2 will retail for $499/599/699 for 16GB/64GB/128GB in Wi-Fi versions. Silver, Space Gray, Gold.

Cellular versions will be offered at $629/729/829.

The iPad Mini is getting a mini update too!  This third generation comes in Silver, Space Grey & Gold and comes equipped with the Touch ID.  Selling for $399/499/599 for 16GB/64GB/128GB Cellular for $529/629/729.

You can pre-order an iPad Air 2 or an iPad Mini 3 tomorrow, and shipping starts next week.

NOW. 30th birthday of the Mac y’all! Macs are cool.

Tim Cook introduced a new iMac with 5K retina display. How many K retina display? 5. 5K.

5120×2880, 67% more pixels than 4K. It’s got a 27″ display, with 14.7 million pixels which makes it the world’s highest resolution display. Retina 5K display.

The new iMac comes equipped with Thunderbolt 2, Fusion Drive, 3.5GHz quad-core i5, upgradable to 4.0GHz quad-core i7. AMD Radeon $9 M290x, upgradable to M295X.

New iMac with Retina 5K starts at $2499. Shipping today!

And finally, the Mac Mini , such a cute little fella, he gets an update too with a 4th-gen Intel Core processor, Intel Iris and HD Graphics, PCIe-based flash storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports. 

New mini starts at $499. Starts shipping today! 

And that’s it folks! Tim Cook signed off with this:

“Designed to be incredible products individually. Also designed to work together seamlessly. Because we create both the hardware and the software, we can deliver something that no one else can do. A simple, intuitive and yes, magical experience for our customers.This is our vision of personal technology. And we are just getting started.”

What do you think? Pretty solid updates, but nothing super exciting? 5k is pretty exciting, and everything seems to be getting more cohesive as a group of products that can work beautifully together. We’ll need to get our hands on some iPad Air 2’s to see just how close they come to stacking up to an original, because 6.1mm thick is not thick and stacking iPads sounds like fun. We’re pretty excited to try out Apple Pay on Monday, and get OS X Yosemite too.

Not sure it was “Apple special Media event’ worthy, but there’s a pretty solid little set of updates for us.

Deals Of The Week Wednesday!

Welcome back kids!

Ready for some deals? Yup? Here they are comin’ ‘atcha:

*T-Mobile are offering 4 lines for $100 a month with up to 2.5 GB of 4G LTE data per line until 2016 if you switch your family to T‑Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan. It’s a pretty stellar deal –  take a look to see if it’s right for your family here.

* Also at T-Mobile, but if you’re not currently on a plan, get a T-Mobile Prepaid Phone SIM Card Activation Kits for just $1 + Free Shipping. Go here and enter code SIMDEAL99 at checkout.

* Save 20% AT BEST BUY on one regular-priced small appliance and enter coupon code  SAVE20SMALLS at checkout to receive your savings. Expires: 10-12-14

*Get a Bunta Frosted Macbook Hard-Case Shell with a Silicone Keyboard Cover for $19.99 from Groupon. Because they funky AND protecty. Gotta love that.

* Best Buy have Beats Mixr On-Ear Headphones on sale for $199.99 down from $249.99 plus free shipping. Get an extra $100 off with an .Edu email student discount. 

*Get a Foscam FI8910W Wireless Camera with Optional 9dBi Antenna for $54.99 from Groupon. Unsure what you would use it for? We use ours to spy on our Guinea pig. So you could do that. (Not on our Guinea Pig, you weirdo)

*Get $10 Off $80, $12 Off $99 or $15 Off $120 Coupon for Brookstone online with coupon code AFF625. Expires: 11-30-14

*12-Month Xbox Live Gold Card for $49.99 From Groupon.

* Get $15 Off $75 at HP online with coupon code 15HPSAVE. Expires: 11-05-14

* Got an old car? We’re so cool with that, because old cars are gangsta, duh. But sometimes they need gadgets to bring them up to date. Get an A.M.P. Bluetooth Receiver for $18.99 from Groupon.

Aaaaaaaand we’re dealed right out. Happy shopping, campers.

New Apple ads with your favourite good looking gents

Apple has released 2 new ads called ‘Huge’ and ‘Cameras’ featuring none other than everyone’s favorite ‘got it all’ guys Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake.

The new ads are all about the size and impressive camera prowess of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. So, go with us here, do you think Jimmy and Justin had a lip-synching karaoke dance off to figure out who was going to be the iPhone 6 guy and who was going to be the iPhone 6 plus guy?

Yeah. Us too. They’re so cool like that.

and

How will Apple pay work with Apple Watch?

How exactly will you be able to use your Apple Watch to make purchase through Apple Pay? In the iPhone 5S and above, you will be able to make purchases with Apple Pay securely using the touch ID feature.

The Apple watch, however, does not have a touch ID feature. It will instead use a manually entered pin code to authorize Apple Pay payments, a pin code that is only active whilst it’s on your wrist.

Using sensors on the back of the watch, it can tell immediately and automatically when you’ve taken the watch off your wrist. Once you take it off, you can’t use it to make purchases via Apple Pay until it is back on your wrist, and you’ve entered the pin.

So there you go. Easy peasy bacon-cheesy. We hope. We’ll find out early next year when the Apple watch is officially released!

Dammit. Now we want bacon.

iPhone 6 Pre-orders info

Thinking of Pre-ordering the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus? There’s only a few more hours to go, yo!

This year you won’t have to wait for your shiny new iPhone to be shipped to your address, as Apple is allowing pre-orders to be picked up in most of their retail stores from 8am on the release day – September 19th. Shiny iPhone. Hot little hands. Days Away.

You can of course choose to get your new iPhone shipped (for free, yay) to your address instead, if that’s what you prefer.

Or you can just go ahead with your fingers crossed and purchase the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus in-store at 8am on the 19th. There hasn’t been much in the way of information on the availability of either model, and how long supplies will last on either, but we’ll be letting you know anything we hear, when we hear it! We would suggest pre-ordering if at all possible.

In-store there will most likely be two lines- those purchasing, and those picking up.

Pre-orders for both models of the iPhone 6 begin tonight at 12:01pm. One minute past midnight, tonight. Mere hours, guys. Good luck! Remember, if you need some cash to make the iPhone 6 upgrade work for you – hit us up! Sell your old stinky iPhone for CashMoney!! 

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!