Every major US credit card will soon work with Apple Pay
The roster of credit cards that work with Apple’s mobile payments platform has always had one notable absentee. Thankfully, the folks at Discover have realized that there’s little to be gained from not being available to use on Apple Pay. That’s why the firm has signed a deal that’ll see its customers be able to buy goods and services with their iPads, iPhones and Apple watches, which will begin at some point in the fall. Naturally, users are afforded the same offers and protections that they would if they’d paid by card, including Cashback Bonus and Freeze It — now all we need is for Chipotle to join in and we’re all set.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Apple
Via: MacRumors
Source: Businesswire
Apple Watch Pre-Order Delivery Estimates Continue to Improve for Many Customers
Many customers who pre-ordered the Apple Watch over the past two weeks and received an extended shipping estimate of 4-6 weeks or later should receive the wrist-worn device earlier than expected. Apple continues to update several pre-orders with improved delivery estimates, with some Apple Watch orders initially slated for June delivery now shipping as early as this week.
A growing number of users within the MacRumors discussion forums with Apple Watch pre-orders facing June delivery are beginning to receive more specific shipping dates between mid May and early June. Some customers, for example, have delivery estimates of May 14-May 20 or May 28-June 10, and the white 38mm Apple Watch Sport in particular is set to deliver on April 28 for multiple customers.
The timing of deliveries is highly dependant on the model that customers selected, as the Stainless Steel Apple Watch with Link Bracelet and Space Gray models continue to face long lead times, and Space Black models are virtually nonexistent. Apple is still processing many of the orders for those aforementioned models, with delivery estimates remaining at 4-6 weeks or later for many customers.
Apple Watch pre-order deliveries began on April 24 as scheduled, but limited data from Slice Intelligence estimates that only about one-fifth of customers who pre-ordered received their Apple Watches on launch day in the United States. The report, based on e-receipt data from only 10,744 U.S. Apple Watch buyers, extrapolates that only 376,000 of 1.7 million pre-orders were delivered over the weekend, with another 547,000 watches estimated for delivery between April 27 and June 11.
Apple confirmed last week that many Apple Watch pre-orders will arrive sooner than expected, shortly after an executive relations spokesperson said that elongated shipping estimates were set purposefully to avoid disappointment in the event orders were not fulfilled on time. Nevertheless, the company said that some customers still face long lead times, particularly those who did not place an order until several hours after pre-orders became available.
Apple Watch Faces Offer a Multitude of Options While Users Get Creative With Home Screens [iOS Blog]
It’s been a full weekend for the first batch of Apple Watch pre-order customers to experience Apple’s wrist-worn device for themselves. While some issues like the impact of the Watch on an iPhone’s battery life remain in contention, many early adopters agree the wearable’s ten available watch faces offer a deep amount of customization for Apple’s most personal device yet.
All of the different watch face options can be a bit confusing, so we’ve put together a video showcasing not only the detailed differences between each face but the complications most of the faces include to allow users to display various bits of information.
Apple Watch faces range from heavily customizable (chronograph) to essentially no customization whatsoever (astronomy and solar), and over the weekend many new Apple Watch owners took to the MacRumors forums to share photos of their watches, including everything from the initial packaging to pictures of the wearable on their wrists with their preferred watch faces and home screen layouts.
While the initial set of watch faces and the various options allow for significant amounts of customizability, Apple hints in its Apple Watch User Guide that it may add more options in the future.
Apple Watch includes a variety of watch faces, any of which you can customize to suit you. Check frequently for software updates; the set of watch faces that follows might differ from what you see on your Apple Watch.
Beyond watch faces, the home screen is another area where users can show some creativity with manipulation of the constellation of apps from within the Apple Watch iPhone companion app. Some users have created completely new shapes of their own design, while others have recreated famous logos, from Apple’s to what appears to be The Legend of Zelda triforce.
Discover Announces Apple Pay Support Beginning This Fall
Discover announced on Monday that cardholders will be able to use Apple Pay for contactless payments at participating vendors in the United States beginning this fall. Discover cardholders will continue to receive current benefits, including Cashback Bonus and the new Freeze It security tool that protects those that have temporarily misplaced their cards.
