AppleMagazine #181

An online rush replaced the traditional overnight queues outside Apple stores Friday as the iconic tech company began taking orders and letting shoppers get their hands on its much-vaunted smartwatch for the first time. Eager customers placed online orders for the Apple Watch as soon as Apple’s website began accepting them, shortly after midnight Pacific Time. Within half an hour, the company appeared to sell out the initial batch of watches that were available for the first official day of shipping on April 24. By midmorning, Apple’s website was showing the earliest shipping date for many watch models would be in June or later. Demand was difficult to gauge, since Apple hasn’t said how many watches were available for shipping in the first wave on April 24. And in contrast…

Technology firms increasingly pitch new sensors and software to U.S. airports as a way to bolster exterior security and keep intruders out, but such digital barriers come with a hefty price tag and don’t always work. An Associated Press investigation this week documented 268 instances in which people hopped over, crawled under, drove cars through or otherwise breached the fences and gates protecting the perimeters of 31 of the nation’s busiest airports from January 2004 through January 2015. How to address the problem is up for debate. “There’s a lot of things that can be done,” said John Pistole, retired director of the Transportation Security Administration, who, like airport officials, argues the perimeters are secure and that breaches are rare. “The question is whether there’s an appetite for paying for…

RAVE REVIEWS AND A BOX OFFICE TRIUMPH Given that The Fast and the Furious action film franchise has been running since 2001, you would need to have spent the intervening time on Mars to not be familiar with the basic formula that has prevailed since: tire-squealing car stunts, fighting, heists and plenty of macho bravado, as epitomized by its central stars, like Vin Diesel. However, the fact that another of its big names - Paul Walker - passed away during filming was always going to give the seventh Furious a different complexion. Was Furious 7 - to give it its proper title - going to live up to the formidable critical and commercial reputation built up by the previous six installments, despite not only Walker's untimely demise in a car…

Apple Watch comes with a choice of watch case, band and size - there are 54 possible configurations in all. Most models come in two sizes, 38 millimeters and 42 millimeters, as measured by the height of the watch face. The larger one costs $50 more in most cases. For a few of the bands, only one size is available. There are three lines to choose from: - The cheapest is a “Sport” version with an aluminum case. You can get it with a silver case and choose a white, blue, green or pink band made of synthetic rubber. Or get a gray case with a black band. The smaller version costs $349, and the large one is $399. That’s 10 configurations - five bands, each in two sizes. -…

AN APT TIME TO CELEBRATE THE ICONIC SPACE FRANCHISE It's difficult to think of a more iconic two words in media than Star Wars. The epic space opera that began with a film of the same name - later renamed Episode IV: A New Hope - in 1977 has since spawned a six part film series, soon to be seven after the completion of filming of the J. J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens. Indeed, those six films have now been put on sale in full digital HD form for the first time. If you fancy finally ditching those VHS tapes and DVDs and taking your Star Wars viewing experience into the 21st century, all that you have to do is browse to the iTunes Store and invest in any one…

From the moment I took it out of the box, Apple’s new MacBook looked and felt like an iPad. The laptop is Apple’s lightest and thinnest yet and borrows many of the iPad’s designs, including the lack of a fan. The result is a 2-pound (0.92 kilogram) laptop that feels almost non-existent on my lap. Yet it packs in a lot of power, including a high-resolution display and a sturdier keyboard. The new MacBook goes on sale Friday starting at $1,299 in silver, gold or gray (the same choices as the iPad). Its box even resembles the iPad’s. NEW KEYBOARD To make the MacBook as thin as it is - a half-inch (13.1 millimeters) at the thickest point - Apple had to redesign the keyboard. Traditional keys need to be…