Debug is a casual, conversational interview show featuring the best developers in the business about the amazing apps they make and why and how they make them. On this episode — Watchmaker and developer Jon Edwards, and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber join Guy and Rene to talk about the Apple Watch and watch culture.

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Show notes

• John’s Superman Watch (potentially)
• Super Mario Watch
• Master/slave clocks
• Tissot T Touch
• Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication
• Quartz Crisis
• Accutron Tuning Fork Watch
• Early Electro-Mechanical Watches
• Braun BN0106
• PepperUICore Class Dump (Digital Detent)
• Ming-Chi Kuo
• Hodinkee Apple Watch Review (Failed Cuff Test)
• Surface Acoustic Wave (Ultrasonic) Touch Sensing
• Vesper
• iOS Apps Jon has worked on

Panel

• Jon Edwards of jonedwards.co
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball
• Guy English of Kicking Bear
• Rene Ritchie of Mobile Nations

Feedback

Question, comment, recommendation, or something you want us to follow up on for the next show?

Email us at debug@mobilenations.com or leave a comment below.

For some time now, users outside of the US using Cortana could get the weather but it was always in Fahrenheit. To get around this US-based temperature system, users had to use the voice assistant to request the temperature in Celsius specifically each time. It worked, but it was also cumbersome.

This morning, Windows Central began receiving numerous reports that their weather is now showing up in their Cortana stream in their regional preference aka Celsius.

Yodel, a new Windows Phone 8.1 app, has just been released. It’s also the first third-party app to support the Yik Yak social media network, which lets users send and read anonymous messages to anyone within a 10 mile radius of their current location.

Just like there are power cases for iPhones, the Reserve Strap — still in prototype — hopes to extend the battery life of the Apple Watch.

The Reserve Strap is a prototype accessory for the Apple Watch that wants to give you extra time to actively use the device. While there are no solid numbers yet on just how long the Watch’s battery should last Apple has indicated that it will last about a day. The Reserve Strap uses two small batteries in conjunction with an inductive charging cradle.

From the Reserve Strap website:

These photos show our first concept–a silicon band with embedded lithium polymer cells and an inductive charging cradle between your wrist and the Apple Watch. Through prototyping, we’ve refined this design and come up with a few other ways to charge the Watch that we can’t wait to share with you.

As previously noted, this is a prototype. What’s more, there’s a better than decent chance that it won’t even work. Apple hasn’t announced any sort of accessory plans for the Watch, and while their MFi program could be expanded to include accessories that connect to Apple Watch, there’s no guarantee that this will make the cut.

Despite this, the company is taking pre-orders for the strap for $249.99, which the company says can be refunded at any time.

Just because Apple’s pulling Aperture from the Mac App Store doesn’t mean you have to pull it from your workflow.

Apple sent out an email to Aperture owners this week reminding them that as soon as Photos for OS X goes into general distribution, Aperture will no longer be available for purchase from the Mac App Store. The usual gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair erupted soon afterwards. I have just one thing to ask people who are complaining about this: Why are you so anxious to get rid of Aperture?

Look, Aperture is end of life, we all know that. Apple said that last June at WWDC, and the email they sent out this week says that they won’t be selling new copies either. But read what Apple said carefully:

When Photos for OS X launches this spring, Aperture will no longer be available for purchase from the Mac App Store. You can continue to use Aperture on OS X Yosemite, but you will not be able to buy additional copies of the app. [The emphasis is mine.]

So you can’t buy new copies of Aperture. What won’t change, however, is that you can still download Aperture if you already own it. I’ve checked with Apple and they confirmed this for me. So if you’re already using Aperture, you can continue to download and use it.

Apple introduced Aperture late in 2005, providing professional photographers with a professionally-priced photography cataloging tool that provided functions like raw image support, non-destructive editing and other capabilities. Apple improved it over time and lowered the price, eventually migrating Aperture to the Mac App Store, opening the software to be used by many other Mac users whose needs exceeded what iPhoto could do.

Some of us have been using Aperture for a decade, since before there were Intel-based Macs. Some of us have invested hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in Aperture workflows to make our photos look great and to better organize large volumes of photos that we’ve shot, imported and scanned into our Macs.

Obviously Apple hasn’t committed to keeping Aperture alive indefinitely. If Apple discontinues APIs in future versions of OS X that are necessary for Aperture to work, Aperture will die. It’s wise to plan for the future by developing a workflow that’s not Aperture-dependent.

But that future isn’t today, or even tomorrow. If you’re going to be using Yosemite for a while, you can count on Aperture to continue to work. Even when Photos for OS X is out in the world, you’ll be able to continue using Aperture to your heart’s content.

I’ve been working with Photos since the first beta version of 10.10.3 was released, and I find it to be a mostly adequate replacement for iPhoto, with considerably more robust and fast iCloud integration, which is nice. But Photos isn’t a replacement for Aperture.

The way I use Photos is for general-purpose importing from DSLRs and my iPhone. Everything I shoot gets dumped in there. I like to use Aperture to catalog and tweak the product photos I shoot for iMore, so I use Photo’s share sheet to export to Aperture. The photos are copied to Aperture’s own, separate database, where I can manipulate them as I see fit.

The rest of the photography software business hasn’t stood still, of course. Adobe’s Lightroom is a popular alternative for photographers, made even more enticing to Aperture users when Adobe said it would double down on Lightroom in light of Apple’s announcement.

So if you’re using Aperture today, you can continue using Aperture even after Photos makes its debut. Sure, go ahead and plan for the future, figure out the best tool for what you need to do. But stop acting like someone from Apple is going to show up at your house and tear Aperture from your Mac with their bare hands the moment Photos for OS X is released. It’s not happening.

Microsoft is once again asking for feedback from the public on how to improve one of its products or services. This week, it launched the Bing Listens UserVoice forum to get input on how the company might improve its search service.

Verizon Wireless has announced that pre-order for Samsung’s latest flagship devices will begin on April 1, 2015.

While the pre-orders for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will begin on April 1, there’s no word yet on an exact release date on Verizon. Both devices were announced earlier this week during MWC 2015.

Developer Blizzard will release the next single player expansion for their popular card collecting game next month for Android tablets.

Developer Blizzard will release the next single player expansion for their popular card collecting game next month for the iPad.

Blizzard plans to launch real money pre-orders for Blackrock Mountain on March 19 and will throw in an exclusive card for those folks. Here’s what players can expect from this Hearthstone expansion:

The Blackrock Mountain Adventure thrusts Hearthstone players into the middle of a war between powerful forces battling for control of the mountain. There, duelists will encounter fierce minions, including Dark Iron dwarves, fire elementals, and dragons, before facing off against iconic menaces from the Warcraft® universe, such as Ragnaros, the Firelord. Card-slingers who take down these villains will reap a mighty reward—31 scorching new cards inspired by the legendary mountain and its denizens, bringing a wealth of new tactical options to the ever-evolving Hearthstone metagame.

Blackrock Mountain will open up one wing per week over the course of a month. As with the game’s first Adventure, Curse of Naxxramas, it will be accessible for either 700 in-game gold per wing or $6.99 per wing , with the entire Adventure purchasable for $24.99. Further details, including specific launch timing, will be announced in the weeks ahead.

In addition, GameSpot reports from PAX East that Blizzard plans to expand Hearthstone to the iPhone sometime in the coming months.

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Source: Blizzard