Developing…
Apple Watch Impacts iPhone Battery Life… One Way or the Other
With the launch of the Apple Watch on Friday, the first wave of consumers have received their Apple Watches. Our forums are abuzz with activity surrounding Apple’s newest device. While there were initial concerns about the Apple Watch’s battery life, reports seem to indicate that the Apple Watch, itself, has no problem lasting a full day.
However, there have been mixed reports about the impact the Apple Watch has on iPhone battery life. The Apple Watch needs to be paired to an iPhone for full functionality. The iPhone connects to the Apple Watch via bluetooth and Wi-Fi to feed it data and notifications throughout the day.
Some users have found a notable improvement in iPhone battery life with the addition of an Apple Watch. This suggests the act of offloading notifications and quick interactions to your Apple Watch, could make your iPhone battery last much longer.
The best unexpected but /now/ obvious surprise to having the Apple Watch is plenty of battery life on the iPhone after a full day out!
— Dan James (@Daniel277) April 26, 2015
However, several other users have noticed a significant drain on their iPhone batteries in early usage with the Apple Watch.
Apple Watch battery life: 16-20 hrs. iPhone paired with Apple Watch: seemingly zero hours
— Jacqui Cheng (@ejacqui) April 26, 2015
Former Engadget editor Ryan Block had as similar experience and pinpointed the Apple Watch Companion app as the culprit. John Byrne also puts some blame on the Companion App, saying that force-quitting the app seemed to help at least a bit. A discussion thread in our forums provides similarly mixed results, with one user blaming his battery drain on checking email on the Apple Watch. Due to the inconsistency in reports, it seems that either a software bug or particular usage pattern could be a culprit.
iTunes Store Facilitating Donations to Support Nepal Earthquake Relief Efforts
Apple today rolled out a feature through the iTunes Store that allows users to contribute to the American Red Cross in support of relief efforts following the Nepal earthquake that has killed over 2,400 people.
The feature leverages the hundreds of millions of credit cards already on file to allow iTunes users to easily donate $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, or $200 to the relief efforts. Apple will be passing along 100 percent of the donations to the Red Cross.
Aid Nepal
Donate in iTunes
#iTunes #Nepal #NepalEarthquake pic.twitter.com/s9seJp8RZV
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) April 26, 2015
This is not the first time Apple has used to iTunes Store to raise money for charity, with the company most recently raising money for City of Hope last October. Other previous relief effort fundraising campaigns have included the 2013 Philippine typhoon, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
HTC gets satirical: Choose a HTC One M9 to get rid of “Bi-phonal Displeasure Disorder”
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HTC‘s Technical Description ads for the HTC One M8 were pretty hilarious, but their latest ad for the HTC One M9 is downright devious. Asking watchers if they have “Bi-phonal Displeasure Disorder”, HTC suggests some alternative treatments such as taking Cellami, an imaginary drug which results in numerous side-effects, like “oily plastic dischargers”, or just to get a HTC One M9 to avoid all of this altogether. Check out the ad below:
It’s pretty obvious that the primary target of this ad are Samsung and Apple users, claiming that these consumers will suffer from SAD (“Samsung Affective Disorder”) and iOS (“Irritable Operating System”) due to their likely miserable smartphone experience. Whether this strategy will actually work with these users is questionable, but we sure appreciate HTC’s effort on the entertainment front and we can’t wait to see more of this in the future.
What do you think about HTC’s latest Cellami advertising effort? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: YouTube via TalkAndroid
The post HTC gets satirical: Choose a HTC One M9 to get rid of “Bi-phonal Displeasure Disorder” appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
The Early Word On Apple Watch Gaming
Apple Watch is available and selling like crazy, and we’ve already revealed a list of must-have apps for the device, compiled by Apple itself. The list featured some fairly standard utilities and a few apps specifically useful for the small wearable device, but curiously absent was the mention of any sort of gaming on Apple Watch.
For those who never expected game developers to bother adapting titles to fit on the Apple Watch’s tiny screen, this probably isn’t a surprise. However, the exclusion of games from the list of essential apps wasn’t actually due to the fact that there aren’t any. There just isn’t a huge selection just yet. The fact is, developers are making efforts to come up with new ideas and shrunken versions of existing games that users will want to play on the watch. In a matter of time, there will likely be hundreds of gaming titles to choose from.
