MacRumors

Apple Pay is now accepted by ten additional stores and partners in the United States, including T-Mobile retail stores, GameStop and a trio of NBA franchises in the Golden State Warriors, Orlando Magic and Phoenix Suns. The mobile payments service, compatible with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and soon Apple Watch, can now be used at 68 participating stores throughout the country as Apple continues to add new partners.

The full list of newly added participating stores and partners:

— ACME
— Davis Food & Drug
— Firehouse Subs
— GameStop
— Golden State Warriors
— Luby’s
— Orlando Magic
— Phoenix Suns
— Rubio’s
— T-Mobile Stores

Apple Pay is a NFC-based mobile payments service that debuted on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last October, enabling customers to make contactless payments by holding their smartphone up to a payments terminal at participating vendors. The service is secured by Touch ID and will also be compatible with the iPhone 5 or later when paired with an Apple Watch, which is available for pre-order April 10 and goes on sale April 24.

Disney is one of the partners Apple is working with on its upcoming streaming television service, and according to a new report from The Street, Disney and Apple are disagreeing over how many Disney-owned channels will be available in Apple's television content bundle.

Disney is pushing Apple to include most of its channel offerings, while Apple wants to offer fewer channels in an effort to keep prices lower. Disney's channels include ESPN and Disney Channel, along with several spinoffs channels like Disney Junior, Disney XD, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and more. Disney also owns ABC channels that Apple feels are essential, like ABC Family, so Apple may be forced to agree to offer more Disney channels to ensure negotiations go smoothly.

Disney is said to be asking for "the strongest deal it can get," according to one of The Street's sources, to avoid upsetting other cable providers and endangering existing revenue streams.

Disney likely would insist that Apple offer all of its channels to as many subscribers as possible. Many cable operators have "most favored nation" clauses in their contracts with Disney that could require ESPN to be carried as widely as possible. If Apple enabled its subscribers to pick and choose which channels to take, other cable channels could use that clause to cut back on lesser watched Disney channels.

Disney CEO Bob Iger sits on Apple's board of directors and was a longtime friend of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and the two companies have worked together several times over the years. Disney was the first company to partner with Apple to offer content like television shows through iTunes in 2005. Despite the disagreement over the number of Disney channels to be included in Apple's television service, The Street suggests that Disney is likely to remain one of Apple's content partners.

Apple is planning to announce its streaming television service and its content partners at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, ahead of a fall launch. Rumors have suggested the service will include approximately 25 channels and will be offered at a price between $30 and $40.

Apple's television service announcement may also be accompanied by the launch of a new Apple TV set top box, which is said to be in the works. The set-top box is rumored to include a full App Store, Siri integration, an A8 processor, and a dramatic increase in internal storage.

Apple today launched a newly updated Siri website, which gives a comprehensive look at the voice assistant built into the company's iOS devices. The site opens with a quick overview of what Siri can do, and then provides users with a list of categories featuring Siri's different abilities: At a Glance, Staying in Touch, Getting Organized, Sports, Entertainment, Out and About, Getting Answers, and Tips and Tricks.

Talk to Siri as you would to a friend and it can help you get things done -- like sending messages, placing calls, or making dinner reservations. You can ask Siri to show you the Orion constellation or to flip a coin. Siri works hands-free, so you can ask it to show you the best route home and what your ETA is while driving. And it's connected to the world, working with Wikipedia, Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Shazam, and other online services to get you even more answers. The more you use Siri, the more you'll realize how great it is. And just how much it can do for you.

Each category offers a look at the different commands that Siri can work with. "At a Glance" gives a quick rundown of a random assortment of questions that can be asked, like "When is the sunset in Paris?" and "What movies are playing today?" while other categories offer a more specific selection of available commands.

"Getting Organized," for example," includes commands specific to apps like Calendar and Reminders, such as "What does the rest of my day look like?" and "Remember to pick up dry cleaning next Friday." "Entertainment" includes commands like "Show me the trailer for Boyhood" and "Buy the latest season of Homeland."

