Apple Watch: all the latest news on Apple’s ‘most personal device ever’ – The Verge

Apple secures design patent for the Apple Watch

2015-05-06T06:44:54-04:00

First, Apple patented the rectangle with rounded corners, and now it's done something similar for the square with rounded corners. Well, sort of. The iPhone maker has been granted a design patent for the Apple Watch, preventing other manufacturers from copying the look of its first ever wearable. The patent is straightforward and simply consists of nine line drawings of the Apple Watch's body - a curved square shape with indentations for the watch bands to slot into, and prominences for the digital crown, single button, and sensor array on the rear.

Two images from the patent showing the front and rear of the Apple Watch. (Apple/USPTO)

The …

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Here’s what the Apple Watch App Store looks like

2015-04-23T14:18:03-04:00

Apple's Watch companion app for iOS is what you'll need not only to set up an Apple Watch for the first time, but also how you'll discover new apps that work with it. Yet, up until now it was unclear just how exactly the second feature would work. That's changed today with Apple quietly flipping the switch in its app to open up the built-in App Store for WatchKit apps.

Right now the store is about as barebones as you can get, with a simple list of of 35 apps with WatchKit integration. Included are apps like Flipboard, Evernote, Twitter, Instagram, and The New York Times, which are being shown off on Apple's site, too. You can download and i …

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Apple wanted to build a far smarter Watch, but couldn’t find the technology

2015-02-17T04:44:00-05:00

Spend a few minutes on Indiegogo and you'll come across a series of extraordinarily ambitious wearable devices promising to detect everything from your sleep patterns, to your stress levels, to the number of calories you've burned in the past hour. They've incited plenty of skepticism and the latest report from The Wall Street Journal shows why: the Apple Watch was initially intended as exactly that sort of multifunctional health-monitoring device, but the sensors available just weren't good enough. Heart activity, blood pressure, and stress levels were among the things Apple wanted to track with the Watch, however issues of complexity and r …

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Apple Watch will be released in April, according to CEO Tim Cook

2015-01-27T17:14:38-05:00

Apple CEO Tim Cook just announced that the Apple Watch will begin shipping in April. Cook revealed the shipping timeframe during Apple's quarterly earnings call with investors; the company enjoyed a blockbuster quarter backed by massive iPhone sales and huge growth in China. Now it will look to carry that success forward with the launch of Apple Watch, its first major new product since the debut of iPad in 2010. "We're making great progress in the development of it," Cook said. He also revealed that Apple is encouraged by the response from developers and app makers so far, saying "We're seeing some incredible innovation."

Update: Read our r …

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Apple is showing off its watch to the public in Paris for just one day

2014-09-29T23:48:24-04:00

When Apple debuted its watch earlier this month, it was keen to invite fashion bloggers and the press. Now it's letting anyone see it, as long as they're in Paris today and don't mind staring at it through glass. The company is showing off its watch at fashion store Colette in Paris, marking the first time it's being shown off to the public since an invite-only event Apple held in Cupertino a few weeks ago. The watches are behind window displays that went up overnight, though people can get a closer look at them on the inside of the store from 11 AM to 7 PM local time.

Pictured: Sarah Andelman of Colette with Karl Lagerfeld, Anna Wintour, Jo …

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The Apple Watch is the best Android Wear commercial yet

2014-09-23T11:44:32-04:00

The iPhone came first, but it was of secondary importance. Apple's big event this month relegated the company's best known and best selling product to the role of an opening act for "the next chapter in Apple's history": the Watch. With a perfectly pitched tremor of emotion in his voice, CEO Tim Cook finally confirmed all the rumors of an Apple wearable device, while leaving some mystery about how it will work and everything it will do. The product itself was almost less important than the statement the company was making: the future of personal computing will be on your wrist and Apple has the time machine to transport you there.

In spite …

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Apple Watch will likely require nightly charging

2014-09-11T02:14:39-04:00

Apple has been quiet on its Watch's battery life, but it doesn't sound like you'll want to go more than a day off the charger. "We anticipate that people will charge nightly which is why we designed an innovative charging solution that combines our MagSafe technology and inductive charging," Apple spokesperson Nat Kerris told Recode, which quotes a separate source as saying that the Watch lasts "about a day right now."

The Apple Watch won't see release until early next year, so there's still some time for Cupertino to tweak its power efficiency. And if it can reliably make it through a single day, that would still be an improvement on Motor …

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Between Google and Apple, the smartwatch wars are over before they’ve even begun

2014-09-10T11:50:06-04:00

We're stood at the foothills of a very large and formidable mountain that has the perfect smartwatch at its peak. It's still very early, not everyone's sure of their footing or the right course to take, but we are all instinctively drawn toward that pinnacle. The thing is, even with all the months and maybe years standing between humanity and its ideal wrist gadget, the winners of the race are already known. Google and Apple won.

Attempts at standalone smartwatches seem to resurface every few years. There was Microsoft's SPOT, the LG GD910 Watch Phone, and the Meta Watch - to name just three in the past decade - and none of them ever amount …

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Apple designed a custom typeface for the Apple Watch, just like Google did for Android

2014-09-09T20:28:34-04:00

Typefaces are a funny thing: to the untrained eye, they can be difficult to tell apart, yet they can make a world of difference in the design and usability of a product. Apple recently swapped Helvetica for Helvetica Neue in iOS and Lucida Grande for Helvetica Neue in OS X Yosemite - but for the Apple Watch, it went a little deeper.

The Watch features a new typeface that Apple designed in-house "to maximize legibility," it says - a noble and important goal when you're dealing with a particularly small display. Interestingly, Google's Roboto was designed with some of the same goals in mind when it rolled out with Android 4.0 almost three yea …

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The Apple Watch is designed for everybody

2014-09-09T18:56:00-04:00

The Moto 360 is too aggressive. It's too big. It's too shiny. Its face is too large in comparison to its bezel. Its strap flops out from the edge of its case like a dog's tongue on a hot day. That's my opinion. Many will disagree with me, but I don't care. I will never wear a Moto 360. I might wear an Apple Watch, though. I expect millions of others might too.

Let's get one thing out of the way: the Apple Watch is not a pretty watch. A bulbous slab of metal, its case is a chunky blob with a square face and bulging sides. But while not conventionally attractive, it does achieve one extremely important goal: anonymity. However big it may be, …

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