But for now, here’s a look at some of the most interesting gaming concepts we’re reading about for the Apple Watch.
Probably the most interesting game to have been announced is Runeblade, an upcoming title from Everywear Games that’s making a bold effort to define RPG gaming for wearable tech devices. It looks to be a fairly standard RPG, set in a fantasy world and putting players in the role of the “High Priestess” out to save the land from various evil characters. But according to Touch Arcade, the game is designed to be played only in 10-15 second bursts. From the sound of things, attacks require recharging time. Delays of this nature will cause players to open up the game, make a move, and then simply wait a while before playing the game again. Whether or not this will work with gamers remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an interesting way to adapt an RPG for a watch.
There have also been some light mentions of potential casino gaming (for fake money of course), with an article in Mac World claiming that Robot 5 Studios is working on a Blackjack Mini experience for the watch. This is a good idea in that it would reach an extremely large market of card and casino gamers. However, one wonders how much the experience has to be cut down in order to work for a phone, particularly given that online casinos have made the experience bigger—not smaller—in recent years. Many digital blackjack games involve player graphics and background settings. At the InterCasino platform, players can actually join blackjack games with live video dealers. Even the simpler options at this site show graphics of entire card tables with chip stacks, opponent positions, dealer cards. This contrast presents an interesting question with regard to casino games on the Apple Watch, and likely other genres as well: will players accept simplified versions of games when online sites and mobile apps have been seeking to make more involved versions?
Another interesting idea making the rounds in conversations about Apple Watch gaming is Spy_Watch, a brilliant idea that got a brief write-up from Kotaku. Developed by Bossa Studios, the game seeks to capitalize on the basic gadget appeal of a smart watch as it relates to spy films like those in the James Bond franchise. Its objective is to basically use your watch to control a secret agent, as if you’re the boss running missions from your wrist. We’ll have to wait and see how well the game performs, but it’s a fascinating concept that could open the door to a whole new genre if it’s successful.
And finally, there’s puzzle gaming, which appears to be the main focus of developers delving into Apple Watch entertainment. USA Today did a write-up of early gaming titles to expect for the device, and the majority of them can be classified in the puzzle genre: LetterPad (a letter-based puzzle game), Rules! (a memory game), BoxPop (something USA Today compares to chess), Trivia Crack (a smartphone trivia game being adapted to the watch), and Peak (a brain training game), just to name a few. At this stage, it appears developers have decided that these sorts of games may be the easiest to produce for the watch’s small screen.
That’s about it, for now. There are a few other titles that have been announced, but these are the ones that should define the early stages of game development for the Apple Watch. Seeing which games stick, and where developers go from here, should be fascinating.
From garage to campus: a look at the digs of tech’s Big Five
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon: These juggernauts are at the forefront of the tech industry. And with that success comes an ever-expanding workforce, and the need for a place to put them. To keep pace with growth, these companies have been making the requisite real-estate deals in order to build physical spaces to match their forward-thinking business approach. Fortunately, their designs are also more environmentally conscious than ever before. With the eyes of the world upon them, they’ve taken the well-being of the Earth, as well as their employees, into account, building innovative work spaces in an attempt to harmonize with the world around them. Below, we take a look at some of the steps these giants of industry have made over the years as they’ve moved from garage operations to vast campuses.
[Image: NBBJ]
Filed under: Misc, HD, Mobile, Alt, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook
Apple Watch Sport Destroyed in Torture Test Video
A CNet video shows the new Apple Watch Sport undergoing a variety of torture tests in a kitchen setting to see how well it holds up to a variety of abuse.
Previously, video bloggers have subjected the Sport’s Ion-X screen and the Sapphire screen to a variety of scratch tests.
The video shows the Apple Watch Sport holds up remarkably well in various scenarios. The watch is washed, submerged in water for 10 minutes, boiled, grated, spilled on, dropped and finally smashed with cast iron skillet. The Apple Watch Sport screen did shatter with the skillet impact, but seemed to remain perfectly functional until that point.
The Apple Watch was officially launched today with pre-order deliveries arriving for the first customers.
AIVAnet 