Each of the pages offers a look at features many iOS users might not have known Siri was capable of, and they're organized in a compelling grid-like view that's easy to read and outfitted with pictures for visual appeal.

Apple previously had a site that offered information on Siri, but it was just a single page that offered more of an overview of what Siri can do rather than something more specific that drilled down into actual commands. The new Siri site offers a much deeper look at Siri's abilities.

Today's Siri website revamp follows the release of iOS 8.3 that added new Siri languages and the ability to make voice calls over the speakerphone using Siri. Apple has also added new Siri features to several additional countries, making local search, directions, and more available in countries like Brazil, Denmark, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, and Turkey.

Over the last few weeks, several previously unknown Apple acquisitions have surfaced. In March, Bloomberg shared news of the company's purchase of data analytics firm Acunu, and earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Apple had acquired search technology startup Ottocat in 2013.

TechCrunch has now shared news of another acquisition that happened in 2014 -- the purchase of Dryft, a startup that specialized in creating keyboard apps. Dryft chief technology officer Randy Marsden, who also co-founded Swype, is listed as an "iOS Keyboard Manager" that joined Apple in September of 2014, suggesting the acquisition may have occurred around that date.

Dryft's technology was a keyboard that appeared only on the screen when a user placed a finger on the display, and as described by TechCrunch, it's "essentially a keyboard for tablets that tracks your fingers' movements," meaning it appears wherever your fingers are placed on the screen.

It is not clear if Apple plans to incorporate this specific technology into iOS or if it made the purchase of Dryft to acquire the company's employees to work on other keyboard features. As of iOS 8, Apple's operating system supports keyboards created by third-party developers, but the company has continued work on its own keyboard. iOS 8 brought keyboard improvements like QuickType, which offers word predictions to speed up typing.

Apple confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch with its standard purchase statement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Apple today released iOS 8.3, the third major update to iOS 8. Seeded to developers in February and to public beta testers in mid-March, iOS 8.3 brings several new features and design tweaks to the operating system.

iOS 8.3 is available immediately as an over-the-air download. Xcode 6.3 is also available, as is a 7.2 update for the Apple TV and a 1.2 update for Swift, Apple's programming language.

iOS 8.3 has a heavy focus on emoji improvements, bringing an updated emoji picker that organizes emoji into categories in an easily scrollable list, new diversified emoji with expanded family options, and emoji skin tone modifiers for changing the look of people emoji. There are also several new flags and updated phone, computer, and watch emoji that now resemble the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch.

Other iOS 8.3 changes include wireless CarPlay, letting users connect their iPhones to their CarPlay systems sans Lightning cable, support for Google two-factor authentication that makes it possible to add Google accounts without the need for app specific passwords, and Apple Pay support for the China UnionPay network. On the iPhone 6 Plus, in landscape mode, there's now a bold/italics/underline key for formatting text. Previously, the key only allowed for bolding.

There are also minor changes to Passbook (dividing Apple Pay and Passes) and the Photos app (icon overlays for albums). Siri has gained new languages plus the ability to make calls using the iPhone's speakerphone, and in Messages, there's now an option to enable filtering to separate iMessages from friends from iMessages from Unknown Senders.

One of smaller but most notable UI changes includes an update to the space bar, which has been elongated to prevent users from hitting the period key in Safari when attempting to make a space. It's also now possible to turn on a setting to allow you to download free apps without the need to enter your password. We have a full list of the changes in iOS 8.3 in our iOS 8 Features Roundup.

iOS 8.3 also has a very long list of bug fixes, which we've added in below. There are multiple fixes to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, orientation, messages, and more.

➜ Click here to read rest of article...

Following the circulation of Apple Watch reviews and news this morning, German-based Apple tech site Macerkopf.de [Google Translate] discovered what appears to be the shipping dates for every line of the Apple watch in Germany.

On the German version of Apple's official website, every model in the Sport lineup features a 4/24-5/8 delivery estimate, which is up to a two week time frame after the Watch's April 24 launch. For the middle-tier Apple Watch collection, the Sport Band, Milanese Loop, and Black Classic Buckle all feature the same 4/24-5/8 estimate. Everything else in the 20-Watch collection, including the Leather Loop and Link Bracelet options, denote a 4-6 week shipping estimate.

Complete shipping estimates:

- Aluminum Case with Sport Band: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Sport Band: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Milanese Loop: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Black Classic Buckle: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Modern Buckle: "Dispatched in 4 to 6 weeks"
- Stainless Steel Case with Leather Loop: "Dispatched in 4 to 6 weeks"
- Stainless Steel Case with Link Bracelet: "Dispatched in 4 to 6 weeks"
- All Edition Models Dispatching in May

To see the shipping dates, a Watch option must first be added into a user's favorite list. The United States store has yet to showcase similar shipping dates to corroborate Germany's estimates, though the exact same match-up of band option and dates can be found on the UK store currently. Interestingly, every version of the Apple Watch Edition only states a vague "May" shipping date, with no other specific frame of time mentioned.

Update 10:34 AM PT: The shipping estimates have now been removed from the U.K. and German Apple Store websites.

Apple lifted the embargo for large websites to publish their Apple Watch reviews this morning, providing us with detailed insight about various functions of the device. Battery life in particular has been one area of interest for several prospective Apple Watch buyers, and most early reviews found the Apple Watch to fulfill its promise of all-day battery life on a single charge.

Well-known tech journalist Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal offers one of the better looks at the Apple Watch's battery life in her video of using the device in day-to-day life. The video keeps track of how much battery life the Apple Watch uses while Stern goes about her daily routine in New York, with the device fully charged at 7:30 AM and having five percent remaining at just past midnight.

Apple confirmed last month that the Apple Watch will have up to 18 hours of battery life with mixed usage, and last up to 72 hours in Power Reserve mode. Early reviews find the Apple Watch generally on par with, or falling slightly short of, those numbers based on articles published by Daring Fireball, The Verge, The Wall Street Journal, Techpinions and Re/code. We've compiled those findings in the roundup below.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

"After more than a week of daily use, Apple Watch has more than alleviated any concerns I had about getting through a day on a single charge. I noted the remaining charge when I went to bed each night. It was usually still in the 30s or 40s. Once it was still over 50 percent charged. Once, it was down to 27. And one day — last Thursday — it was all the way down to 5 percent. But that day was an exception — I used the watch for an extraordinary amount of testing, nothing at all resembling typical usage. I’m surprised the watch had any remaining charge at all that day. I never once charged the watch other than while I slept."

Nilay Patel, The Verge:

"By the end of each day, I was hyper-aware of how low the Apple Watch battery had gotten. After one particularly heavy day of use, I hit 10 percent battery at 7pm, triggering a wave of anxiety. But most days were actually fine. Apple had a big challenge getting a tiny computer like this to last a day, and it succeeded — even if that success seemingly comes at the expense of performance."

Geoffrey Fowler, The Wall Street Journal:

"The battery lives up to its all-day billing, but sometimes just barely. It’s often nearly drained at bedtime, especially if I’ve used the watch for exercise. There’s a power-reserve mode that can make it last a few hours longer, but then it only shows the time."

Ben Bajarin, Techpinions:

"From my experience with battery life, Apple appears to have undersold it. The Apple Watch easily lasted a day, even a long day of heavy use. My Apple Watch battery never got below 20% and only once even got close to that. The day it did was a long day when I took it off the charger at 5:45am and used it frequently, including tracking my activity during a two hour tennis match, and I didn’t plug it back in until 10:30pm.

With my average usage, I tried to see how long I could go and several times over the week got nearly two days of battery life. This will obviously vary by person, but the fact Apple Watch users will not have to worry about battery life over the course of the day no matter how heavy it is used is important for the experience."

Lauren Goode, Re/code:

"Apple has promised that the battery will last 18 hours per charge with normal use. It hasn’t yet died on me during the day, or even late at night. My iPhone actually conked out before the Watch did; this happened to Bonnie, too.

One day this past week, I woke up at 5:15 am, exercised for an hour using the Watch, ran Maps during my commute, made phones calls and received notifications throughout the whole day, and by 11:00 pm the Watch was just hitting its Power Reserve point."

Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, with pre-orders and try-ons beginning April 10.

As expected, Apple today released OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, the first significant feature-rich update the operating system has received. OS X 10.10.3 was first seeded to developers in February, and was provided to public beta testers in March.

The OS X 10.10.3 update can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store. OS X Yosemite Recovery Update 1.0 is also available to improve the reliability of Yosemite Recovery when restoring from a time machine backup.

The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 update includes the new Photos app and improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.

The update also includes the following improvements:
- Adds over 300 new Emoji characters
- Adds Spotlight suggestions to Look up
- Prevents Safari from saving website favicon URLs used in Private Browsing
- Improves stability and security in Safari
- Improves WiFi performance and connectivity in various usage scenarios
- Improves compatibility with captive Wi-Fi network environments
- Fixes an issue that may cause Bluetooth devices to disconnect
- Improves screen sharing reliability

Earlier Yosemite releases, including OS X 10.10.1 and 10.10.2, brought mostly under-the-hood bug fixes and reliability improvements to the operating system, but OS X 10.10.3 includes major new features, like the Photos for OS X app.

Designed to be a replacement for Aperture and iPhoto, Photos for OS X was first announced during the 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple promised it would see an "early 2015" release. The Photos for OS X app takes on Yosemite-style design elements, with an emphasis on flatness and translucency, and it integrates with both iCloud Photo Library and the Photos for iOS app.

Reviews of the Photos for OS X app have suggested that while it's a suitable replacement for iPhoto, with speed improvements and better tools than were found in iPhoto, it lacks many power features that professional users have become accustomed to in its current incarnation, like plug-ins, a loupe, brushable adjustments, and custom metadata fields.

Along with the new Photos for OS X app, OS X 10.10.3 brings a new emoji picker that consolidates emoji into a single scrollable page with clear labels, new diversified emoji and emoji skin tone modifiers, additional flag emoji and updated emoji for the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch.

There's also support for Google 2-step verification when setting up accounts in System Preferences, doing away with the need for app specific passwords, and there are Force Touch APIs for developers, which will let them incorporate Force Touch gestures into their apps.

As noted by MacRumors reader Joe, the Memory section of the Activity Monitor app has been redesigned to make memory usage more clear to users. The App Memory, Wired Memory, and Compressed sections are now listed as part of "Memory Used" rather than listed separately.

Wired earlier this morning posted an interview with Apple Human Interface Chief Alan Dye, in which Dye discusses a few lesser-known details of the Apple Watch, specifically giving Wired an inside look at the obsessive level of detail that went in to making each of the Watch's customizable faces.

During the interview, Dye elaborates on his team's enormous talent, but says what makes them work so well is that they "really care" about what they create. Echoing back to Steve Jobs' creative concern over every bit of minutiae within any one of Apple's products, Dye begins discussing the process of capturing a simple flower bloom for one of the Apple Watch faces.

Yet what Dye seems most fascinated by is one of the Apple Watch’s faces, called Motion, which you can set to show a flower blooming. Each time you raise your wrist, you’ll see a different color, a different flower. This is not CGI. It’s photography.

“We shot all this stuff,” Dye says, “the butterflies and the jellyfish and the flowers for the motion face, it’s all in-camera. And so the flowers were shot blooming over time. I think the longest one took us 285 hours, and over 24,000 shots.”

The same goes for the jellyfish face, which was captured by the team after building a tank within the design studio and shooting a variety of different species at 300 frames-per-second with high-end Phantom cameras. The resulting 4096 x 2304 images were shrunk down to fit the Watch screen, Dye noting “when you look at the Motion face of the jellyfish, no reasonable person can see that level of detail. And yet to us it’s really important to get those details right.”

The Mickey Mouse face features a similar level of detail, with the popular mouse's feet tapping in exact rhythmic beat to a one second count. Dye claims that if one were to line up 100 Apple Watches with the Mickey face on, his foot would tap in perfect unison on each one. The astronomy faces are some of Dye's favorites, however, with the Apple chief noting how hard the team worked to perfect the Earth and Moon's daily orbits and cycles.

Dye points out the subtlety of this face. “When you tap on the Earth and fly over the moon: We worked really hard with our engineering team to make sure the path you take from your actual position on the Earth to where the moon is and seeing its phase, is true to the actual position of the Earth relative to the moon.”

Wired interviewed both Dye and Apple vice president of technology Kevin Lynch earlier in April, with the two providing some behind-the-scenes knowledge on everything from the origins of the Apple Watch to the reasoning behind the look of the fitness-related medals.

Check out the full Wired interview here.

Apple has given members of the media several hands-on experiences with the Apple Watch following its special events, but ahead of Apple Watch pre-orders, select sites have been able to get a much closer look at the device. Apple has provided a handful of publications with Apple Watch review units, giving them a chance to spend multiple days with the watch, and they've now shared their opinions in reviews published today.

We've rounded up tidbits from several of the best reviews in order to give MacRumors readers a look at the Apple Watch from the perspective of those who have finally had a chance to use it extensively. The roundup includes reviews and opinions from Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Verge, Re/code, Yahoo Tech and other large publications that tested the Apple Watch.

The consensus among reviews is that the Apple Watch sets the bar for smartwatches, but has downfalls as a first-generation product and isn't for everyone. More specifically, the watch's goal of providing you with instant access to notifications of a paired iPhone can be both convenient and interruptive at times. Overall, the device is the future of the wrist and should get better after new features are added in the future.

Joshua Topolsky, Bloomberg:

"The watch is not life-changing. It is, however, excellent. Apple will sell millions of these devices, and many people will love and obsess over them. It is a wonderful component of a big ecosystem that the company has carefully built over many years. It is more seamless and simple than any of its counterparts in the marketplace. It is, without question, the best smartwatch in the world."

Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times:

"It was only on Day 4 that I began appreciating the ways in which the elegant $650 computer on my wrist was more than just another screen. By notifying me of digital events as soon as they happened, and letting me act on them instantly, without having to fumble for my phone, the Watch become something like a natural extension of my body—a direct link, in a way that I’ve never felt before, from the digital world to my brain. […]

What’s more, unlike previous breakthrough Apple products, the Watch’s software requires a learning curve that may deter some people. There’s a good chance it will not work perfectly for most consumers right out of the box, because it is best after you fiddle with various software settings to personalize use. Indeed, to a degree unusual for a new Apple device, the Watch is not suited for tech novices. It is designed for people who are inundated with notifications coming in through their phones, and for those who care to think about, and want to try to manage, the way the digital world intrudes on their lives."

Geoffrey Fowler, The Wall Street Journal:

"With the Apple Watch, smartwatches finally make sense. The measure of their success shouldn’t be how well they suck you in, but how efficiently they help you get things done. Living on your arm is part of that efficiency—as a convenient display, but also a way to measure your heart rate or pay at a cash register. This is a big idea about how we use technology, the kind of idea we expect from Apple. […]

Yet the Apple Watch isn’t quite the gatekeeper to my digital life that I wanted. Take app alerts—there’s a fine line between being in the know and having your wrist jiggle all day. It never got horrible for me, because Apple lets you assign VIP status to individual contacts and specify which apps can trigger alerts. But setting up all of this is a tedious—and unfortunately ongoing—chore."

Nilay Patel, The Verge:

"There’s no question that the Apple Watch is the most capable smartwatch available today. It is one of the most ambitious products I’ve ever seen; it wants to do and change so much about how we interact with technology. But that ambition robs it of focus: it can do tiny bits of everything, instead of a few things extraordinarily well. For all of its technological marvel, the Apple Watch is still a smartwatch, and it’s not clear that anyone’s yet figured out what smartwatches are actually for."

Lauren Goode, Re/code:

"Not everyone has an iPhone 5 or later, which is required for the watch to work. Not everyone wants her wrist pulsing with notifications, finds animated emojis thrilling or needs to control an Apple TV with her wrist. Smartwatches can sometimes feel like a solution in search of a problem. […]

One day this past week, I woke up at 5:15 am, exercised for an hour using the Watch, ran Maps during my commute, made phones calls and received notifications throughout the whole day, and by 11:00 pm the Watch was just hitting its Power Reserve point."

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

"I’ve worn a watch every day since I was in 7th grade, almost 30 years ago. I’m used to being able to see the time with just a glance whenever there is sufficient light. Apple Watch is somewhat frustrating in this regard. Even when Wrist Raise detection works perfectly, it takes a moment for the watch face to appear. There’s an inherent tiny amount of lag that isn’t there with a regular watch.

Some other specific examples. I was in New York last week, and stopped to have coffee with a friend in the afternoon. He had a meeting to get to, and I wanted to catch a 4:00 train home to Philadelphia. I was sitting on a low bench, leaning forward, elbows on my knees. It got to 3:00 or so, and I started glancing at my watch every few minutes. But it was always off, because my wrist was already positioned with the watch face up. The only way I could check the time was to artificially flick my wrist or to use my right hand to tap the screen — in either case, a far heavier gesture than the mere glance I’d have needed with my regular watch."

David Pogue, Yahoo Tech:

"The Apple Watch is light-years better than any of the feeble, clunky efforts that have come before it. The screen is nicer, the software is refined and bug-free, the body is real jewelry. First-time technologies await at every turn: Magnetic bands, push-to-release straps, wrist-to-wrist drawings or Morse codes, force pressing, credit-card payments from the wrist. And the symbiosis with the iPhone is graceful, out of your way, and intelligent.

But the true answer to that question is this: You don’t need one. Nobody needs a smartwatch. After all, it’s something else to buy, care for, charge every night. It’s another cable to pack and track. Your phone already serves most of its purposes. With the battery-life situation as it is, technology is just barely in place to make such a device usable at all."

Scott Stein, CNET:

"We're still two weeks away from Day One of the Apple Watch. It's already got tremendous potential, lots of software, and beautiful design. I like wearing the Apple Watch, and it might be my favorite smartwatch...if its battery life lasted beyond one day. That makes me want to return to the Pebble again, or wait and see what Pebble Time, a more bare-bones but much more affordable watch, feels like."

Additional reviews were published by Mashable, USA Today and Techpinions.

The Apple Watch will be available to pre-order beginning on Friday, April 10 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time. Orders will go live in all first wave launch countries simultaneously. Try-on appointments for the Apple Watch will also be available on April 10, giving customers a chance to experience the Apple Watch in person ahead of its April 24 launch.

OS X 10.10.3 with the all-new Photos app will be available Wednesday as a free software update for Mac users, according to The Associated Press. The news organization mentioned the release date as part of its in-depth review about the all-new Photos for OS X app, which it praised for making basic photo editing easy.

"Procrastinate no more. Apple's new Photos app for Mac computers, available Wednesday as a free software update, makes it easy to organize and edit your pictures. The app, which replaces iPhoto, bundles professional-level tools such as granular color correction into one free consumer package."

OS X 10.10.3 will be available through Software Update in the Mac App Store.

Apple announced today that it is collaborating with internationally acclaimed artist HENSE to commemorate the upcoming opening of its all-new Apple Store at 1021 Lincoln Road in Miami, Florida. The relocated store is set to open April 24, the same day that the Apple Watch goes on sale in the United States, and HENSE will be painting a one-of-a-kind mural live from April 8 to April 12 to celebrate the opening.

"Miami is one of the most creative places on Earth. A big part of that creativity is expressed through its incredible street art scene. So to announce the upcoming opening of the all‑new Apple Store at 1021 Lincoln Road, we’re collaborating with internationally acclaimed artist HENSE. The mural he’s painting, like the store itself, will not only be inspired by the energy of Miami, it will also be a fresh source of inspiration for the city."

Apple currently has a nearby retail store at 738 Lincoln Road that will close as the new, larger location opens down the street later this month. Apple also recently commemorated the opening of its West Lake store in Hangzhou, China with a calligraphy video, and we reported last night that the company will open a second retail store in Hangzhou on Apple Watch launch day.